I can't envision a situation where someone of sound mind would agree to take the Raiders' head coaching gig, given what's happened since owner Al Davis fired Bill Callahan in 2003. We've seen Norv Turner, Art Shell, Lane Kiffin and now Tom Cable amass 17 wins in four-plus seasons. Staggering.
So maybe Oakland's best hope is to find an eager, young, bright football mind, someone who would use the opportunity to get some experience, while changing the culture of losing in the process. You know, somebody like, say, Lane Kiffin.
Former Giants coach Jim Fassel fits the profile to be the Raiders' next head coach: He wants to coach again. After the Lane Kiffin disaster, Al Davis is not going to hire another coach barely out of diapers. The hot assistants are not going to want that land mine as their first NFL head coaching job. So that leaves the recycled coaches.
Myers points out that Fassel lost out to Herm Edwards in Kansas City, Scott Linehan in St. Louis and Kiffin in Oakland, which raises more questions than it answers, I think. Fassel, who took the Giants to the Super Bowl in 2000, couldn't beat out three guys who have subsequently run their respective teams into the ground, and two of them have already been fired?
Blame it on Bob Stoops. If you don't want to blame it on Stoops, blame it on Jim Tressel. If not Tressel, then Urban Meyer. All three of those guys took over high-profile programs. All three won national titles in their second seasons. Now any school thinks it can do the same thing. If you're a coach and you can't get your program turned around by the middle of the third season, there will be a fire(yournamehere).com website. And you can look forward to a variety of stock arguments as to why you should be unemployed.
The problem, of course, is that most of these arguments are completely worthless. Don't believe me? Let's investigate. "We can't let this program sink any further into mediocrity!" Yeah, that's what Steve Pedersen said when he fired Frank Solich and brought in Bill Callahan. I suppose you could argue that Pedersen was correct; instead of sliding into mediocrity, he let the program degenerate into irrelevance. Unless your team just went 0-12, "up" isn't the only possible direction a new coach can take your program.
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.
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.
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.
"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 withBrian 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.
I can't envision a situation where someone of sound mind would agree to take the Raiders' head coaching gig, given what's happened since owner Al Davis fired Bill Callahan in 2003. We've seen Norv Turner, Art Shell, Lane Kiffin and now Tom Cable amass 17 wins in four-plus seasons. Staggering. 
Blame it on 
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.
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.
It was 
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.
FanHouse's Josh Alper 
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 
