Author: Shaun P Kernahan

Overthrown Royalty

It’s not unprecedented: A major sports team wins a championship and then fails to qualify for the post-season the following year. Before the Los Angeles Kings just somehow managed to do it, the Carolina Hurricanes did in 2006-07. It happens in other sports more frequently, baseball being a perfect example, but what makes it such a, uh, accomplishment in hockey is that so many teams make the playoffs. 16 to be exact. That’s more than half.

And what makes it such a monumental shock to many is that the Kings were in the midst of a mini dynasty, with two Stanley Cup Championships sandwiched around a Western Conference Finals loss to the Chicago Blackhawks.

It didn’t take long for the excuses and the finger pointing to start. And granted, some of it is valid. Those pointing to injuries could accurately say that the loss of young superstud Tanner Pearson for much of the season with a broken leg severely impacted the team’s offense. They could say that the weeks Alec Martinez, he of the game winning goal from last year’s Stanley Cup Final, missed with a concussion had a profound impact on a defense already thinned due to the season-long absence of Slava Voynov while his domestic violence case moves forward. They could say that losing Andrej Sekera to a leg injury just a few games after they acquired him to thicken the aforementioned thin defense was another nail in the coffin. All of these points have some validity.

Then they point to all the extra hockey the Kings played the last three seasons. Extra hockey… what a bunch of crap. The point is, of any professional sport, to play as much extra of it as you can! Because that would mean you’re in the running for a championship. You didn’t see all that extra hockey impacting the New York Rangers, who have the league’s best point total, despite the lengthy absence of Henrik Lundqvist.

The blame game usually starts with Mike Richards and his disproportionately huge cap number compared to his offensive production. Similar vitriol is thrown at captain Dustin Brown, whose paychecks are similarly gaudy while his offensive production is equally meager.

And again, these points are not entirely devoid of merit, nobody wants to put any blame where it really belongs – with the coach and general manager who were at the reigns for the team’s first two championships in…well, in ever. Kings fans should be forever grateful to Darryl Sutter and Dean Lombardi. But as happens frequently with success, complacency and/or arrogance never lurks far away. It’s worth noting that in Sutter’s coaching career, he’s won less than half of the games he has coached. So, while there has been some success, it hasn’t all been chocolate and roses. And Lombardi, while having been general manager of some very good San Jose Sharks teams from 1996 to 2003, had plenty of detractors in hockey circles for failing to fill out those rosters with the players to take the team from good to championship level. It explains why he eventually wasn’t employed there anymore.

Now, good coaches/executives don’t get every decision right. Billy Bean doesn’t get every decision right. Bill Belichick. Vince Lombardi. Pat Riley. (Phil Jackson is being intentionally omitted). Bruce Bochy. They get decisions wrong. What makes these guys better than everyone else is that they get more calls right than they get wrong. Fred Claire trading Pedro Martinez to Montreal for Delino Deshields would have been forgivable if there had been two or three moves where the scales tipped back in the other direction. But they didn’t.

Moving back to this past off-season, Dean Lombardi made two decisions that would ultimately prove fatal to the Kings’ playoff hopes. First, the decision was made to not re-sign defenseman Willie Mitchell. He may not have a ton of household notoriety, but those who know hockey know that Mitchell is an exceptional player. Not all defensemen score like Erik Karlsson or PK Subban. Some just control their defensive end, move the puck well, and chew up huge, productive minutes. And the decision not to re-sign Mitchell was reportedly due to…wait for it… they didn’t want a defense partnership with two left-handed shooting defensemen. Yeah. Never mind that they won two Stanley Cups with that arrangement, and when they lost to Chicago in the Conference Finals, Mitchell was out with a knee injury. Coincidence? Lombardi the compounded ludicrously inept bit of business by giving Matt Greene a new four year deal. Greene was once a borderline serviceable third pairing defenseman who worked hard, was a favorite of fans and in the clubhouse, and wasn’t afraid to drop the gloves to protect a teammate. Then injuries hit. And more injuries. And at this point he would be overmatched on the junior circuit and should seriously consider retiring and beginning a coaching career. If you want to criticize Lombardi further, you can also point out that he failed to take advantage of the opportunity to amnesty Richards, instead giving the veteran a chance to prove he had something left in the tank…at a cap hit of just under six million. Bad call? Possibly. But let’s move on to Sutter.

Quick, what do Jonathan Quick, Anze Kopitar, Jeff Carter and Drew Doughty have in common? If you said they’re universally regarded as four of the best players in the NHL, you’d be right. Then you have super sniper Marian Gaborik, puck possession monster Justin Williams, young star Tyler Toffoli. There are so many great pieces to the Kings’ puzzle that it’s incomprehensible they failed to make the post season. Sutter epically screwed up so many different things this season that it’s hard to pick just 12. So let’s just start ripping off a few. Repeatedly jacked with line combinations that were working…because who effing knows why? Demoted the underperforming Mike Richards to the minors to send a message, and replaced him with the woefully inept Nick Shore. And when he did have Richards in the lineup, put him on a fourth line ill-suited to his abilities. Somehow kept throwing Jarret Stoll in the lineup instead of, well, anyone with a pulse. Paired two top notch centers who own the puck in Kopitar and Carter on the same line. The team had fifteen overtime/shootout losses, and only three wins. The only way a Stanley Cup champion team can have that woeful record in overtime and shootouts is if 4 on 4 skating and penalty shots were never practiced.

Going on at this point would be self-indulgent to my own disgust at how the Kings were run this year. Fortunately, the core of a great roster remains. Fans will just have to hope it’s run by new and competent leadership next year. And I still can’t believe the team only had three more overtime/shootout wins than my cat did this season. What a joke.

MLB 2015 AL Central Preview

After earning a Wild Card spot last year and going on a wild run into the World Series, the Kansas City Royals have lost James Shields, Billy Butler, and Nori Aoki, but don’t seem to have taken much of a step back at all. Their pitching staff will be lead by young phenom Yordano Ventura and they still have the best bullpen in baseball. Alex Rios looks good this spring, and could be a real offensive weapon if his thumb is healthy (I have my doubts), while Kendrys Morales looks to bounce back. The Cleveland Indians only big off-season addition was Brandon Moss, but their relatively young team will likely only get better. Last year Corey Kluber was a surprise Cy Young candidate, and they may have another this year in Carlos Carrasco. The Chicago White Sox made moves bringing in Jeff Samardzija and signed Melky Cabrera. Avisail Garcia has looked good in the spring, as have rookies Micah Johnson and Carlos Rodon. Rodon will start in Triple-A, but will be in the rotation this season and has the potential to be dominant while Johnson will likely be the opening day second baseman and number nine hitter. Both will improve the club that already had an underrated pitching staff and has a very good mix of power and speed. The long time favorites, the Detroit Tigers, are only getting older. Victor Martinez and Miguel Cabrera are coming off surgery this off-season and Justin Verlander will start the year on the DL. They brought in Yoenis Cespedes, Anthony Gose, and Shaen Greene, but the bullpen that was their downfall last year is virtually unchanged. The Minnesota Twins have brought back fan favorite Torii Hunter, but are a clear bottom of the barrel in the division. Ervin Santana will miss 80 games due to a PED suspension, and the team really lacks a true star. This may be the year uber prospects Byron Buxton, Miguel Sano, and multiple highly touted pitching prospects make their big league debuts, so at least Twins fans have that to look forward to.

Projected Winner: This may be the toughest division to pick a winner, but the Indians are the favorite for me. They might have the best rotation in the division outside of Chicago, and they could also end up as the best offensive team in the division.

Is there a Wild Card, perhaps? I think it is almost a certainty one of the Wild Card spots comes from the Central, but which team is tough. Based on pure talent, the Tigers should be the team, but I think they finish fourth in the division. That leaves the White Sox and Royals. I would not be shocked if both teams earn a Wild Card bid, and the rest of the league should be scared if it is the White Sox as their potential playoff rotation could be the best in baseball. In the end, I think the Royals get the only Wild Card bid from the Central, but it will be close.

MLB 2015 NL East Preview

There isn’t much intrigue to speak of here. The Nationals will probably have the division all but locked up by the all-star break. As a whole, the NL East comes down to groups of teams trending rapidly in opposite directions. The Nationals added the top free agent pitcher available, The Marlins locked up Giancarlo Stanton for 68 years and 984 billion dollars, and picked up some productive pieces in Dee Gordon, Mike Morse, and Dan Haren. The Mets didn’t add a ton apart from Michael Cuddyer, but the healthy returns of Matt Harvey, David Wright, and Bobby Parnell, figure to help. And then there’s the other guys…

The Phillies are looking to…they’re in a…they should probably… Ok, let’s just call it what it is. If Ruben Amaro had a shred of sense, he’d have gotten what he could for aging slugger Ryan Howard, still productive veteran Chase Utley, and now injured hurler Cliff Lee last year, or at the latest, this off-season. I don’t know that trading your best pitcher is ever the answer, but if it was, Cole Hamels would also fetch the best return of prospects.

Then there’s the Braves. I’m not sure they needed to blow everything up, but at least they committed. Out with Justin Upton, Evan Gattis, Jason Heyward, and in with… Shelby Miller and a bunch of guys they hope to see in a couple years. While the future may be brighter for one of these teams, this season figures to be a long one for fans of both.

Projected Winner: The Nationals. I get angry at weird things sometimes. I don’t know why. I just do. Last year, the Nats had a pitcher win 15 games and sport a sub-3.00 ERA. Moreover, his fielding independent pitching (FIP) supported those numbers being reflective of excellent pitching, rather than luck. And he isn’t good enough to crack their rotation. What. The. Fudgesickles? My point is this. If Tanner Roark isn’t good enough to crack your starting rotation, you either have an embarrassment of riches in starting pitching, or you have no clue who he is. So the Nationals will win this division. Because they have a guy who could secretly trade places with Zack Greinke and very few people would notice… and he’s not good enough to make their rotation. Ridiculous.

Is there a Wild Card, perhaps?: If you asked me this question and no form of bet hedging was an option, I’d say yes. I think the Marlins have done enough to improve the roster to be in the conversation, and if Jose Fernandez successfully returns from TJ surgery in June, I think they have enough to make a run. I also think Christian Yelich is an all-star this year. You heard it here first. Unless you heard it somewhere else first, in which case you heard it here second. The Mets might also be a part of the conversation, but ultimately I think they’ll fade.

MLB 2015 AL East Preview

The AL East is as intriguing a division as there is in baseball. The two big teams in the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees both have massive needs. The Red Sox pitching staff is barely middle of the road, and the catcher who was expected to make each of them better, Christian Vazquez, is out for the year with TJ surgery. Meanwhile the Yankees have yet another old/injury prone lineup and the distraction that is Alex Rodriguez. Their pitching staff may be improved, but the depth in the middle infield, pitching staff, and behind the plate leave a lot to be desired. The Tampa Bay Rays trail only the Oakland Athletics in roster turnover it seems this off-season, but have an interesting squad. They open the season with several injury concerns, but if the young pitching staff can stay healthy and pitch up to their potential, it could be the best staff in the East by far. The Baltimore Orioles are still waiting on Matt Wieters to come all the way back from TJ and JJ Hardy will enter the year on the DL. Chris Davis has one game left on his suspension, but he has a therapeutic exemption to go back on Adderall so time will tell if he returns to his 2013 form. The Toronto Blue Jay will roll out six rookies with major roles to start the season. All have tremendous upside (except maybe Devon Travis who just has solid upside) but there is obviously plenty of risk with such a young roster.

Projected Winner: The risk just might pay off for the Jays. They traded Brett Lawrie for Josh Donaldson this off-season, and signed the best catcher on the market In Russell Martin. Justin Smoak will look to resurrect his career in the friendly confines of the Rogers Centre, and there might not be a better trio in the middle of an order than Jose Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion, and Donaldson. If their pitching can hold up, there is a chance the Blue Jays not only win the division, but run away with it.

Is there a Wild Card, perhaps? Probably not, but there are some situations that I could see a team sneaking in. The division is rather weak as a whole, so if a team like Tampa Bay or Baltimore perform really well within the division, they could put up enough wins to sneak in as a Wild Card. The bottom of the division will likely be the Red Sox and Yankees, unless the Red Sox move some of their quality pitching prospects and outfield depth to improve both their rotation and bullpen. If they get a guy like Cole Hamels and a bullpen piece or two in July, it could be enough to catapult them up to Wild Card contention.

MLB 2015 NL Central Preview

No shortage of noise here this off-season either. The Cubs appear to be serious about making a run, after signing Jon Lester, trading for Miguel Montero, and bringing in Joe Maddon, without even the slightest hint of skullduggery, to manage. Nope, Rick Renteria didn’t get boned one bit there. The road to the NL Central crown still runs through St. Louis, though, because it always freaking does. That pitching is just better top to bottom than the rest of the division. The Pirates have found a way to make things interesting in recent years, but the departure of Russell Martin north of the border is going to hurt. It’s hard to tell if the Reds are looking to be a factor or slowly edging into a rebuilding era. If they’re trying to add young pieces, I’d have started by flipping productive veterans Brandon Phillips and Joey Votto rather than staff ace Mat Latos, but what do I know. And you have the team from the land of beer and sausage races.

Quick, how does a team with two of the best all-around players in the game (Carlos Gomez and Jonathan Lucroy) and a former PED-enhanced MVP who is still productive without all the junk project to finish last? Well, turns out, you have to pitch the ball too. I’d love this Brewers team, Ryan Braun notwithstanding, if they just had the pitching to keep them in games.

Projected Winner: The Cardinals. Because this is America. And three things are constant. Death, taxes, and the Cards winning the NL Central. Why? Pitching wins ballgames and they have it in spades. You could nitpick a little bit and say they have some holes in the lineup, and Matt Holliday and Yadier Molina aren’t getting any younger. But as they say, you don’t have to be faster than the bear, you just have to be faster than your buddy. And they’re faster.

Is there a Wild Card, perhaps?: This is where the real intrigue lies. Slide any of the teams other than the Cards into one of the other National League divisions and you can make an argument that they’re a legitimate Wild Card contender. However, as it stands, they’re all going to beat up on one another 19 times each over the course of the season. The other divisions have walk-over teams, where the big boys can realistically hope to go 15-4 or even 16-3. No such luxury here though. So if all plays out the way I think it will, you’ll be looking at a division winner with a win total in the high 80s and the rest of the gang between 78 and 85. And that may not be good enough to surpass the second place team from the NL West or East that has some weak opposition to beat up on. Is the NL’s deepest division really going to be its least represented in the postseason? I don’t know, but I consulted with a fortune cookie and the little paper inside said I was destined for traveling to exotic locations…so there’s that.

MLB 2015 National League West Preview

Well, this division certainly made a lot of noise in the offseason, didn’t it? San Diego acquired seemingly every available slugging outfielder not named Cespedes. The Dodgers retooled the front office and subsequently, a large chunk of the roster. The overachieving Giants and their best-in-the-game manager Bruce Bochy are coming off yet another surprising World Series championship.

But let’s start with the bottom. The Diamondbacks and Rockies were terrible last year, and that doesn’t figure to change. For the 20 something year in a row the Rockies still don’t have any pitching, and even if Jon Gray and Eddie Butler break out, it’s not enough. The D Backs are now led by Chip Hale, and have added Cuban slugger Yasmany Tomas, and while some of their young guys (see: Enciarte, Ender; Peralta, David; Owings, Chris) look like future studs, they’re still a couple of years away. Neither of these teams will factor.

With only a hint of sarcasm, the poor Giants. They lose the Panda to free agency, Hunter Pence to a broken arm for a while, Angel Pagan’s back is reportedly a concern, and their rotation is counting heavily on Tim Hudson and Jake Peavy, combined age over 70. Bochy can work magic, but look for a big step back this year. The Padres were serious about improving their putrid offense. Enter Justin Upton, Matt Kemp, Wil Myers, and Derek Norris, and to a lesser degree, Will Middlebrooks. Their starting pitching remains a strength, if on potential alone. They might very well miss Huston Street, however, at the back end of ballgames. Very quietly, he has been baseball’s most effective closer for the last three years.

Projected Winner: The Dodgers. They just have a spectacularly good starting rotation, even if the criminally underrated Hyun Jin Ryu’s barking shoulder keeps him out the first month. There are very few lineup questions, if any, (the Pads still don’t know if Yonder Alonso, Tommy Medica, Carlos Quentin, or a Partridge in a Pear Tree will be starting at first base, or whether its Middlebrooks or Yangervis Solarte at third) and the departures of Brian Wilson and Chris Perez give Don Mattingly fewer catastrophic options to insist on using in high leverage situations out of the pen – even if closer Kenley Jansen misses the first 4-6 weeks after foot surgery. The Padres will keep it interesting, but probably finish four or five games back at the end of the season.

Is there a Wild Card, perhaps?: It’s not outside the realm of imagination, that’s for sure. The Padres have a good shot. Here’s why: The NL Central has the Cardinals, Pirates, and an improved Cubbies team that figure to contend. The Reds are still potent enough to play some spoiler, and the Brewers, while probably ticketed for a last place finish, shouldn’t be walkovers. That division could beat up on itself and struggle record-wise. Meanwhile, teams like the Padres and, perhaps, the Marlins in the NL East can fatten up against legitimate bottom dwellers in their divisions and lock down one of the two wild cards. Will they? The magic eight ball says check back with us in July for a clearer picture.

Snake-bitten Sam

Quick, apart from the position they play(ed), what do Tim Tebow, Jimmy Claussen, Colt McCoy, Mike Kafka, John Skelton, and Rusty Smith have in common with Sam Bradford?

If you said that they were the next 6 quarterbacks drafted following Bradford in the 2010 NFL draft, you would be correct. More on this later.

Any time a quarterback is taken with the first overall pick in the draft, the standard of Face of the Franchise is, either fairly or unfairly, bestowed upon that man. Sam Bradford was no different. From the moment his name was the first one read in 2010, he was going to change the fortunes of one of the most moribund franchises in all of professional sports. Apart from a three year period at the turn of the millennium, the Rams…well, they were awful.

Plagued by brutally inept leadership that consistently assembled rosters permeated by sub-professional level “talent,” failure was unavoidable. Bradford was the turning point, however. His on-field excellence was matched only by his spotless character. And with his Abercrombie model looks, the whole face of the franchise thing could literally be taken…well, literally.

If there were concerns about Bradford, they were about a shoulder injury that ended his junior and final season at Oklahoma, and kept him from participating at the combine. To date since then, it has never been an issue.

Being the first overall pick in any sport’s draft is both a blessing and a curse. Ultimately, you end up being a smashing success or a dismal failure, a “bust” if you will. There isn’t any middle ground. When I make this argument to people, for some reason they always point to Eli Manning as the example of why I’m wrong – the “other” Manning is the perfect example of the middle ground for a first overall pick. I argue back that two Super Bowl rings means smashing success unequivocally. Eli is hardly the most skilled quarterback of the last 20 years – his predecessor as top pick was the more talented and two Super Bowls lighter Carson Palmer, for example – but his status as big game leader is beyond reproach.

The Rams brought in respected veteran AJ Feeley to both challenge Bradford for the starting gig as a rookie, but more to help the young quarterback become accustomed to life as an NFL player. Bradford played well enough to earn the starting job and it appeared a star was born. Key word, “appeared.”

Those of us who have been Rams fans for the last few decades (guilty!) have a complex. An old work buddy of mine who was a huge Rams fan from the pre-Kurt Warner days used to truly (I think) believe that God had it in for the Rams. For the purposes of this article, and also for the purpose that it was actually his name and I’m too lazy to come up with a pseudonym for him, we’ll call him Chris. Chris once speculated to me that someone would have to sell their soul to reverse the cosmic law that forever and for always, the Rams would suck. Then, something strange happened. The heaven-ordered moratorium on competent personnel decisions was briefly lifted. They traded for the awesome multi-purpose back Marshall Faulk, signed Trent Green, a quality free agent quarterback from Washington, drafted promising receiver Torrey Holt, and things were looking up. Then, a single cheap shot by Rodney Harrison in preseason game number three changed everything. Shortly thereafter, the news became public: Trent Green’s season was over due to a knee injury.

“We’re f*****.”

That was the email I got from Chris, except that the little stars weren’t little stars. They were, in fact, letters of the alphabet. I don’t think I need to explain which ones.

The rest of that season of course was historic. Who knew that Kurt Warner would come in and play Hall of Fame level football?

Bradford won the offensive Rookie of the Year honors in 2010, and a franchise devoid of any hope for the better part of a decade had some. The Rams even had a chance to back into the playoffs with a final week win in Seattle. Now, these Seahawks weren’t anywhere near the juggernaut that today’s squad is, but still a beast of an opponent at home.

The Seahawks ended up beating the Rams that day, 16-6, but three pivotal plays shaped the game. Two beautifully thrown bombs by Bradford, one down the middle and another down the left sideline, to rookie Danario Alexander, and a late key third down strike to tight end Daniel Fells. The normally sure-handed Alexander let both passes go right through his hands, and Fells allowed the ball to carom from right between the numbers on the front of his jersey harmlessly to the ground. Both plays to Alexander could have gone for 50 or more yards, and the play to Fells would have kept a critical late drive alive. And to be clear, all three of these passes were throws that an NFL receiver should catch 90% or more of the time.

As frustrating as the loss was, there was a curious lack of foreboding among Rams fans. We had a young stud quarterback, we nearly made the playoffs, and things could only get better. Chris and I had long since lost touch, but I imagined that even he remained cautiously optimistic. Little did any of us know that the Seahawks game was only the beginning of, with a nod to Lemony Snickett, a lengthy series of unfortunate events for Bradford.

We’re not even talking about the injuries yet. Regular season, 2011, Game 1 against the Eagles. On the Rams’ first series, Steven Jackson thundered through the entire Philly defense for a long touchdown run. It was also his last contribution to the game as he pulled quad muscle on the run. Jackson frequently pulled muscles in the early part of seasons, leading one to believe he bit his thumb at the time-honored practice of stretching, but that’s neither here nor there. On the subsequent possession, Bradford threw a long strike to a wide open Lance Kendricks who could have waltzed into the end zone with all the urgency of molasses in January, had he only remembered the minor detail of actually catching the perfectly thrown ball.

Week 2 against the Giants, the teams were close until the game turned on a third down play deep in Giants territory where Bradford threw a lateral pass to a wide open Cadillac Williams. Williams dropped the well-thrown ball, and then inexplicably didn’t make any attempt to recover it, allowing the Giants to return it for a touchdown. Game, set, match.

The play of Bradford and his surrounding cast only deteriorated from there, culminating in a catastrophic high ankle sprain in week 7 against the Cowboys. This injury not only ruined the rest of 2011 for Bradford, it never quite healed right and cost him valuable mobility for all of 2012 – essentially making him a sitting duck for opposing defenses which penetrated the Rams’ putrid offensive line with minimal effort and remarkable ease. It’s worth noting, however, that Bradford managed to lead the Rams to seven wins in spite of terrible pass protection, and the fact that he now was working under his third offensive coordinator in three years, the appallingly incompetent Brian Schottenheimer.

2013 looked to be the first season since his rookie campaign that offered a glimpse of what a healthy Bradford may be capable of, though any real chances of a prosperous year were scuttled by a comically cataclysmic attempt at installing something resembling a spread passing attack, which ultimately spread only despair. After a particularly horrifying display at home against the 49rs, where a shell-shocked and panicky Bradford was desperately and aimlessly heaving passes in the face of a relentless San Francisco pass rush, coach Jeff Fisher came to his senses and went to an uninventive but not calamitous power run approach behind bruising rookie Zac Stacy. Bradford’s play and that of the team improved, but giving the other teams in the stacked NFC West a four week head start is too much to overcome. Oh, and there was that whole ACL tear thing against Carolina in week 8 too.

The Bradford story for 2014 is a short one. It ended in the preseason with another ACL tear.

What is my point, you may be thinking? Well, with the trade earlier this week of Bradford to the Eagles for fellow quarterback Nick Foles, an era came to an end. It’s weird to call something that lasted just five short years an era, but it was. Bradford’s time with the Rams was a saga of unfulfilled potential and abysmal luck. It also leaves unanswered questions. Now that Bradford has been freed from any curse there might be over the Rams, as well as the lofty expectations that come along with being an obscenely overpaid quarterback before you ever even take a single NFL snap (he’s still obscenely overpaid if accomplishment is used as a barometer for what salary should be, but it’s in a new city), will he finally become the superstar that people thought he would? Or, is it just him? Remember those six guys I mentioned at the beginning? Maybe Bradford only seemed to be as good as he was in college because of who his contemporaries were. I’m among the dwindling crowd that still thinks Tim Tebow deserves to be employed as a quarterback, though probably not a starter, somewhere in the NFL. He has a playoff win to his credit (he threw for three hundred yards that game!!!!) ((though much of it came on the final play…)) (((shut up, voice in my head!!!))) and his career win-loss numbers are far from terrible. But apart from him, nobody in that crowd has accomplished anything of note in the NFL.

What do I think? Well, I think the good Lord has too many other important things to do to waste His time ensuring the continuing futility of an NFL franchise, though I haven’t entirely discounted the possibility that more sinister forces may be at work. That’s the kind of answer you’ll get from a self-aware conspiracy theorist and unapologetic pessimist. But I think Bradford is good. I think his struggles are far more a result of unfortunate circumstances and buzzard luck than they are of not being any good. Is he Andrew Luck good, to reference another number one overall pick at quarterback? No, very few people are Andrew Luck good. Is he Cam Newton good, also a first overall pick? Yeah. They’re not the same player but they’re close in terms of goodness. And you’ll see that in 2015. Or…you won’t if he gets hurt again.

Now, about Nick Foles. How good will he be? I don’t know, to be honest. The Rams offense should improve exponentially by the departure of Schottenheimer alone, but it will all be academic anyway if the Rams indeed are cursed, and Foles suffers some kind of horrible injury in preseason.

I sure hope curses aren’t real.

Time for the Beast to Talk

The ongoing business of Marshawn Lynch and his continued middle finger at the NFL regarding talking to the media has been a source of amusement, bemusement, social media fodder, and scorn as the season has gone along.

Now that the Seahawks are back in the Superbowl, in spectacular fashion no less, it will be interesting to see how Lynch responds to the ongoing and increasing media demands.

There shouldn’t really be any suspense though. Odds are, he’ll do what he’s been doing; either giving terse and irrelevant answers or shirking his responsibilities altogether, fines be damned.

Surprisingly, Lynch has been getting quite a bit of admiration, sympathy, and other positive sentiment for his actions (inactions?) with the media.

One close friend of mine went so far as to tell me that the league needs to recognize his severe social anxiety and grant him an exception to his media responsibilities.

That kind of sent me over the edge. There are people in my life who are close to me that have what would qualify as acute social anxiety, and that’s not Lynch. If anything, what he has is a mild form, but more likely, he just hates the media.

Well, you know what dude, suck it up. Those of us who work everyday jobs couldn’t dream of behaving the way he does. Lynch is one of the best players in the NFL, irrespective of position, but an employee of a company nonetheless. One of his responsibilities is to talk to the media. If any of us in the real world would stick up our bird fingers to our bosses the way he has done, we’d be summarily fired.

If the NFL has any backbone at all, it’s time for them to stand up and say to Lynch, if you don’t honor your responsibilities to the media like all other players have to, you are not eligible to play in the Superbowl. Done and done.

And if Lynch really does have social anxiety to the point where speaking with the media causes him to experience severe mental anguish, he certainly has the means to get an independent and accredited therapist to testify as such to the NFL. And then, and only then, should he be given any kind of reprieve.

We’re talking about a guy who is building a Hall of Fame resume. It certainly would be a shame if this bull, uh, excrement, was a factor in that voting a decade from now.

College Football Playoff Preview

Let’s face it, we all wanted to get rid of the BCS, but is the current version of the College Football Playoff really that much better? Every Tuesday, 12 supposedly un-biased members of a playoff committee flew to Dallas to meet and discuss the playoff rankings which were announced on a weekly special on ESPN. If “weekly special on ESPN” doesn’t make you question the honesty of a committee, I am not sure what will, but then they went out and blatantly showed that is was all for money and ratings at the end of it all. TCU was ranked as the number three team in the playoff standings with one week to go, meanwhile Baylor was left out despite having beaten TCU head-to-head. Then, in the final week, TCU goes out and absolutely destroys Iowa State 55-3 leaving anyone with any sense about them to reasonably conclude they had secured a spot in the Playoff. Not only was that not true, but they fell all the way to sixth, behind the Baylor team that many had been arguing should have been ahead of TCU all along.

So, every ranking before the final rankings were clearly just a made for TV special so ESPN could make a few extra bucks and boost their ratings. If the rankings are so blatantly manipulated for ratings and discussion, why didn’t they manipulate the final rankings for premium viewership? Alabama got the number one seed, allowing them to stay in the South and play in the Sugar Bowl, and Oregon gets to stay on the West Coast and play in the Rose Bowl. That left Florida State and Ohio State as the next two team in the playoff, and the seeding is obvious right? Send Florida State to the Sugar Bowl to play Alabama and Ohio State to the Rose Bowl to create a traditional Pac-12 vs. Big Ten matchup. No, apparently a couple months of lip service BS specials on TV was enough devious manipulation for the committee and the easiest one would be too obvious for them. So Ohio State heads to the Sugar Bowl and undefeated, yet third ranked, Florida State heads West to the Rose Bowl.

Enough about the garbage that was the committee, let’s take a look at the games. The Playoff could feature the top three overall picks in the coming NFL draft, and a third string quarterback who said on Twitter “Why should we have to go to class if we came here to play FOOTBALL, we ain’t come to play SCHOOL, classes are POINTLESS”. Yes Cardale Jones, you got a free ride to a premier university to be a third string quarterback and not go to class, I am sure you will be wildly successful in life after college.

So the third string QB who hates college despite playing college football will face the number one team in the nation, the Alabama Crimson Tide. This is a matchup that is as interesting for the coaching matchup as it is the players on the field. There might not be two better college football coaches in the game today than Urban Meyer and Nick Saban, so it will certainly be fun to watch. Also fun to watch is receiver Amari Cooper, who is likely to be the first receiver taken in the coming NFL draft. In the end, Alabama should be able to win this game rather easily with their defense against a quarterback who has just one start under his belt.

In the Rose Bowl, the last two Heisman Trophy winners take the field in Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota. Winston’s off-field issues will likely cause him to drop some in the NFL draft, but these two could end up being the top two pick come April 30th. Florida State has not lost a game in two years, but they also haven’t faced a team like the Oregon Ducks. The Ducks obviously have a high powered offense, but their defense gets underrated and I see them just pulling out a very close game.

That would set up a National Championship matchup of Alabama and Oregon in Jerry’s World in Dallas. Oregon has not faired well against premier SEC teams in recent years, but this team has the best chance to get it done. While I would be rooting for an Oregon victory, and could see it happening, if I had to place good money on the game, I would have to go with Alabama purely because of Nick Saban. The Tide is playing as well as any team in the nation down the stretch and they have the best big game coach in the country, but it won’t be a blowout, instead a very competitive game.

Why is My Seat Warm? NFL Coaches Who Might Soon be Jobless

As another NFL regular season draws to a close, a hot topic of discussion is always the coaching hot seat. It can be an awkward and unpleasant topic. In many cases it’s not 100% fair to blame the coach for a team’s underperformance. The NFL season is a short one; 16 measly games. A solid baseball team can go through a brutally bad 16 game stretch and have plenty to time to right the ship over its 162 game season. In basketball and hockey, it’s not quite as easy, but over an 82 game schedule, it’s still well within the realm of possibility to recover from a rough 16 game patch.

But football? No, entire seasons can go south in a mere 4 or 5 weeks. The quarterback can get hurt. The schedule makers can be merciless. The referees can be horrifyingly inept, or just plain cheat. Or the oblong ball made of pigskin might take an inopportune bounce. It really takes very little. The final playoff participants are frequently separated from the Just Missed Its by one lousy game…or even a tie-breaker.

And someone has to take the fall. The NFL is a gazillion dollar enterprise, and failure is not tolerated for extended periods of time; not by a fan base that spends ungodly amounts of money on season tickets and memorabilia. Not with television networks throwing around billions. Not in the social media era, where anonymity is an ancient relic from a bygone era, and everything gone wrong can instantly go viral. Every move, every mistake is under a microscope.

You can get rid of an underperforming player or two, and try to sell your fan base that an upgrade here or there was really all you needed. But put too much on the players, the guy who makes the decisions is indirectly pointing the finger at himself, since he’s the guy that went out and got those players. No no, we can’t look too hard at the GM. Well, that leaves the coach.

Again, it’s not always fair. Football can’t be painted in black and white, and there isn’t always a direct cause and effect correlation. Then again, the lowest paid nfl head coach makes 100 times what the average blogger with a day job makes, so my sympathy goes only so far. Well, for right or for wrong, here are The Stain’s top 5 coaches who may be filing for unemployment insurance sooner rather than later.

5. Andy Reid, KC: Didn’t take us long to get to the surprises, did it? But wait a minute, you might be saying. The Chiefs have been halfway decent the last couple of seasons. And, you’d be right. In fact, they went 11-5 as recently as 2013. But there were rumblings that the record was fluky. They got off to a good start, just kind of held on at the end, and then predictably went nowhere in the playoffs. Apologists will point out that as far as the regular season goes, it doesn’t matter in what order you win the games, just that you do. And they’d be right, to a point. But this year, the team will either finish 8-8 or 9-7, barring a tie, and miss the playoffs regardless. That’s a startling regression from a team that won 11 games just one season ago, and doesn’t appear to have any age-related player regression concerns. The defense is solid, they have an all-galaxy running back in Jamal Charles. Alex Smith almost never turns the ball over. The right blueprint seems to be in place. But it didn’t happen. You look at some of the games they lost, like the one against the Raiders. A team that had just beaten Seattle should be able to win that game, right? And there was the winnable game at home against the Broncos. Charles carried the ball 10 times in that game. For perspective, the Broncos’ CJ Anderson carried it 32 times in the same game. Even if you count his four receptions, 14 times is not enough for your best player to get the ball in a game against a division opponent with Super Bowl aspirations. Some tough questions could be asked of Reid after this season. It remains to be seen whether he can come up with answers. I think he’ll get one more year, but if the brass in KC thinks that this could have been the year for them, it may be a story with an unhappy ending for Reid.

4. Marc Trestman, Chi: The Bears have to go down as one of the season’s biggest disappointments. It started week 1 at home against Buffalo, and just never really got any better. What may hurt Trestman is that he brought with him the reputation of being a sort of quarterback whisperer, someone who could coax extraordinary results from his signal caller. Well, that may or may not be true, but Jay Cutler leading the league in turnovers would jade just about anyone’s 10,000 foot judgment on that. If you look at little deeper, yeah, Cutler hasn’t been very good. But he also hasn’t been as terrible as the numbers would indicate. Quite a few of his interceptions have been of the second half variety while his team has abandoned the run and desperately tried to claw back into a game it was losing by multiple scores. This would be because the defense, by in large, showed an alarming lack of ability to stop anyone. Sure, age, injury and some personnel decisions that were questionable have had a negative impact on this unit. But Defensive Coordinator Mel Tucker has to shoulder his fair share too. For years, Lovie Smith had success with a reasonably uncomplicated Tampa 2 scheme. Whatever Tucker is running currently for Chicago is neither Tampa 2 nor uncomplicated. That said, Tucker came from Jacksonville with a sterling reputation. And Trestman came from the CFL. In a logical vacuum, Tucker would seem the guy who may be responsible for more of this season’s calamity. But Trestman, at least on the surface, can be called the bigger risk when he was brought in to coach. So, logically, he’d be the guy that would make more sense to fire.

3. Jeff Fisher, Stl: Fisher has always been overrated, largely because he had a Super Bowl appearance with an absurdly talented Tennessee Titans team which he lost by half a yard. Apart from that, mediocrity abounds across his resume. When he joined the moribund Rams franchise three years ago, he was anointed some kind of savior, which was completely unfair to both him and the gullible fan base. But that said, he still represented an improvement over previous coaching regimes, so optimism spread like wildfire. After the third, and arguably worst of his three seasons in charge, the luster has worn off. However, upon closer inspection, he’s been perfectly serviceable as a head coach this year. The real issue is that as long as Brian Schottenheimer is in charge off offensive play-calling, the Rams will never be good enough. Schottenheimer is so brutally incompetent at running an offense, the Rams could eliminate his position entirely, have whomever is playing quarterback call every play at the line of scrimmage, and immediately see a drastic improvement. At the very least, there would no longer be a concerted effort made to keep the ball out of the hands of the team’s most explosive weapons. But the poop rolls down hill as they say (And by they I mean me), so Fisher is more likely to face the scrutiny. Couple the teams offensive troubles with questionable coaching selections (Gregg Williams the first time, then Tim Walton), there’s a real chance that GM Les Snead looks elsewhere. If Fisher has a saving grace, he can honestly and accurately say “look, I haven’t had a healthy starting quarterback for two consecutive seasons.”

2. Jim Harbaugh, SF: Media outlets pretty much have already punched his ticket to Michigan, or Oakland, or…well, anywhere but San Francisco. It would have been hard to predict at the beginning of the season that the Niners would miss the playoffs. After all, the team made it to three consecutive NFC Championship Games, including one Super Bowl, and the core elements of what got them there were intact; rock solid defense, uber-athletic quarterback Colin Kaepernick, and of course, bulldozing running back Frank Gore. Looking back at the 2014 season, it’s not hard to see why it went south. The team essentially anchored Kaepernick to the pocket, taking the most explosive element of his game out of the nightmares of defensive coordinators. They also showed a Schottenheimerian reluctance to give Gore, arguably the team’s best player, the ball. Suspensions and injuries hampered the defense a little, but largely, the unit performed well. The struggles were on offense. Now, was it offensive coordinator Greg Roman who messed with a winning formula? Or was it head coach Harbaugh? I don’t know that the question will be answered. But one thing is for sure. Where there’s smoke, there’s often fire. And if Harbaugh wants out, as has been rumored all year, nobody would benefit by him staying.

1. Mike Smith, Atl: If the Falcons happen to lose on Sunday, they will have gone a combined 10-22 the last two seasons. TEN and TWENTY-TWO!!! And mind you, this is a team that boasts Matt Ryan, Roddy White, and Julio Jones on offense, and shows no aversion whatsoever to getting the ball to its best players. The players, especially Ryan, love Smith. But the players are also not the ones making the decision on whether Smith stays or goes. And football is very much a what have you done for me lately game. If the Falcons happen to win on Sunday, they’ll actually win the NFC South division with a record of 7-9, and possibly save his job. But even that might be prolonging the inevitable. All you have to do is Google him and you’ll see multiple media outlets urging, albeit somewhat apologetically, for Smith’s dismissal. When it’s gotten to that point, it’s a long road back.

Honorable Mention. Sean Payton, NO: After nine years of coaching the Saints, you’d be hard to find many detractors of Payton. He’s universally regarded as a great coached, and he’s beloved in New Orleans. It would be hard to imagine him getting fired. But this could end up being a case of the team throwing Payton a bone and letting find a contender to coach next season. (San Francisco?) It’s time for a bit of a rebuild in New Orleans. They have some nice offensive pieces in place, with Drew Brees, Jimmy Graham, Kenny Stills, and a suddenly good Mark Ingram. But they’re lacking in youth and depth. Even with a good framework in place of stars to build around, it can take a couple of years to restructure a roster to perennially compete. It takes patience, and most often multiple successful drafts. Odds are Payton will stay, but would you really be overly surprised if a coach accustomed to success didn’t want to suffer through a rebuild?

Did we miss anyone on our list? Let us know in the comments. Happy holidays, all.