The Vince Young era nears its completion and other NFL thoughts

(1)              Vince Young could learn a lot from Donovan McNabb.  If he just took the time to watch McNabb, he would learn that playing quarterback in the NFL requires a tremendous amount of leadership, professionalism and perseverance.  An NFL quarterback is the face of a franchise like it or not.  Unfortunately, Young doesn’t seem to grasp the idea that being a leader of men means being accountable to your fellow teammates and responsible for your own behavior.  If only Young had reached out to his fellow quarterback, just 160 feet away on the other sideline, he could have avoided the public meltdown that ensued following the Tennessee’s 19-16 overtime loss to Washington.  I’m sure that McNabb would have taught him a thing or two about the proper way to handle being benched.  Despite all of his trials and tribulations throughout his career, McNabb has never thrown his jersey and shoulder pads into the stands during a toddler-style meltdown.  Furthermore, McNabb has never walked out on his team and head coach following a particularly tough loss.  During his illustrious career, McNabb has been thrown under the bus by teammates and benched by his coaches, but he has always faced the media scrutiny with grace and held himself accountable for his own actions regardless of his level of blame.  I have always held a lot of respect for McNabb for the way that he has handled himself during difficult times.  A lesser man would have lashed out at the Terrell Owens, Andy Reids and Mike Shanahans but McNabb has managed to keep his cool.  Vince Young is no Donovan McNabb.  At the first hint of trouble, Young’s reaction is to pout, complain, run away or all three at the same time like he did this past Sunday.  By my count, this situation is the second time that Young has become so frustrated that he has quit on his team.

I believe that Young has gone too far this time.  His 30-17 record as a starting quarterback is not worth the anxiety of not knowing the next time he will run away from his problems.  His only remaining ally seems to be Bud Adams, but that may change today as Adams learns the details of Young’s recent behavior and finally comes to the realization that the Vince Young that he fell in love with at Texas no longer exists.  This Vince Young lacks the necessary maturity, toughness and competitiveness to truly lead an NFL franchise.  Adams needs to remove the rose-colored glasses and finally choose his well-respected head coach over his petulant, immature quarterback.  It is shame that Young has been coddled so long by his peers, handlers and team because he clearly has the talent to be successful in the NFL.  Unfortunately, he never was able to put all of the puzzle pieces together and the time has come for him and the Tennessee Titans to part ways.  I’m hoping that the unceremonious ending of his Titans’ career will be a wake-up call for Young, so that he will be able to fulfill his potential at his next stop.  I’m pretty sure that McNabb would be happy to give him some good advice about how to leave your first NFL team gracefully and land on your feet with a new team.  Let’s pray that Young is ready to listen to some good counsel for a change.

(2)              The Brad Childress era is officially over in Minnesota after he was relieved of his duties following the 31-3 home loss to the rival Green Bay Packers.  It was a move that had been long rumored around the league, but owner Zygi Wilf was left with no other option than firing his head coach after the abysmal showing in front of their home fans.  In reality, it must have been a hard move for Wilf to make considering the fanfare that he created when he hired Childress five years ago, not to mention the millions that he still owes him to not coach his team.  In the interim, defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier will coach the team and will bring at least one character trait that Childress did not possess: the ability to personally connect with his players.  From his first season, Childress has clashed with his players and, even in the best of times, he had relationships with his players that could best be described as cold and distant.  As a result, Childress never developed a sense of trust and loyalty with his teams, which became a problem at the first sign of adversity.  When the Vikings were busy winning back-to-back NFC North titles for the first time since the 1970’s, no one cared that Childress had the people skills of C-3PO, but when the losses started to mount during this disastrous season it was clear that Childress wouldn’t survive.  Frankly, the decision-makers in Minnesota should have known about Childress’ inability to connect with players from his days as the offensive coordinator in Philadelphia.  They were so blinded by their need to hire the “hot” coaching prospect that they apparently ignored the anecdotal evidence of Childress’ dubious people skills.

It certainly didn’t help Childress that he wasn’t very good with the X’s and O’s either.  When he was hired at age 49, he had never been a head coach at any level and his influence on the highly successfully Philadelphia teams as the offensive coordinator was debatable when you consider that head coach Andy Reid called all of the plays during that time.  As a result, Childress brought an offensive scheme to Minnesota that lacked imagination and failed to find ways to maximize the skills of his most talented players.  The lack of imagination might have been tolerable had Childress been flexible enough to incorporate plays that highlighted his best players or allowed his players, principally his quarterbacks, more in-game freedom.  Unfortunately, Childress worked very hard to batten down the hatches with an increasingly “my way or the highway” mentality instead of opening things up for his players.  He nearly benched Brett Favre last season for too much free-lancing during games and he has clashed with nearly every veteran quarterback that has played for him.  As a result, he didn’t have any support in the locker room when the Grim Reaper came calling.  Now, like in Dallas, a well-respected coordinator gets his shot to right the ship and possibly remove the interim head coach label for the 2011 season.  Some scribes, most notably Peter King, have surmised that in-house coaching replacements are going to be the preferred solutions for teams looking for head coaches due to the labor uncertainty surrounding the 2011 season.  King argues that with players being locked out during mini-camps and OTAs and assistant coaches being paid for part-time work, it is advisable for teams to promote from within to ensure scheme consistency.  Regardless of King’s theories, I think it would be a sound choice for the Vikings to hire Frazier as long as he shows that he can run a football team during his audition.

(3)               The 2010 NFL season has been a crazy ride so far and, as a result, the coaching carousel has started spinning furiously after the firings of Wade Phillips and Brad Childress respectively.  Going forward, who are the coaches that are still firmly planted on the hot seat?  In my mind, I see four teams that have underachieved enough to turn up the heat on their coaches somewhere between medium-high to boiling hot.  First, and foremost, I believe that Marvin Lewis is being burned so badly by his team’s collapse from 2009 division champs to cellar dwellers that he probably has one foot out of the door.  The only thing that might save Lewis’ hide is the Brown family’s notorious reputation for being the cheapest ownership group in the NFL.  Unfortunately, even their most Ebenezer Scroogish inclinations can’t ignore the fact that the Bengals were widely expected to challenge for a wild card playoff berth at a minimum.  Instead, Cincinnati finds itself looking up at the rest of the AFC North and just finished sealing Lewis’ fate by blowing a 31-14 halftime lead against the woeful Buffalo Bills. 

Not far behind Lewis on the heat index is Gary Kubiak of the Houston Texans, who just watched his team lose back-to-back games on essentially the last play.  Kubiak led the Texans to their first winning season in 2009, but the team has taken a huge step backwards this season.  The biggest culprit for the Texans’ struggles has been a defensive unit that couldn’t stop a powder puff football team.  The Texans are the worst passing defense in the NFL and they are second-to-last in total defense and scoring defense.  As a result, they have undermined the best efforts of a top-10 offense and have lost four games in a row to completely blow the momentum they created as part of a 4-2 start.  I believe that Kubiak has hit the ceiling of his ability to improve the football team, so he will probably be looking for a job in the offseason.  The next hottest seat belongs to Josh McDaniels in Denver.  After starting his rookie season 6-0, McDaniels has watched his team lose 15 out of the next 20 games.  He has tried to import the Patriots’ way to the Rocky Mountains, but it is starting to look like his fate will be the same as Romeo Crennel, Eric Mangini and Charlie Weis.  McDaniels should not fret too much because he can find solace in the turn-around that his mentor, Bill Belichick, made after getting canned from his first NFL head coaching job.  In my opinion, McDaniels has made two fatal mistakes that will probably result in a spot in the unemployment line.  First of all, he has had pretty poor draft results, which means he has found very few young and cheap replacements to run his system.  Secondly, he hitched his wagon to a lot of journeyman players like Kyle Orton, Jabar Gaffney and Correll Buckhalter and the results have been mixed.  He saw Belichick work this formula to perfection in New England, but it has largely backfired in Denver.  The big difference is that Belichick has the luxury of having a future Hall of Fame quarterback, while McDaniels shipped his most talented quarterback to Chicago.  Finally, I think that the heat is starting to intensify for Mike Singletary in San Francisco.  Still, his situation seems to be survivable because it appears that he enjoys the greatest amount of ownership support out of all of these guys.  Nevertheless, if the 49ers collapse completely down the stretch, then I could see the York family pulling the trigger on a new head coach.  In the end, it is likely that these four teams will all be looking for new coaches in addition to Dallas, Minnesota and Carolina, where John Fox will not be returning when his contract expires at the end of the season.