Posts tagged Bill Callahan at FanHouse

Great news, Lane Kiffin: when God closes a door, he opens a window. Or something. The second-year Raiders head coach is out of a job, and owner Al Davis has the freakiest press conference in NFL history to show for it. Ah, to be a Raiders fan.

To the madness: some choice bits from Davis' surprisingly coherent but still extraordinarily bizarre presser (click that handsome mug above for the moving-pictures proof).

"Maybe I didn't want to admit that I made a mistake ... to be quite frank with you, I'm firing him for cause now, I'm not firing him for anything else other than cause. ...

I reached a point where I felt the whole staff, we were fractionalized ... that the best thing to do ... was to make a change. It hurts because I picked the guy. I picked the wrong guy. This is regretful, but I thought it was best for the Raiders. And I wanted to make it work, because I want the Raiders to do great. Someone said to me the other day, a newspaper man, 'Why don't you tell us your side of the story? Why don't you tell us what's happening?' And I said to him, look, I don't want to win in the press, I want to win on the field"

Um, obviously? Of course, Davis then proceeded to ignore himself and try to win in the press. Or, at the very least, malign Kiffin in such a way that he comes off looking like a guy who's fresh off running a bed and breakfast. Davis read from a letter he had given Kiffin prior to the Week 3 Chiefs game that included this nugget of awesomeness:

The teams you don't normally want to read about or hear about but since there's no football there's nothing you'd rather do than read this. Please. Not that I'm begging. Although I may be willing to bribe.

NEBRASKA CORNHUSKERS

Big Red hasn't been so big lately, although they're certainly a little red (in the face) after the embarrassing collapse last year that led to the termination of coach Bill Callahan.

Like a stiff prairie wind legendary former coach Tom Osborne arrived, taking the athletic director's job and replacing Callahan with former Nebraska assistant Bo Pelini. With him comes promise of a tough defense and a commitment to returning to what makes Nebraska, Nebraska. In-state recruits are getting more favored looks, the walk-on program is being dusted off and hopes for some return to glory are proffered.

That's all well and dandy but Nebraska right now is just another team in the Big 12. Pelini's a winner and has the graces of Osborne, but contending football isn't likely this very moment. Quarterback Joe Ganz showed something last year and we all know about back Marlon Lucky, so there is promise for the offense. Let's just not kid ourselves about a Big 12 Championship quite yet.

Bill Callahan's nationwide recruited boosted the overall athleticism of the program, but Nebraska still has a ways to go at various position groups. Give this one some time.

And, Nebraska fans would contend, their program. It doesn't take a shrink to diagnose some of the troubles: mania, control freak behavior, lone wolf efforts to thoroughly undermine hired hands. It's all there.

Former coach Bill Callahan was obsessive about his offense; he made the game plan and called the plays. Sources say before the Texas game -- and at the height of Nebraska's failures -- Callahan let his assistants build the game plan and said he wouldn't call one play.

After the first series, Callahan not only called every offensive play, he called the defensive sets, too. The Huskers gave up three touchdowns in the fourth quarter and lost, 28-25. Then they allowed 172 points over their final three games.

Ever see a kids' community league basketball game where one kid basically hogs the ball on offense, doesn't pass, and whose teammates basically hate his guts and more or less quit on the court? That never works out, and then everyone says nasty things about that person when they're out of range. Or they snipe from the digital pages of The Sporting News.

(Via: Double Extra Point)

It was Thomas Tusser, of course, who once said, "A fool and his money are soon parted." Perhaps never has this been more true the case of Nebraska fans and the upcoming spring game. The glorified practice recently sold out, which has produced an outrageous market for the now hard-come-by tickets. An AP wire story opens with the following anecdote:

The week of the sold-out Bruce Springsteen concert in Omaha last month, you could call a local ticket broker and pay $39 for a seat.

For Saturday's sold-out Nebraska spring football game, that broker is getting $95 a ticket.

"I'm not going to be one to judge the craziness of Nebraska football fans," Ticket Express owner Chad Carr said. "The weird thing about this game, I can't keep tickets in stock."

When I last checked on the national ticket site StubHub, prices for Nebraska's spring game were ranging from $44-$148. Face value for the tickets was $10 for reserved seating and $8 for general admission. That's quite the markup. And let's keep in mind this is for a practice game, and one that won't even feature a match-up between the top offensive and defensive units.

It was under Bill Callahan's regime that spring game attendance at Nebraska first took off. The previous attendance record occurred in 2005 when 63,416 fans showed up. Given the disastrous season a year ago, fans are apparently anxious to see what the Bo Pelini era will bring.

We didn't have to do a whole lot of marketing or advertising. It pretty much sold itself," said Nebraska athletic marketing director Corrie Sears. "It's our fans being excited about the new era with Tom Osborne back (as athletic director) and Bo Pelini."

"What we have here is very special," Sears said, "and what we have are very passionate fans. The spring game is becoming more of an event, and we're treating it more like a real game for our fans."

Well, given that it's already surpassed a concert by "The Boss," the spring game has definitely become an event in Nebraska.

A new coaching staff and a new attitude apparently can't prevent finger pointing and placing of blame as Nebraska begins spring practice. With just one day of practice with the new staff behind them, players are already dredging up the past and highlighting the shortcomings of the previous staff and the frustrations of a 5-7 season.

It all began with a whimper from offensive lineman Matt Slauson.

"There was definitely a frustration for the team, one, but for me especially," Slauson said. "Because I kind of feel like I got jacked around a little bit, switching positions all the times, switching playing time all the time, playing a few plays here, a few plays there. I was really frustrated the whole time ... I had no idea what was going on the whole year. I think (it) just messed with my head a little bit. I don't know if there were head games they were doing or what, but I just didn't feel comfortable where I was."

Slauson said guys usually didn't know who was going to start until 10 minutes before the game. He said he wasn't sure who was making the final call on who started.

That doesn't sound good, but perhaps Slauson was an isolated case. Not so, according to running back Cody Glenn, who also weighed in.

NFL Offseason Roadmap is a series focused on the needs of NFL teams as they begin the offseason.

The offseason roadmap for the New York Jets isn't hard to follow. They need to get better, pretty much everywhere. Some areas have more urgent needs than others. A failure to upgrade them would doom the team to a 2008 as dark as 2007 while others require more modest improvements that will make the team a more potent one.

1. Offensive Line – The problems with this unit started in training camp when the team failed to settle a squabble with Pete Kendall and traded him to the Redskins. The loss of their most experienced blocker threw the line into disarray. Adrian Clarke, his replacement, was awful and offered no help to the running game or the pass blocking. Anthony Clement, the right tackle, was almost as poor and the Jets need to upgrade the talent at each position.

FanHouse's Josh Alper mentioned last week that the New York Jets would interview twice-fired-from-head-coaching jobs Bill Callahan. And today, they hired him. As Josh suspected, Callahan will be charged with fixing an offensive line that gave up 53 sacks last season, fourth-worst in the league.

Callahan is best remembered for running the Raiders into the ground soon after Jon Gruden left for Tampa Bay, and then ruining the Nebraska Cornhuskers. But before he became a head coach, he was a pretty good offensive coordinator/line coach. And now he'll work with Brian Schottenheimer, the Jets' coordinator who was a candidate for the Ravens job for it finally went to John Harbaugh.

It will be interesting to see how Schottenheimer and Callahan mesh. Callahan, who compiled a 27-22 record in four seasons as the Cornhuskers' coach, runs a West Coast offense. He was the Raiders' head coach in 2002 and 2003, taking the team to the Super Bowl in his first season. Prior to that, he served as Jon Gruden's coordinator/line coach in Oakland.

As the New York Daily News' Rich Cimini writes, the Raiders led the league in rushing in 2000 under Callahan, and only allowed 55 sacks from '00-'01. I'm guessing if he can replicate that effort next season it will make Thomas Jones and whoever ends up playing quarterback.

The 2007 Jets had no shortage of trouble spots. Their defense offered little resistance to good running games, their quarterback play settled no questions for the long haul and their offensive line play left much to be desired. Despite some talk about jettisoning Bob Sutton, they haven't made any changes to the defense yet and they appear comfortable returning both Kellen Clemens and Chad Pennington in a competition for quarterback next season but there may be changes afoot on the O-Line.

Bill Callahan, late of Nebraska, met with Eric Mangini yesterday for what the Daily News calls an unspecified position on next year's staff. Based on Callahan's history, though, offensive line seems like the place where he'd offer the Jets the most assistance. He coached the lines at Wisconsin and with the Eagles before Jon Gruden hired him as offensive coordinator with the Raiders. While in Oakland, the Raiders had one of the league's best offenses which led to Callahan's ascension to the top job when Gruden decamped to Tampa.

That didn't work out well, despite an AFC Championship in his first season, and his Nebraska tenure ended badly but that doesn't change Callahan's history of offensive success. The Raiders always ran the ball well while he was in Oakland and the Jets definitely need an upgrade in that aspect. Callahan needs to rehabilitate his reputation if he wants to be a head coach again, which makes this seem like a good fit all around.

It must be the last month of the regular season because the Raiders are talking about moral victories. The team usually gives up on real wins sometime between Halloween and Thanksgiving depending on the coach (last year, it was Labor Day), so it should come as no surprise that only losing by seven points to the defending Super Bowl champs is viewed as a good thing:

[T]he Raiders led into the fourth quarter, and they had a chance to tie the score, and yes, that was a pass interference on fourth down when Kelvin Hayden held Jerry Porter's arm.

But ... the stands were packed and the Raiders went toe-to-toe with the NFL's second-best team. That's a whole lot of achievement. December has been checkout/early holiday planning time for four years in Raiderland, and Lane Kiffin has his team fighting. That has to mean something.

Yeah, it means that Oakland is 4-10 heading into Week 16. Good news: the Raiders have clinched homefield advantage throughout the playoffs in the parallel moral-victories-only NFL. They are 13-1(there's nothing moral about losing the the lowly Lions, even in Week 1, when God still loved Jon Kitna) and are favorites to win the Moral Victory Super Bowl. So there's that.

Seriously, there's no disputing that Kiffin has been good for the Raiders, or at the very least, much better than Art Shell, Norvell Turner, or Bill Callahan. Okay, that's setting the bar ... well, on the ground, but we're talking about the Raiders here. Any progress is a good thing. And if it includes moral victories, all the better.

Earlier this week, ProFootballTalk.com, citing an unnamed source, wrote that Raiders first-year head coach Lane Kiffin wasn't super-psyched about losing out on the Arkansas job to that stiff in Atlanta, Bobby Petrino. According to the source, Kiffin was so miffed, he slammed doors and cursed. What a savage.

Whatever happened behind slammed doors, Kiffin wants you to know that he's not interested in any other job than the one he currently has:

"I never had any contact with the University of Arkansas or any college about any job at all," Kiffin said Wednesday. "I've done nothing but prepare my team for the upcoming game....

When asked if he had any desire to take a college coaching job at any point, Kiffin said: "No, no. I'm coaching the Raiders and getting us ready to play. I don't have any idea where all that information [that he was upset about losing out on the Arkansas job] came from."

So there you have it; mystery solved. Or not.

Who knows how this ends, but there was a sense earlier this season (right around the time the 2-2 Raiders were tied for first place in the division) that the organization was finally reversing the once-thought-to-be irreversible damage done by Bill Callahan, Norv Turner and Art Shell in a five-year period. Now? Well, the Raiders are 4-9 and are in line for another top-10 draft pick. If Kiffin wanted to pull a "Saban" it would be hard to blame him, but he says he's not going anywhere. Of course, we've heard that before.