NFL 2018 Off Season Thread
 

It's about time we get this one started.

The the Lions hired the Pat's DC.

The Colts have hired the Pat's OC. Josh McDaniels is even bringing in Pat's Special Teams Coordinator Joe Judge to be the next Colt's STC. Is that kind of lateral move common?

Colts at +4000 to win the Super Bowl.

I'd say with a new coach and a (probably) healthy Luck, those are pretty good futures odds.

And McDaniels decides not to take the Indy job. Have to guess Belichick's retiring is soon, even if not next season.

He resigned as HC of IND?

That’s right, I made that connection right along with the rest of the internet.

LOL. Woohoo!! I wouldn't want to work for that moron owner either. :lol: :lol: :lol: :p

Josh McDaniels withdraws from Colts' coaching job - NFL.com

Well son of a gun. I was hesitant about the McDaniels hire in the first place. Although now I'm more worried about how this has delayed the Colt's search for a new HC.

There's still a few good OCs available.

From Albert Breer’s Twitter feed.

Per sources, the Colts also have contracts in place with three of Josh McDaniels' new assistants: Defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus, OL coach Dave DeGuglielmo and DL coach Mike Phair.

wow isn't NE hated enough? If its true that he's going to be Bellicheck's replacement down the road now-couldn't they have sat him down before now when everybody including the Colts had announced it? I hope the league investigates what went on here.

From Adam Schefter’s feed

Text from one league source: “That’s Kraft putting it to the Colts again. He will forever try and (expletive) that place ever since deflate gate.”

I appreciate the petty.:lol:

I feel a strong kinship with a man who thinks about staying in but barely pulls out before creating an overwhelming commitment for himself.

Who else has done this stuff? Billy Donovan with the Magic? BB with the Jets? I gotta think that the Colts might be able to get some sort of compensation out of this mess.

Wonder who regrets hiring McDaniels more, Denver or Indy?

I disagree. The Colts jumped the gun and announced an unsigned candidate (didn't the Volunteers do the same thing?). Until the contract is signed (and even then one could immediately resign), nothing is official.

If its Kraft trying to get back at them for Deflategate, then I hope the league comes after them for it.

Investigate what?? One league's source biased opinion? Probably from the same source about the AH81 hoax. :lol:

Wait until the Colts turn around and get Kraft's 1st round pick taken away when McDaniels is made head coach in February 2019 for violating the Rooney rule

basically, apparently the story is that McDaniels never told the Pats he was accepting the offer, and was vacilliating (that's why the 2nd meeting with Irsay, etcetera), and Kraft definitely sweetened his contract and possibly guaranteed McDaniels that he'd take over when Bill B. leaves.

Normally I would agree with you, but given the history between these two owners and the timing (again why did they wait until it was announced unofficially or not)? If McDaniels had a bad taste in his mouth after the Super Bowl loss, or a change of heart, then that's one thing, but let's be sure that's what this was about.

Jim Caldwell anyone?

I would take Jack Del Rio and any other candidate before Jim Caldwell.

I don't think you should want him actually. I threw the name out as someone Irsay can call on the rebound as his first option turned him down.

Caldwell will answer the "You up?" text immediately.

What is there to investigate? McDaniels never signed a contract. Maybe Indy thought announcing would force the issue in their favor. They were right about the first part.

Reading between the lines it seems there's a chance they promised him Belichick was leaving after this year and offered him the 2019 job, but I also believe that he had reservations about working for Irsay (and/or got some questionable info on Luck's health) and also does care at least a little about stability for his school age children who bounced around different schools when he was in Denver/Chicago, so if it was just more money and a promise of HC in waiting when Belichick retired with no definitive date I wouldn't be shocked.It's not like college where getting a coach in early is necessary for recruiting. Unless you think the Colts would've hired one of the other coaches who have been hired I don't think the timing matters much.
Until someone can explain to me why the Raiders didn't get fined for hiring Gruden I think enforcement of the Rooney Rule is an even bigger joke than every other unilateral decision the NFL office makes.
I don't pretend to know all of what's true & what's rumor coming out of Foxboro, but I do fully believe that Belichick doesn't have any of these discussions about 2019 until the 2018 season ends, and they're notorious for waiting until the last minute when their target is about to accept an offer to even start talking to guys for big deals. I thought it was a crazy strategy not franchising them, but with both McCourty & Hightower they said go out in FA, find the best offer, and then we'll talk. They did, those players agents said they were about to accept X offer, & that's when the Patriots stepped in and worked out a deal. This situation obviously has a lot more speculation tied to it with everyone wanting to speculate on Belichick's status, but I think McDaniels having second thoughts for a bit now, and Kraft waiting to sit down with him and make a hard push for him to stay/hammer out details last night or early today because that's the day after they got back from the Super Bowl makes more sense than him timing it and letting McDaniels get that far down the road just to mess with the Colts (and invite league scrutiny.)

It's all speculation at this point, but there were rumors that the Colts were very interested in Mike Vrabel. As in he was one of the top two candidates for them. (the other one obviously being McDaniels).

He better hope he gets the Pats job, because I can't imagine very many other teams are willing to put up with his bullshit after this.

I still struggle to understand why anyone is even interested in the guy. His stretch in Denver was phenomenally bad.

And McDaniels was allegedly a candidate in Tennessee too - and like I said at the time, I thought the Titans job was a much better situation given Jim Irsay's craziness and Luck's uncertain health. We'll see - I haven't followed Vrabel's coaching career much, but I don't think he's some slam dunk hire. And now we can likely get another round of Harbaugh to the Colts rumors :)
Oh come on. Never underestimate how much NFL organizations are willing to overlook to hire failed ex-coaches. ;)

Good gameday coach and great offensive gameplanner who was a terrible, terrible GM, and tried to act like Belichick without Belichick's historical success rate to back him up. He's at least humble enough to admit that he made a lot of mistakes off the field during that time, and I assume any team will be smart enough to give him limited input on personnel decisions. Maybe Dave Toub is the next Doug Pederson, but as much as I bag on some of the retreads who always seem to get interviewed, I don't think a bad couple year stretch with obvious mistakes you admit to is worse than someone with no head coaching experience.

I think you can just promote McDaniels if it's in his contract terms. You don't have to go through a charade of interviewing an AA candidate.

Also are we sure Andrew Luck is going to play again? 18m in salary goes guaranteed on the 5th day of the season, they can get out of his contract right now if they want.

good work here, underappreciated.

So did McDaniels actually do anything in Indy before dropping out?

Hearing things about how destructive he has been already and that it's a blessing for Indy...

https://www.indystar.com/story/sport...vor/304619002/

I would love to pile on the Pats for anything that can even be perceived as "shady" but I see nothing close to being wrong with what could have happened here.

Frankly I don't understand why more teams don't seem to be more aggressive in trying to retain assistants. There is no salary cap for a coaching staff. If you're printing money like many of these teams are, why not pay a HC-like salary to coordinators and try and ensure continued success on that side of the ball, while also having a guy in waiting if necessary? Of course at some point a coordinator will want a chance to run his own team but if I'm an owner, that decision would never be made for money purposes.

I don't fault the Pats, at all, for trying to keep their assistant who had yet to sign a contract.

I think that McDaniels has demonstrated that he can't be trusted. That may or may not come back to bite him in the future.

Winning cures all, so if he does take over the Pats and wins a bunch, all will be forgiven. If he runs the Pats like he ran the Broncos, then he'll end up as a college QB coach somewhere, and everyone will pat themselves on the back and pretend that the demotion was because of his untrustworthiness.

Colts GM described the phone conversation with McDaniel when he told them he was not coming to Indy. And McDaniel's agent quit when he was told:

Colts general manager Chris Ballard doesn't want a coach who isn't 100 percent committed

I'm all for piling on the Pats but not seeing any reason to here. It leads to some interesting questions about hoodie. Is he doing one last season and they are keeping his potential replacement? Is hoodie leaving before the 2018 season and they now have his replacement ready to go? Did they offer him a crapload of money and there was no way he could say no?

I don't think the Pats did anything wrong, but McDaniels certainly did.

If we believe that McDaniels staying is a step in the planning for the post Belichick era, is it safe to assume that Scott Pioli is the guy that takes over Belichick's role on the personnel side?

The only thing McDaniels did wrong was not fully realizing earlier the extent of what it would be like working for the nutcase Irsay.

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/j...-coaching-job/

I agree on Irsay, but McDaniels either made a verbal agreement or knowingly allowed the Colts to proclaim that he was their new coach without offering any correction. It's fine not to want to work with Irsay, but don't play games with the team and the fanbase.

I understand but I wonder if we should hold such a position any different than any others in the job market? He did not break or renege on a contract (which would be a legal offense, I presume), he just changed his mind at the last minute - just like you and I and many others have experienced when we hire or try to hire or know of hirings that fall through. Just because this is more public than my company filling an IT spot or your college filling an associate spot, should it be different?

But if I'm hiring again, I wouldn't consider that guy and if others asked me about him I'd tell them how he behaved. That would absolutely happen to me if I pulled a similar stunt. I wouldn't lose a job, and I'm not suggesting McDaniels should lose a job or face any league discipline, but I, and I expect McDaniels, would find it harder the next time I went looking.

The NFL is small and shitting on one owner is going to come back on you.

I for one look forward to McDaniels taking the reigns of a Brady/Belichick less franchise in the near future after seeing his work in Denver :-)

Agreed.

Colts Will Bring in Frank Reich, Dan Campbell to Interview For HC Vacancy

Hopefully this is all better in the long run

Sounds like they offered him more money, more years, and basically an agreement for Belichick to "mentor" him, a.k.a. make him coach in waiting, though without a definitive date on that. This will only increase speculation that 2018 is Belichick's last year, but even if it was officially said in that meeting I don't think we'd hear it officially until after next season. I don't think there's any chance Belichick is retiring this offseason or he would've just done it Tuesday.

It is interesting for this stuff to come out a week after The Two Bills 30 for 30... I thought you could tell Belichick was still annoyed that Parcells jerked him around multiple times,and let him take the job in Cleveland only to later retire that offseason.
*shitting on one owner, but helping out the one you're under contract with, and presumably in line to be the next head coach for... who knows if that will play out as planned, but given his failure in Denver I think McDaniels - who is still very young - gets one more chance at a head coaching job, and if I were him I'd be content waiting a year or two to take over New England under the Kraft's than working under Jim Irsay, especially given Luck's status.

Btw, lol at the Colts GM saying "the rivalry is back". Points for bravado, but I'd worry about your division first given the QB's Houston/Tennessee have & the roster outside of QB Jacksonville has :)

As a Colts fan I'd have to agree. Maybe beat the Patriots and the statement will actually be a statement.

I will add that the Pats shouldn't blame the Colts if the Patsies were cheating.

Agreed. Of course, I thought Belichick would suck after his first job in Cleveland...

I don't question his choice, I question the way he went about it. If he gets the NE job eventually and turns into the next Belichik everything will work out well. But if he doesn't get the NE job or flames out again, this will work against him getting another opportunity. I wouldn't say he has 31 owners against him, but I would say that he only has one owner on his side.