“Less than Truthful–Less than a Winner”

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Oh the story is so different now that he has changed his mailing address.

Mike McCoy, the deposed Chargers head coach, met with the media in Denver, where his homecoming is underway, his return as Offensive Coordinator.

When last seen up there, he had helped deliver the Broncos into the playoffs, even got them a post season win with the flawed quarterback Tim Tebow running the show.

He did such an amazing job under trying circumstances in the Tebow era, it earned him the opportunity to be the Chargers head coach. He got likely the best coaching opening there was, inherited the greatness of quarterback Philip Rivers, and then saw the franchise go downhill.

All is well now, as McCoy talked to the friendly Denver media about that last tour of duty, and how much fun it was ‘coaching up’ Tebow.

Of course here in San Diego, when asked about that accomplishment, McCoy never wanted to look back to his Broncos days.

Up there yesterday he talked about all he learned in San Diego, and how hard it was to get the coaching job done because of all the injuries the Chargers had incurred.

Of course, when offered the chance to explain the impact the devastating injuries had on the Bolts, he kept trotting out the phrase, ‘cannot use injuries as an excuse’ mantra to the San Diego media.

And then there was the ultimate slam, telling Broncos beat writers, that the ‘fires burned within him’ to call players again, something he could not do the last four years’.

What?

Last I checked, McCoy was head coach. That’s equivalent to being the CEO of the football team. He has input in every game plan, especially over the dreary (4-12) and (5-11) seasons.

As Frank Reich was staggering around before he was fired, as Ken Whisenhunt had issues with losing so many skill players, it is hard to believe McCoy could not have stepped in and changed plays to help his battered quarterback along last season and the year before.

For a coach who kept reminding us it was his team, and it was on him, he sure did not do anything to take better control of the spiral down teams he was coaching.

Just another check mark in the book about McCoy’s credibility.

Check that page that reads “over his head as head coach-blatant liar-condescending loser”.

McCoy…less than truthful here….surely not a winner either.

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“Tuesday Tidbits”

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The Falcons will be haunted by the late-game play calls of now departed offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan at the end of Sunday night’s Super Bowl.

He helped turn a (28-12) lead into the devastating late game loss.

The Falcons had the ball 3rd-and-1 at their own 35-yard line with 8-minutes left in the game. They had run he ball effectively thru out. Shanahan called a pass play when he got isolated coverage, instead of a power run that would have gotten Atlanta a first down, and kept the clock going.

Matt Ryan took a sack, fumbled the ball, and gave the Pats short field position. Tom Brady took New England in for a score, and it was (28-20) with 6-minutes left.

Atlanta came right back throwing on the next possession, hitting Julio Jones on a spectacular deep sideline catch. Then with the ball deep in Pats territory, Shanahan did it again.

Line of scrimmage the New England 22, he didn’t run it with 4-minutes to go, already in field goal range. He came out throwing again. Incompletion….quarterberback sack…then holding call. All of a sudden, out of field goal range, it was 3rd and 33, incomplete pass then punt. Moments before he could have had a 3-pointer, that would have built an 11-point lead with two minutes to go.

New England would have never comeback from two scores down with 2-minutes to go, and probably would have had to burn their timeouts up to preserve the clock.

Instead Brady engineered the 91-yard game tying TD drive to tie it, and bring on overtime.

Yes the Pats QB had to make some huge throws, and Julian Edelman had the catch of a lifetime to aid the drive, but none of that could have had happened, if Shanahan had done things differently.

The Falcons said it was all about being aggressive. But not at that time, nor that place.

New England had been blitzing, Atlanta had not been protecting. Why expose Ryan even further, when running the ball, draining the clock, using the Pats time outs would have been the right thing to do?

Sure it’s so-called Monday morning second guessing. But the Pats would never have gotten the time off the clock back, had Atlanta put the ball into the hands of either Devonta Freeman or Tevin Coleman. Runs that could have gotten a first down, definitely would have marched time off the scoreboard clock.

The (28-3) deficit was gone. The game wound up being tied. Overtime came and went on one possession. The Pats got the trophy, the Falcons got a loss that will hang over them all off season.

Shanahan got on a plane and flew to San Francisco to begin his job as the 49ers head coach.

Should have been an Atlanta win, wound up as a gruesome Falcons loss.

Smart guy, this offensive coordinator. Stupid call by the soon to depart play caller.

Atlanta’s fine season ruined by the outgoing assistant coach. It won’t show up on his resume. It will however be stapled to the hearts of Falcons players and fans forever.

Smart guy coordinator…stupid play calls….stunning and sad ending. Victory turned into defeat.

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“The State of New England-The Place to Be”

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Yes you can officially transfer the word “Dynasty” from where ever it was located to the 617-area code, in Boston, home of the Super Bowl champion New England Patriots.

Once upon a time they used the word to describe Vince Lombardi and the Green Bay Packers.

Al Davis wanted it, and stole it, to put next to the 3-trophies his Oakland Raiders won back in the day.

Pittsburgh, with its Steel Curtain defense and Terry Bradshaw, had a great run with Chuck Noll and the Steelers.

And of course America’s Team, the Dallas Cowboys, owned it from the Tom Landry to Jerry Jones era.

Now it goes to the Patriot Nation, the State of New England.

They are cheering and probably still drinking and celebrating at Plymouth Rock, to Portland, Maine…..from Providence to Durham, New Hampshire…and Rutland, Vermont down to Danbury, Connecticut.

New England Patriots football is something special.

From the highly accomplished businessman-philanthropist that is Robert Kraft. To the brilliance of the often crusty-frost coach Bill Belicheck. To Tom Terrific Brady and all the things that former 6th round draft pick has accomplished.

They’ve rebuilt the team 3-times in a 15-year span around Brady. Draft picks, athletes, free agents, and refugees from other teams. They’ve put them all around Tom Brady, and all he has done is drive them back to the Super Bowls.

Sunday night was no exception.

The Pats were caught off guard by the enormous Falcons team speed on defense. They couldn’t block the pass rush. The Atlanta cover corners were everywhere. And Brady got rocked.

They were down (28-3) when Brady took control. They went no huddle, they put 5-straight scoring drives together. The Falcons defense died on the field.

Belicheck changed his own defense, going to press coverage. They mugged the Falcons receivers, disrupted their rythm, and they did something they hardly ever do, blitz, and they banged around Matt Ryan.

They chopped away at the lead. It wound up (28-28) headed to overtime, and the Patriots needed just one possession to win the game.

The numbers inside the game were something.

From the mid-third quarter on, the Pats had a (338-to-74) advantage in yardage. Ryan and the Falcons had just 2-first downs on four possessions.

Brady wound up throwing for (466). He survived 5-sacks and 16-hits.

When it was over, it was the Falcons laying face down in the gutter, their lead gone, their Super Bowl trophy hopes dashed.

And in typical New England fashion, somebody different helped get them the win. Two weeks ago it was utility wide receiver Chris Hogan who went wild.

Last night, 3rd string running back James White scored twice on the ground, and caught 14-passes for 110-yards.

Consummate team win. Enormous come from behind victory.

Safe to say New England is the NFL’s modern dynasty. And nobody may ever top what Kraft-Belicheck and Brady has just accomplished.

You may not like them, their attitude, their way of business. But you need to respect them.

Dynasty. Super Bowl Champs. The State of New England.

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“The Patriot Way-Winning Way”

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The Raider Nation. America’s Team. The Patriot Way.

Dynasties, run by demagogues, followed by everyone, loved by many, despised by a bunch too.

The Raiders and Al Davis thru all those decades. The Cowboys, with Shramm and Landry, and now the multiple eras of Jerry Jones.

But this dominance coming out of Foxborogh is really something.

And so the Patriots are back where they normally are in February, playing in a Super Bowl.

It’s their 9th trip as they search for their 5th ring.

If you live in the ‘State of New England’, you love Patriots football, and why not. From the early days of the AFL, Gino Capiletti to the John Hannah era, to where we are now with the the Tom Brady Bunch, they have had a string of succeses.

Robert Kraft, the paper magnet, saved the franchise, built the stadium, hired the enigma as coach, and has overseen dominance in the sport.

Bill Belicheck, an ogre of a personality, but a brilliant strategist, and mastermind tactician, has rebuilt his team twice now in the last decade plus.

You may not like ‘Spygate’ or ‘Deflategate’, you might disagree with their CIA mentality, but you have to respect a (25-10) postseason record with Belicheck as leader.

Tom Brady’s brilliance will take him from 6th round draft pick to the steps of the Hall of Fame, once he is done throwing touchdown passes. And his 24-career post season wins is pretty impressive, and so is his ability to drive his team to wins, regardless of whom is catching his passes.

The Patriots offense is so explosive. Belicheck’s defenses are so complex. Think of the challenge quarterbacks face at the line scrimmage, wondering if the presnap reads are true fact or New England fiction. Think of the worn out defenses, who can never get to Brady, and have to chase all his receivers-running backs game after game.

Atlanta steps up on Sunday with lots of firepower for QB-Matt Ryan. Now the issue, can he win if New England takes a bunch of his things away.
Will he have enough bullets in the gun? Can he do it without making mistakes? Will Brady, find a way to do it again. Get another ring.

The Patriots Way. You may not like it, but you should respect it. It’s always been the winning way.

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“The Price is Right-NFL Style”

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Back in the day on old television, they played the “Price is Right”…Bob Barker yelling ‘C’mon down’.

The modern day version is now played by Roger Goodell and the 32-NFL owners.

Pay the price, get to keep your team. Fail to do so, and watching the moving vans take your team away.

And so the Chargers officially exit San Diego, paying the 12.8M termination fee of their lease.

The Raiders are in scramble mode, to come up with 650M additional financing, now that they have lost two of their big backers for the Las Vegas project.

In San Diego, there may be movement behind the scenes to find a way to come up with the financing, to try and become a player in the Raiders situation, lure them here, rather than have them stay in Oakland.

Is there a way to do all this?

Yes the Raiders can go back to Oakland and play in the Black Hole another year or two. But would you rather be in San Diego in the sunshine, or a stadium where the sewage backs up?

Of course it all has to be tied into a comittment to come up with 1.6-to-1.8B dollars to get a new stadium built in Mission Valley.

Look for San Diego to go back to bits and pieces of what they wanted to do with the CSAG plan. But now there are new players in the mix. Now there is another revenue stream and maybe additional ideas to make this happen.

Follow my math:

350M-City-County
350M-Raiders
300M-NFL
100M-San Diego State
54M-State Funds-River Park
100M-FS-Soccer Investors
625M-Sale of Qualcomm land to FS for development.

That gets you to 1.8B, what you needed for an NFL Stadium. It alleivates the drain of maintenance of the crumbling Q. You have a developer to sublet projects for the other aspects of the Friars Road sight.

And you do all that by getting city-county approval by a 50%–plus-1 vote.

Goodell spent 45-minutes covering lots of storylines in the NFL. Headlining the conversation was ‘Deflategate’…..then the San Diego-Las Vegas situations. That’s where the bulk of the questions come from.

The NFL said they would not approve a casino owner as a co-owner of an NFL team or a facility. The end of a piece of the Las Vegas-Raiders financing plan.

The Commissioner dropped a hint, making light of history, that cities, who lost teams, then built stadiums, got replacement teams. The Ravens in Baltimore…Browns to Cleveland…Texans to replace the Oilers in Houston.

Of course, he stood up there and tried to sell the nationwide media that owner Dean Spanos did everything for 15-years to try and get a stadium built, when we know he did nothing with the city and county the last calendar year. Shame on that piece of revisionhist history.

But as Spanos is looking forward, so should San Diego. Create a financing plan, make a push for the Raiders.

The critics will be out in force. Don’t want the Raiders. Won’t get even a 50-plus-1 vote. Mayor too busy getting ready to run for governor. Etc.Etc.Etc.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Make the calls, take my math, see if you can get it done.

Maybe this time, our price in San Diego, proves the price is indeed right.

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