“The Word  ‘Team’….Empty Meaning Today”

-0-

His end of season press conference was all about positives, and the future, moving forward, forgetting the horror-show (4-12) season his San Diego Chargers had just completed.

In a 24-minute Q-and-A session with Coach Mike McCoy, he must have mentioned words ‘team’ and ‘coaching staff” in a positive way a combined 20-times taking to a large group of us in the media.

He fielded all types of questions, gave redundant cliché-filled answers. Typical comments from the Chargers ‘ball coach
.

There were little fragments of information, but nothing of great content, about ownership’s decision to allow to coach in 2016 after the demise of the 2015-season. He refused to answer whether he was given a contract extension, that might match the one his GM, Tom Telesco, received just before the start of the season. Guess it’s his right to retain his personal information, though he was freely speaking about his wife and kids and the offseason plans.

He didn’t want to talk about whether ownership demanded he shakeup his assistant’s coaching staff, only answering my question that the Chargers would evaluate everything about the football operation, from players to coaching, in depth, over the next couple of weeks.

All that around 1pm on Monday. By 4pm, Mike McCoy had fired 6-assistant coaches, most of them veterans in the NFL. No questions nor answers because his post season review, generic as it was, was indeed over. All the info you needed to know about the bodies on the side of the road, the key people on his staff, was contained in a one paragraph press release.

Who,hired when, what positions, and now gone.

How convenient, the coach stays, but all of his hard working loyal veteran coaches are gone. They took out offensive coordinator Frank Reich, wide receiver coach Fred Graves, both of the offensive line coaches Joe D’Allesandris and Andrew Deeds, longtime defensive line coach Don Johnson and tight end coach Pete Metzelaars.

They didn’t even put in any reference to ‘next of kin’, surviving members still on the staff, like defensive coordinator John Pagano, linebacker coach Mike Nolan, or running backs coach Ollie Wilson, or some of the younger assistants, who serve behind the scenes. They still have jobs, though many of the offices around them are now empty.

It’s a pretty tough cleansing of a veteran staff that McCoy had openly praised for their dedication thru all the adversity of an injury ravaged season. The head coach kept using the terms team and coaching staff time and time again thruout his Monday session.  And an indictment, in that he hired a large segment of the group.

When head coaches go, most of the assistants exit too. Aside from the bloody Monday firings in Detroit, where Jim Caldwell blew out as many as four offensive assistants after a (1-7) start, I cannot remember something as nasty as this.

To blame those assistants for this mess, is a cheap way out of not holding yourself accountable.  These were your guys in the foxhole you shared the last three years.

If GM-Tom Telesco mandated all those firings, then we can imagine McCoy new title will be ‘head coach and puppet’.

And now an interesting side story to all this. If McCoy is serving out just the final year of his original contract, how will he, and what quality will be get, when he goes to replace those just departed? And if that is not the case, the alternative exists. McCoy was given a contract extension after a hideous season, a reward for a poor campaign. How does that play out with the fans?

Coaches usually go down with the ship out of loyalty to their staff. History should remind you of the Bobby Ross-Bobby Beathard-Dean Spanos divorce, when Ross, the Super Bowl coach, refused to axe his Coordinator Ralph Friedgen. Ross exited and the staff went with him.

McCoy has every right to retain his personal information from the media and the fans. What is bothersome are the continued ‘lies’ to the media. He knew changes were coming, and lied about evaluations that would take weeks to conduct. Just like he lied about injuries, this guy was ‘dinged’ when he in reality he suffered a catastrophic career ending knee injury.

So now we have a second incident at the Fortress that raises the question, who are these people, and why do they act this way? The Chargers, who always want to use the word family, got nailed for how they treated family, in the fining and suspension of Eric Weddle last week. And now this.

Bothersome too, if McCoy is lying on Monday, how can you trust him on anything else, in the past or in the future.?

He always uses the phrase ‘ in the best interest of the team’. Maybe best interest should include honesty also.

Mike McCoy now viewed as Mike McFib, something that looks bad on your resume, just like the (4-12) record and 10-losses in the last 15-games too you have stapled on it too…

Please follow and like us: