FanHouse Jim Mora

NFL Coaches Fight Club: the Tournament. Because we have nothing better to do than predict what might happen if head coaches started punching each other in the face.

Consider this hypothetical: what if two coaches met in a dark alley and threw down in a no-holds-barred brawl? Who would emerge victorious?

First, some background: back when I was in high school, when my friends and I were pretty creative in finding ways to avoid actually paying attention in class, we'd create brackets (think NCAA Tournament) where we'd pit our teachers against each other**. Whoever we thought would win in a fight advanced to the next round. It always ended with our offensive line coach against our wrestling coach in the finals and a huge argument as to who would come out on top.

Anyway, last week, the Back Porch staff somehow ended up discussing whether Rex Ryan or Tom Cable would win in a old school playground scrap. I passed along the above information, and shortly after that, an idea was born -- NFL Coaches Fight Club: the Tournament.

Every week, NFL FanHouse hits the lowlights from Sunday's action, looking at those players who did the most to move their head coaches that much closer to returning to the Bed and Breakfast business.

Football is very often a game in which the 21 men not carrying the ball all do significant work in determining what happens on the given play. Field goals and extra points are usually the exception. While, yes, there is the occasional bad snap or missed block that throws everything into oblivion, most of the time kicking is like clockwork -- the ball is safely pinned to the ground by the holder, and everybody becomes irrelevant except for one guy. The kicker.

I think it's pretty stupid, personally.

Olindo Mare has made over 80 percent of his field-goal attempts during a long 14-year NFL career. So let's just say that Sunday was not his finest effort.

It's rare that a coach will single out a player after a loss -- and even rarer that he'll more or less blame an entire defeat on the efforts of one guy, but that's what Seattle coach Jim Mora did to Mare after the Seahawks kicker missed two of six field-goal attempts in a 25-19 loss to Chicago.

"There' s no excuses for those," Mora said in his post-game press conference of Mare's misses. "If you're a kicker in the National Football League, you should make those kicks. Bottom line. End of story. Period. No excuses. No wind. Doesn't matter."

With Fantasy Football season ready to kick in high gear, FanHouse previewed each and every team, closing with the Seahawks. Click here to view the rest.

Meet the ...
Jim Mora Space Needlers, starring T.J. WhosYoMama on air guitar and T.J. Duckett on drums. Mora succeeds Mike Holmgren after his decade-long reign and vows to change some things. That includes ramping up the rushing attack and attacking on defense. But Mora's goal is easier stated than accomplished short-term, and when looking at this roster from a fantasy perspective, the more enticing options seem to be in the passing game.

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When a video goes "viral" it circulates wildly around the internet. And today's special is DJ Steve Porter's remix of a slew of different sports rants. Via Kissing Suzy Kolber, it basically hinges on Allen Iverson's "Practice" rant while mixing in Jim Mora's "Playoffs!" freak, slicing some Terrell Owens into the fold and even including a little Mike Gundy and Joe Namath, although not together. It's freaking beautiful, too, people. Holy meme.

With the draft approaching, we ignore projections and identify the dream scenario for each team in a series we call The Perfect Draft.

For all the good that Mike Holmgren did in Seattle (and everywhere else he coached), it's hard to argue that the first year of the Jim Mora Era hasn't already started out better than the Holmgren Farewell Trainwreck Tour. The Seahawks traded Julian Peterson, but they signed T.J. Houshmandzadeh and managed to pick up Colin Cole. Sure, it's not that impressive, but it's still better than what happened to Holmgren and Co. last year.

T.J. Houshmandzadeh finally made his free agency choice today, taking the Seattle Seahawks up on their offer to pay him $40 million ($15 million guaranteed) over five years.

From a football perspective, Housh's decision is huge: the Seahawks are immediately made better while the Bengals, well, hey, at least they're the Bengals. From a fantasy perspective though, this makes things extremely interesting.

The Seattle Seahawks have signed T.J. Houshmandzadeh, according to numerous sources and confirmed by ESPN's Michael Smith on SportsCenter a few moments ago.

Smith reports that while the Minnesota Vikings put the "full court press" on Houshmandzadeh, in the end he simply couldn't turn down what is apparently a five-year, $40 million ($15 guaranteed no less) contract from the Seahawks for the 31-year-old wide receiver.

Because the NFL season never ends, we present our 2009 Offseason Roadmaps for front offices to navigate through the summer.

Mike Holmgren has long been one of the primary identities of the Seattle Seahawks. He took them to the Super Bowl and made them a perennial winner of the NFC West. Then last year happened. As Holmgren's retirement tour rolled along, more and more injuries piled up, Seneca Wallace had to start at quarterback for a few games, and the Seahawks stumbled to a 4-12 record.

The coaching transition in Seattle hasn't garnered much attention around the NFL this off-season, with coaching changes in places like Denver and New York making headlines while the media mostly overlooks the departure of Mike Holmgren.

The reason for that, of course, is that we've all known since last year that Jim Mora Jr. would take over for Holmgren after the season. But just because everyone in Seattle knew this change was coming, that doesn't mean there's no news coming out of Seahawks headquarters.

Adam Schefter of NFL Network reports that Seattle requested permission today to interview Patriots special teams coach Brad Seely, who could replace the Seahawks' current special teams coach, Bruce DeHaven.

And in a sign that Mora would like his defense to model the Tampa 2 system that Buccaneers defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin has employed over the last decade, Schefter reports that the Seahawks are also interviewing Buccaneers linebackers coach Gus Bradley and former Lions head coach Rod Marinelli.

What it all adds up to is that just because Mora was the top lieutenant on Holmgren's staff, that doesn't mean Mora is going to do things the same way Holmgren did. And really, why should he? With the Seahawks coming off a 4-12 season, they need more changes than just a new head coach.