FanHouse RexRyan

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.

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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.

As Round 1 of our single-elimination fight tournament involving NFL coaches nears its end, let us recap the action we've seen so far. To view the entire bracket or learn what we're talking about, kindly click on the links below.

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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.

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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.

Back in June, before we knew that Rex Ryan would fix what Eric Mangini broke or that the Dolphins would return to their pre-Tuna form, the long-distance gum-flapping between Ryan and Miami's Channing Crowder was just that. A summertime diversion between an unproven head coach and a chatty linebacker.

Now, four months later, the AFC East division rivals will finally face off, and Ryan sounds like he has gained some perspective. Crowder, however, is a different story.

"I think the thing with Channing Crowder, if I had to do one thing over, that would probably be it," Ryan said in a conference call earlier this week, "because clearly I was joking about the whole thing, which I had done before in the past in Baltimore with Chad Johnson [Ochocinco] and with some other guys."

Comments from Titans fullback Ahmard Hall have eliminated any doubt. One of the running themes of this year's NFL season is going to be trash talk and the New York Jets. Up until this point, the Jets have been the ones running their mouths with the explicit approval of new coach Rex Ryan, but it was inevitable that some of it would get lobbed back in their direction.

We thought it happened last week, but it turned out to be a fake Rodney Harrison doing the tweeting. Now, though, we've got our first actual return of fire. Hall isn't a fan of Jets linebacker Bart Scott's running on-field commentary. On the eve of this Sunday's game, Hall told Jim Wyatt of the Tennessean exactly why.

FLORHAM PARK, N.J. -- This is how Jets receiver Jerricho Cotchery knows his quarterback is an overgrown child. On the first play of the second half Sunday against the Patriots, Mark Sanchez hit Cotchery with a 45-yard pass down the right sideline. When Cotchery got up at the end of the play -- a 45-yard pass play, remember -- Sanchez was standing right there in front of him, screaming in Cotchery's face and whacking his helmet in celebration.

And it's not the first time that's happened.

"When you catch a long pass 30, 40 yards down the field, you're not used to seeing your quarterback right there in your face when you get up," Cotchery said Monday. "I'm like, 'What happened? Did you throw it and start running after it right away?' "

If you didn't know better, you'd think that Sunday's Jets-Patriots game was for the AFC Championship. There has been an outsize amount of jabbering between the two rivals, most of it coming from the Jets, for a game that will leave one team at 1-1 with 14 games to play.

The latest and, presumably, final stage in the pregame yammering took place on the radio and Twitter Friday between Jets safety Kerry Rhodes and former Patriots safety Rodney Harrison. Earlier this week Rhodes said that the Jets didn't want to just beat the Patriots, they wanted to embarrass them. Harrison responded during a radio interview.

Jets coach Rex Ryan has informed Mark Sanchez and Kellen Clemens that Sanchez has won the starting quarterback job, FanHouse has confirmed. A source said Ryan gave the news to the two candidates this morning, as first reported by Jay Glazer on FOXSports.com. Ryan's daily press conference is scheduled for 2 PM ET, after the Jets practice today in Florham Park, N.J., and he's likely to make his decision public at that time.

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Maybe Rex Ryan's midweek gum-flapping had nothing to do with the Monday night Jets-Ravens game. Or maybe it did. Either way, rookie quarterback Mark Sanchez found out two plays into his first NFL start that he wasn't facing the University of Washington.

On his first pass attempt, Sanchez threw a pick-six to defensive tackle Haloti Ngata, but not before getting knocked silly by linebacker Ray Lewis. And on his second pass attempt, Sanchez would have thrown another pick-six had Lewis not dropped it.

Before proclaiming that Sanchez isn't yet ready for the New York City spotlight or the rigors of life as an NFL starting quarterback, it's probably worth repeating this tweet from Football Outsiders: "Basing your QB decision on preseason play is like deciding on a NASCAR career because you won at go-karts."