Trent Baalke is out as general manager of the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Sounds sort of like a combined resignation-firing, so I’m chalking it up as a firing.
Archive for the ‘NFL’ Category
Firings watch.
Wednesday, January 22nd, 2025Firings watch.
Monday, January 13th, 2025This is still breaking, but: Mike McCarthy is supposedly out as head coach of the Dallas Cowboys.
ESPN, who is attributing this to “a source”.
Firings watch.
Friday, January 10th, 2025On Tuesday, the Las Vegas Raiders fired Antonio Pierce as head coach.
Yesterday, they fired Tom Telesco as general manager. One season, 4-13.
In other news, Sean Dyche is out as manager of Everton. Everton is apparently a soccer team.
(I would have sworn I posted this yesterday, but I just found this in my drafts. Apologies.)
Firings watch.
Tuesday, January 7th, 2025Bloody Monday felt like sort of a nothing burger. I think what we may see is firings trickling out over the course of the week.
Starting with today: Ran Carthon out as general manager of the Tennessee Titans.
The Titans, by the way, have the number one pick in the upcoming NFL draft. Also by the way, they are keeping Brian Callahan as head coach.
Personally, I’d like to see Carthon, Callahan, Amy Adams Strunk, and every other person who was involved with the Titans wearing Houston Oilers throwback uniforms placed in stocks in front of the stadium and pelted with rocks and garbage.
ESPN.
Brian Schneider out as special teams coach of the San Francisco 49ers, who were 6-11 this year.
Edited to add: ESPN is reporting that Antonio Pierce has been fired as head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders. This seems to be backed up by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, but that’s not a great newspaper, so I’m sticking with ESPN.
The Raiders were 4-13 this season: Pierce came on as an interim coach in 2023 (and went 5-4), and this was his first and only full season.
Monday, Bloody Monday.
Monday, January 6th, 2025This is your official thread for today’s NFL coach firings. I will try to keep this thread updated throughout the day, but I have some things going on later in the afternoon that may interfere.
Doug Pederson out as head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars. (That link may give you trouble about your ad blocker, but if you reload that seems to clear it. Archive.is seems to be having problems right now, or I would put up the archive version.) 4-13 this season, and 22-29 in Pederson’s three seasons. However, the team is keeping Trent Baalke as GM. ESPN.
Interestingly, the New York Football Giants have apparently decided to keep general manager Joe Schoen and head coach Brian Daboll, even though the team finished 3-14 this season and 6-11 last year.
Edited to add: “Sources say” Lou Anarumo is out as defensive coordinator of the Cincinnati Bengals.
Not a NFL firing, but Wes Goodwin is out as defensive coordinator at Clemson.
Edited to add: Ryan Grubb out as offensive coordinator of the Seahawks according to “sources”.
The NYPost is running their own “Black Monday” ticker as well.
Hold the Mayo!
Sunday, January 5th, 2025It’s the hap-hapiest time of the year. That is, the final Sunday of the NFL season, and the lead-up to Bloody Monday.
Except Bloody Monday has increasingly started on Sunday. Like it did this year.
Jerod Mayo out as head coach of the New England Patriots. One year, 4-13.
Meanwhile, the Cleveland Browns have fired offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey and offensive line coach Andy Dickerson. Cleveland finished the season on Saturday, and went 3-14.
I’m going out this evening with friends, but if I get a chance and if there are more firings, I’ll try to update here.
da Bears.
Friday, November 29th, 2024I’m trying to get out of the house to do some shopping, but stuff keeps coming up.
The Chicago Bears fired Matt Eberflus this morning. Tribune. ESPN.
This was not entirely unexpected. The Bears have lost six straight games, and are 4-8 this season. The big reason for pulling the trigger seems to be yesterday’s Lions game. It wasn’t just that they lost to Detroit, it was that the Bears completely botched the end of the game.
(I don’t know why ESPN keeps referring to this as “Sunday’s game”. It was Thursday, right? My internal clock isn’t that messed up, is it?)
I didn’t see the game (we were busy eating Thanksgiving dinner out with our people) but from what I hear and read, Eberflus completely botched things. For crying out loud, the game ended with an unused timeout by da Bears!
“Bears fire Matt Eberflus shortly after making him meet with media” from Awful Announcing. Yes, he had a press conference this morning, in which he said “I’m confident I’ll be working to San Francisco and coaching that game.”…and then they fired him about two hours later.
Eberflus was 14-32 in “three years”.
Obit watch: November 28, 2024.
Thursday, November 28th, 2024Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Yes, I know it’s weird to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving in an obit watch, but it is a weird Thanksgiving. I’m actually rooting for Detroit to win this year. (And the odds look good: they’re playing da Bears.)
Rev. Robert W. Dixon Sr. (United States Army – ret.) passed away on November 15th. He was 103 years old, and was the last surviving “Buffalo Soldier”.
Created after the Civil War, the Army’s all-Black cavalry and infantry regiments were nicknamed “Buffalo Soldiers” by Native Americans who encountered them in the nation’s Western expansion in the post-Civil War 19th century. The name may have been a reference to the soldiers’ curly black hair or to the fierceness that buffalo show in fighting. In either case, the soldiers embraced the name.
The troops could serve only west of the Mississippi River because most white Southerners would not tolerate armed Black soldiers in their communities. They fought in the Indian Wars and protected settlers moving West. During the Spanish-American War, the experienced horsemen of the 10th Cavalry led the way for Col. Theodore Roosevelt’s novice Roughriders in fighting in Cuba.
In the 20th century, official racism by the Army diminished the role that Buffalo Soldier regiments played in major engagements during both world wars, although some troops saw action in World War II during the invasion of Italy and in the Pacific theater.
…
Mr. Dixon, who grew up in New York City, enlisted in the Army in 1941 and remained at West Point through the war.
His wife, whom he married in 1977, said she did not know where he learned to ride or what he did at West Point; he was a disciplined, modest man and a Baptist pastor, who never spoke of his wartime service, preferring to focus on the future.
…
…
Mr. Dixon returned to West Point at 101 to visit a monument to Buffalo Soldiers erected in 2021 on the open grasslands where they had trained future officers; the area is now named Buffalo Soldier Field.
At a celebration of Mr. Dixon’s life this week, Aundrea Matthews, the granddaughter of a Buffalo Soldier who serves as president of the Buffalo Soldiers Association of West Point, recalled that Mr. Dixon declined the help offered by cadets during his visit.
“When the soldiers went to grab Rev. Dixon to bring him up, he shook them off,” she said. “At 101, he walked by himself, and he saluted the Buffalo Soldier monument.”
For the historical record, archived NYT obits for Jim Abrahams and Helen Gallagher, which were posted after I put up yesterday’s obit watch.
Edited to add: 11-1! Go Lions!
More firings!
Tuesday, November 19th, 2024According to “sources”, the NY Jets have fired general manager Joe Douglas. ESPN.
Under Douglas, the Jets have a 30-64 record, no winning seasons and no playoff appearances.
The Charlotte 49ers have fired football coach Biff Poggi.
…
The good news is, former coach Biff is going to have more time to drink white wine spritzers at the club with Muffy, Buffy, and Brock.
Obit watch: November 15, 2024.
Friday, November 15th, 2024Theodore B. Olson, noted lawyer. I sort of vaguely remember him from the Reagan administration:
Later on, he became involved in the effort to overturn California’s gay marriage ban, and opposed the first Trump administration’s efforts to repeal the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
…
Mr. Olson worked on the White House’s behalf during the initial stages of the Iran-contra affair, Congress’s investigation into the illegal arms sales to Iran to support right-wing rebels in Nicaragua. He was also accused of committing perjury during a congressional investigation into the White House’s withholding of environmental records.
That investigation, which lasted five years and personally cost Mr. Olson $1.5 million, ended without charges. It made him a darling among conservative commentators, but left many Democrats convinced that he was dangerously partisan.
…
His third wife, the conservative commentator Barbara (Bracher) Olson, was aboard American Airlines Flight 77 to Los Angeles from Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, when Al Qaeda terrorists hijacked it, crashing it into the Pentagon and killing everyone aboard.
She had planned to leave the day before, but had stayed an extra day to be with Mr. Olson on the morning of his birthday. As the plane veered back toward Northern Virginia, where they lived, she called him from a bathroom, and Mr. Olson was able to record some of the call. His telephone is now in the collection of the National Museum of American History.
Gerry Faust, former coach at Notre Dame.
John Robinson, former coach at the Universty of Southern California and of the Rams.
…Attending Our Lady of Perpetual Help School, he met a fellow fifth-grader, John Madden, the future Hall of Fame coach and broadcaster, and they became lifelong friends.
“Just two doofuses from Daly City,” Robinson told The Los Angeles Times in 2021.
Timothy West, noted British actor. Other credits include “EastEnders”, “Nicholas and Alexandra”, “Crime and Punishment” (the 1979 TV miniseries)…
…and what was, according to the obit, a disastrous production of “Macbeth” with Peter O’Toole.
Mr. O’Toole, who had not appeared on the London stage for 15 years, had insisted on complete artistic control over the production, Mr. West wrote in a memoir — “a sure recipe for dissent if not disaster” — and refused to make any suggested changes.
The first night was a critical failure (“Not so much downright bad as heroically ludicrous,” The Daily Mail wrote), and ignited a public war of words (“West Disowns MacBeth,” one headline blared). But the play drew so many curious theatergoers that it became a box office hit.
He was also married to Prunella “Sybil Fawlty” Scales, who I did not know (until I read the obit) has Alzheimer’s. Damn.
Firings watch.
Monday, November 4th, 2024I had scheduled today and tomorrow off, and am running around with Mike the Musicologist. I had no idea how busy it was going to get, so I am blogging by phone.
Dennis Allen out in New Orleans. 18-25 in more or less three seasons, and the Saints have lost seven games in a row.
The Raiders fired Luke Getsy as offensive coordinator. Also offensive line coach James Cregg and QB coach Rich Scangarello. The team is 2-7, and all three were in their first season with the Raiders. (Hattip: Lawrence.)
Norts spews.
Friday, October 25th, 2024I ran across a story on ESPN last night that, for me, raised more questions than it answered. I even ran it past Mike the Musicologist (who is very much not a sportsball person) because it just seemed so odd.
Josh Reynolds, wide receiver for the Denver Broncos, was shot last Friday.
Police documents indicate Reynolds and another man were located, after multiple 911 calls to report two people had been shot, near South Quebec Street and East Union Avenue in Denver. Reynolds had been shot twice — once in the left arm and once in the back of his head.
Team sources said Thursday that Reynolds was treated and released from a Denver-area hospital hours after the shooting.
So he was shot in the back of the head, treated, and released? That’s the kind of thing that should make you get down on your knees three times a day and thank God. It is also the kind of thing that makes you wonder what caliber he was shot with, and whether something slowed down the bullet on the way.
Strippers. Always with the strippers. Also, nothing good happens after midnight. Also, Shotgun Willie’s is where Ja Morant got into trouble. Maybe teams should be telling their players “Shotgun Willie’s is off-limits.”
Also also: situational awareness. Maybe teams should be hiring the Left of Bang guys (more on this to come).
Sounds like the car was shot up enough to where it wasn’t mechanically functional, which is another reason why I’m wondering if Mr. Reynolds was hit by a bullet or fragment that was slowed down by glass or auto body.
I don’t know that this worth the amount of thought I’ve been putting into it. It just seems like a curious thing.
By the way, the police have arrested two suspects. And while Mr. Reynolds was treated and released, he won’t be playing this week: he’s been on injured reserve for a finger injury. (Carolina plays in Denver Sunday afternoon.)