Rex Ryan

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– Posted by Jay Paris –

Rex Ryan was on the phone and that’s always a hoot.

The Jets and their one-time bombastic coach, Ryan, roll into town on Sunday. The Chargers will attempt to stretch their winning streak to four, and if doing so at Ryan’s, uhm, feet, all the better.

Ryan was yapping Wednesday with the San Diego media about this weekend’s date. It was mostly coach-speak, and my hasn’t he pumped the brakes on his bravado.

Losing three of the first four and not having a reliable quarterback will tame the wildest of souls, even Ryan.

Ditto losing the 2009 and 2010 AFC Championship Games, and not getting a sniff since.

Ryan’s place on this week’s conference call was so different from the last visit in 2012. That’s when the jolly coach always aiming for the NYC’s newspapers back page unleashed a zinger than got play from sea to shinning sea.

Remember Norv Turner? Thought so. He was then-general manager A.J. Smith’s pick over Ryan when the Chargers cashed out Marty Schottenheimer after the 2006 season. After Ryan previewed the game in 2012, he was asked a what if. As in “what if you were selected over Turner to coach the Chargers?”

He who hesitate is just that, and Ryan wasn’t. Before the Jets’ public relations flak’s elbow could find Ryan’s ribs, Ryan blurted: “Oh we would have won a couple of rings. Those teams were loaded.”

Ryan soon went into a backpedal so fast that if Derek Cox did the same he would still be a Charger But Ryan was right — those teams of LaDainian Tomlinson, Philip Rivers, Shawne Merriman, Lorenzo Neal — were loaded.

Their were Pro Bowlers sprinkled around the field and on both sides of the ball.Ryan’s indirect stab at Turner made for bold headlines and an uncomfortable pre-game meeting with Turner. Later Ryan said he apologized to Turner for his remarks. But in recalling Ryan’s needle we’re reminded of “what a shame that storied Chargers era passed with the highlight being an 2007 AFC Championship Game appearance.

That’s a polite way to describe losing one game shy of playing for a Super Bowl ring. Like those several Ryan boasted would be gracing his fingers by now. We’ll never know.

Just like we’re unsure if Ryan’s quick reply two years ago was him being a blowhard or a realist. Like it was with Ryan that day, isn’t it interesting to play what if.

Raider Nation Revolting

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Error after error.  Mistake after mistake.  Bad contract after bad contract.  Loss after loss.
 
That pretty much sums up Oakland Raiders football, a franchise where the past is all they have to reflect on, because the present is awful and the future not so bright.
 
Welcome Tony Sporano, interim coach, it’s your turn to fix the mess no one has been able to fix for nearly a decade.
 
2004 was a long time ago.  Raiders football, Rich Gannon, the Jon Gruden era ending, a Super Bowl appearance in San Diego.
 
Prior to that, you know well about Raiders history, legendary owner Al Davis, Coach John Madden, a roster full of stars and personalities, from Marcus Allen to Lyle Alzado, Jack Tatum to Jim Plunkett, Gene Upshaw to Art Shell  and so many more.
 
But that’s all Raiders fans of today have, memories of yesterday, and dented-dirty trophies stuck in a closet somewhere. 
 
Mark Davis runs the franchise now, trying to wash away the stain of the final years of his once-brilliant father.  Trying to unravel the club from years of bad contracts, and bad draft picks, and bad people.  It takes time, but the Raiders are so far behind, you wonder if they can ever catch up.
 
J’Marcus Russell, Tommy Kelly, Rolando McClain, Darius Heyward Bey.  18-different starting quarterbacks since that Super Bowl night here.  It goes on and on, the guys who stained the Silver & Black.
 
The franchise had the brilliance once upon a time of a young coachMike Shanahan, then the bombast of the another young Jon Gruden, but has nothing now.  They just fired Dennis Allen, last seen on the sidelines, like a kid whose brown bag lunch had been stolen.  Axed and his (8-28) three year  record attached to his name tag as he was sent home, told to leave, we’ll pay you to go away…
 
Raiders football has been one bad choice after another; Bill Callahan to Tom Cable  to Norv Turner to Art Shell, etc.  It just never gets better in that sewer of a stadium they play in, the Oakland Coliseum.  Sporano becomes the 7th coach in 10-years, and next season they will be hiring their 8th.  That’s some record isn’t it?
 
Waiting for young draft picks to develop, it never happens.  Waiting for the next giant-check free agent to carry the flag, it seldom takes place.  Hoping a veteran traded for makes a difference, it is just  disappointment squared on an annual basis.
 
They have the lowest attendance in the league, the lowest revenue stream in the league, a tarped upper deck stadium.  Whereas they were feared because they were swashbuckler players and personalities, they are laughed at now, for being a standing joke, where the highlight of the day are the fans in costume, and the lowlight of the day is when they kick off the ball to begin the game.
 
Hard to believe, the team that gave us ‘Commitment to excellence’ is now ‘incompetence by everyone’.  Pity the bright young lst round draft pick quarterback Derek Carr and what he has around him, trying to learn on the job.
 
Since their Super Bowl loss in San Diego, when Gruden’s Tampa Bay Bucs trashed the Silver & Black, the Raiders have a composite record of  (49-116).  Take that record and it makes you remember eras like the Orange clad Bucs 26-game losing streak, or the woeful Steelers of the 1950s or the Bidwell led Chicago Cardinals.
 
The Raiders nation.  They want you to believe they are different.  They really are, really bad.
 
Raiders football, “Silver & Bleak”.

State of the Padres

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General Manager AJ Preller met with the media in a season ending press briefing in the dugout at Petco Park, hours after his team completed another non-playoff season, finishing (77-85).  The topics came from every direction.
 
Off season timeline:  Organizational meetings started at 1pm on Monday, evaluating the 40-man roster and will continue this week with reports on the minor league system.  October will be to evaluate the Padres players, heading to the GM-meetings in November and the Winter Meetings in December.
 
Buddy Black status…He has a year plus an option to go on his contract, and he and the coaching staff will return.  Preller called the second half of the season (36-30) a positive, and he will “go forward” with the leaders in the dugout, saying he is on the same page with his manager.  “We are partners and there is mutual respect”.  The GM said his manager “had a feel for the game and a feel how to handle players”.  He called his manager intelligent and that players like to play for him.  “I had positive impressions of everything the final six weeks of the season.”
 
The Roster:  Getting OF-Carlos Quentin healthy was the top priority, and he will be monitored on a month-to-month basis, saying Quentin “is doing everything possible everyday with his ailing knees”.  There will be no attempt to reduce the 8M-contract due Quentin for the coming season to give the team some budget space.  “My priority is his health-not his contract.”  Pitcher Josh Johnson’s 4M-option will not be picked up, coming off his third elbow operation, but Preller says he hopes to work out a deal to bring him to camp on a different contract.  
 
Surprises:  The pitching staff for sure, and the growth the second half of the season of Alexi Amirista and the positive season of catcher Rene Rivera.
 
Needs:  He would not say getting power bats in the middle of the lineup was the big priority, ”there are lots of different ways to find premium bats” to help the team.
 
Free Agency:  “We will address on a case-by-case basis, our ability to go to Cuba to big on free agents”, this after I asked him if the Padres had the resources to big on Cuban free agent slugger Yasmani Tomas, whom Preller scouted last week.
 
Young Kids:  He felt the callups and auditions the second half of the season were very positive, in that they saw the kind of player Spangenberg, Liriano, Solarte could be, saying “we found 3-or-4 pieces” we can put into the roster.
 
Trouble spot:  “We need to see if he fits, and we have to evaluate his off the field situations, and will deal with his issues in the next month.”  He finished with “I want player who will do it right, on the field, and off.”
 
Trades:  “Teams know we have pitching depth and we are getting calls already to gauge our interest in moving arms for bats-we will look at anything, including trading pitching”
 
The Record:  “We need more talent.  Bad starts come because you don’t have enough players.  It’s not about playing poorly under pressure, then playing better when there is nothing to play for.  We need more players.”
 
Organization:  “I do not expect to hire any other front office execs from the Texas Rangers”.  He brought on board longtime scout Don Welke, then added Don Post from the Houston Astros organization. 

Padres Future

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So this under-achieving, disappointing, typical Padres baseball season is over.
 
They wind up with a strong second half finish (36-30), after a miserable first half showing, that nearly set records for ineptitude.
 
And this afternoon, they will begin “organizational meetings'” under new GM-AJ Preller and his new lead Scout Don Welke.  There’s not much to evaluate atop, and they’ve seen what is far down the road in the farm system.
 
Manager Bud Black and his staff coming back used the word ‘rebuild’ last night in his postgame press conference in the clubhouse in San Francisco.  Maybe another word to use will be ‘purge’, the type that leads to a houseclearning.
 
You wonder if they will start parking bodies out on the curb shortly for the sanitation department to start picking up.  The roster needs to be overhauled, a couple of middle of the order power bats must be imported.  They can no longer put this team of utility men out on the field everyday.
 
Carlos Quentin, the nearly crippled left fielder still has another 8M left on his contract with a half million buyout for 2015.  He’ll never get on the field to be what he used to be with the White Sox.  Bone on bone knee problems have pretty much eradicated his ability to play everyday, and there is no DH in the National League.  Do you eat the contract, release him, and clear a spot on the 40-man roster?
 
How much longer do you stay with Cameron Maybin, a year by year underachiever.  Will Venable may be classy, and plays with heart and good glove, but .220 batting average guys should not be regulars.
 
Seth Smith has a two year deal to stay in San Diego, but he did tail off much the second half of the season.  .260-hitters are .260 hitters regardless if they hit .333 for a month.
 
What do you do with the troubled Evreth Cabrera, drugs, PEDs and now possibly not trustworthy? 
 
Jed Gyorko is rock solid, and so is the multi position Alexi Amirista, coming off an amazing second half.  Yonder Alonso may be a better first baseman, from a wear and tear factor, than he is holding up at catcher.  And Rene Rivera turns out to the find of the season, and what a season he had, hitting nearly .300 the last 2-months, this from a .207 lifer.  What do you do with Yonder Alonso, who has played the outfield in the past, but has hand injury history problems?
 
That’s it.  That’s your roster.  Please don’t try to sell us, the public, you are going to be a true playoff team running out a lineup filled with names like Solarte, Almonte, Goebbert, Medica and other refugees from El Paso.
 
A sneak preview showed us the Liriano-Spangenberg potential.  But there is nothing left at AAA, and much of the future talent is way down the line.  San Antonio and Ft-Wayne are a long way from San Diego, in miles and players’ ability.
 
Let’s not hang our hat on a decent second half of the season.  We cannot forget stretches of time, where the core players were hitting (.118) for a month.  You cannot forget a team batting average (.211) the entire first half of the season.  Anybody ache at the all the good pitching San Diego wasted this season, when they were shutout 20-times, and scored 2-runs or less in 68-of-162 games?.
 
Some tough decisions are coming, maybe beginning tonight.  
 
“Play in October” was the theme this year at Petco Park.  The good teams will begin Tuesday, with wildcard games.  The Padres won’t be there again, for something like the 8th year in a row.
 
Team Utilityman and its roster has to change.  The leadership philosophy has to change.  The payroll has to change.   The results in San Diego have to change.  The fans and the media should demand that.
 
The words “Wait till next year” sure get old everytime this time of year.

Bad Football

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I tried to think of some of the bad NFL teams I have seen in this modern day NFL we have to cover and watch.
 
This goes against all the plans laid out by the former Commissioners Pete Rozelle and Paul Tagliabue.  You know the rules, salary cap, the draft, free agency, evens out the playing field.  The theory that the big money Dallas Cowboys can lose to the small market Green Bay Packers.  Everybody has a chance to be competitive.
 
This defies all logic as to how the Jacksonville Jaguars could be so bad.
 
You have to have a lot of bad luck with injuries, a bunch of bad drafts, make mistakes on free agency, and have your team get really old all at once, so you get really young when you start to rebuild.  The Jags have all the bases covered.
 
History reminds us of the horrors of the Matt Millen-Detroit Lions era (0-16) and all that.  The record book shows us all those Tampa Bay losses in the early John McKay years in the popsicle orange jerseys and 26-losses in a row.
 
The Ryan Leaf era brought the Chargers a  (1-15) team.  Ditto for the blight of a (1-15) Patriots team, or a (1-15) Colts team that had Eric Dickerson on it.  There was a (2-14) Tom Flores led Seahawks squad too.
 
The best of the worst, and many forget this, was Jimmy Johnson’s (1-15) Cowboys team that debuted Troy Aikman,  who would soon be followed by Emmett Smith and Michael Irvin and you know the rest.
 
But this is bad, this bunch from Florida’s East Coast.  The Jaguars cannot compete, at least thru three weeks of the season.  All you need to know is that they are ranked 30th, 31st or 32nd in every important stat category on both offense and defense in the NFL. 
 
And now they are giving the football to lst round pick Blake Bortels at quarterback, with the hope he doesn’t get hurt, get ruined, get maimed, playing behind a line that has given up 17-sacks already.  All their receivers are gone, thru drug suspensions, alcohol issues or injuries.  The defense is either way too young, undersized, or just fringe in talent.  The hopes you could make something of a team anchored by WR-Justin Blackmon or RB-Maurice Jones-Drew are over.  Blackmon’s drug-alcohol issues seem to overwhelm him.  Injury and age caught up with Drew.  
 
You have to work real hard to screw up a roster, but the former GM-Gene Smith did, and the ex-head coach Jack Del Rio saw it slip and slide away.  Feel bad for a good coach, Gus Bradley, who came from the Seahawks, for this will be ugly, this will be bad, this may be record-setting awful by the end of the season.
 
The Chargers get a walk-over game.  The Jaguars get their brains beat in.  This goes against all the rules and regs of the NFL, where everybody should be 8-8 at worst…