We all went to school over the weekend during Week Four of the NFL Season. Let’s sit down in a circle, pull out our notes and see what we’ve learned.
The Dolphins really wanted rid of Joe Philbin
Seeing a coach get canned this early in the season has happened before, but usually it’s got something to do with someone with the last name Davis and the Oakland Raiders. If every coach with a 1-3 or worse record was in danger of getting fired, we’d have 12 job openings as of today. Firing a coach after a month is no way to run a railroad.
But for the Dolphins’ move to make sense, you have to see it as their ownership sees it. Miami has too good a roster to be playing so bad, which is evidence enough that Philbin needed to go. Except that same roster could have pulled it together enough to still squeak out an 8-8, 9-7 season and God forbid you sneak into the playoffs. Then they’d be stuck with Philbin for another year and no one outside of Harvard University’s football “experts” thought that was a good idea.
Firing a coach at any point during the season always kills your season. The Dolphins know this, but didn’t want to take any chances on Philbin pulling his crap together.
College football programs are probably already circling Chip Kelly
How can something that succeeded so well two years ago but less so last year suddenly not work at all in 2015? Easy. NFL defensive coaches and players are smart. Chip Kelly’s gimmicky offense worked the same way all the other gimmick offenses did. For just about a year. Remember the Wild Cat? What about the Read-Option? They all looked fantastic for just about 365 calendar days until NFL defensive specialists got good solid film on them and then, suddenly , you’ve got a problem.
There’s no great secret on how you win in the NFL. Chip Kelly’s offense works when you don’t know what to expect and when you’re playing teams with significantly less talent. You can count on that in college football, not in the NFL.
So when the Eagles fire Kelly, and they will if they have a losing record, he’ll walk right into a college job and probably kill it. Hell, if Texas is stupid enough to fire Charlie Strong, they could do a lot worse than Kelly. Tennessee may be in the market for a new coach too.
We already know who the other hot-seat coaches are
With Philbin gone and addition to Kelly, we’ve got a good handle on the rest of the current coaches who are battling for their jobs for the rest of the season. Our No. 1 seed is Jim Caldwell of the Detroit Lions. No. 2 right now is Kelly, I think, with Andy Reid of the Kansas City Chiefs holding down the No. 3 spot. Mike Pettine of the Cleveland Browns is at No. 4 and defying all expectations thanks to his win over the Eagles, way down at No. 5 is Jay Gruden. So congratulations to him.
Who isn’t on the hot-seat but should be? Jim Tomsula, of course, but the York’s hand-picked patsy won’t take the fall this season. Lovie Smith is probably safe, though he shouldn’t be. Yes, he’s going into battle with a rookie quarterback, but he was hired to fix the defense and it’s been terrible.
We still don’t know what Rams team will show up each week
Is it the team that unleashed some explosive offensive plays and shut-down defense that knocked off the Seattle Seahawks and Arizona Cardinals? Or is it the pathetic, hapless offensive team that couldn’t manage 16 total points against the Pittsburgh Steelers and Washington Redskins? Nobody knows.
Jeff Fisher’s Rams have made a habit of playing up to good teams and down to bad teams, making it impossible to actually gauge how good this St. Louis squad actually is. With the Green Bay Packers coming up on the schedule, we still won’t know. The Packers are at home and will win. That much we do know. If they blow out the Rams, that doesn’t tell us much because they blow out everybody. If the Rams play them close, but still lose, that doesn’t tell us anything because that’s just what they do.
We’ll really find out who this Rams team is after their bye. They’ll face the Cleveland Browns, the San Francisco 49ers, the Minnesota Vikings, the Chicago Bears and the Baltimore Ravens all in a stretch of very winnable games. If the team that played Seattle and Arizona shows up to those games, the Rams win all of them and travel to Cincinnati on Nov. 29 at 7-3.
