Saints’ poor road record faces chilly test in Philly
As he was hired a year ago, Cleveland Browns coach Rob Chudzinski called the gig his “dream job.”
Yes, yes, aside from the Blue Jays, aren’t they all?
When he was fired last week, after another miserable year on that crash-landing pad Cleveland calls a stadium, Chudzinski pretended surprise (understandable) and hurt feelings (oh, come on).
“I was shocked and disappointed to hear the news that I was fired,” Chudzinski said.
That’s highly doubtful, unless ‘the news’ arrived via rock through his windshield.
“I was more excited than ever for this team, as I know we were building a great foundation for future success.”
This is the sad trombone played by every coach everywhere, and it’s even less convincing in the NFL. Foundations are for contractors, and even they get laid in less than a year.
Chudzinski will now mope his way to the bank. He was on a four-year, $10-million (U.S.) deal. You’ll agree, it’s an awful lot of money to earn for telling people, ‘Tell those other people where to run.’
The Monday after the season ends has become the great schadenfreude moment in sports. Five guys lost their job this year (six, if you count the early dismissal of Houston’s Gary Kubiak). That’s a fifth of the league.
There is a tendency to conflate what a professional coach does with what an actual worker does. Aside from paying taxes, they have nothing in common.
A pro coach is not allowed the courtesy of bad years or big mis- takes. Their excuses may be valid (Chudzinski might rightly point to $20 million worth of cap space that went unspent in Cleveland), but they’re still excuses.
Unlike the rest of us, they’re not hired to accomplish what is reasonable or expected. They’re hired to exceed norms. If they can’t, another guy can draw up plays (or, more correctly, hire people to do that for him) just as well as they can.
This is why coaches everywhere now claim a work rate that sounds more like an obsessive-compulsive disorder. All of them get up a halfhour before they go to bed. All of them do nothing but think about football/basketball/baseball/hockey. They’re all happy workaholics — though their ‘work’ sounds a lot like what you do for free in the bar on Saturday nights.
Years ago, I was talking about coaching with a gentleman who’d played for several NHL teams in the 1950s. He was ranting about the number of suits standing behind the bench these days.
“What do they all do?” he fumed. “I had one coach, and he hardly ever talked to me. Every once in a while, he’d put an arm around me and say, ‘You have to try harder.’ That was it. That was ‘coaching.’ ” It hasn’t really changed so much since his day. There are two key differences: the salaries, and the unreasonable expectations. For all those coaches tone deaf enough to sound hard-done-by when they are inevitably sacked, you can’t have one without the other. Week 17 picks: 8-8 Not too shabby. Heavy emphasis on ‘too.’ Year to Date: 124-116 Kansas City @ Indianapolis (Sat., 4:35 p.m.) The Chiefs are the schoolyard bully of the NFL — they only beat up kids they know can’t fight back. Of their 11 wins, 10 came against sub.500 opponents. The last time they beat a team that ended the year with a winning record was in September. With their playoff seeding locked in, they rested their starters in the season’s final game and still took the Chargers to overtime. A week before that, they were getting their heads handed to them by their first-round opponents, and at home. The Colts have been sporadically excellent throughout the year. Five times, they followed a win with a loss. If everything about them is middling, there aren’t any gaping holes. They are good at home (6-2). This pick is more about the Chiefs and the coming reality check. They were the feel-good comeback story of the year, but that narrative was built on a schedule tailored to the worst team in the NFL. Now that they’re playing teams their own size, they’re going to be eating dirt. Colts (-2.5) New Orleans @ Philadelphia (8:10 p.m.) The Saints are another one of those happy turnarounds. The most noted agoraphobes in sport, New Orleans’ playoff hopes rested largely on a Carolina loss last weekend. The Panthers won, and now the Saints will have to be shoved, squinting and moaning, into the hard light of someone else’s outdoor stadium. The Saints were brilliant at home (8-0) and average on the road (3-5). QB Drew Brees has never won a playoff game on the road. It will be cold in Philadelphia on Saturday. The hope for the Saints will be Philly’s pass defence (32nd in the NFL). The anti-hope is that the Eagles’ defence has been solid for the last two weeks (33 points allowed). In New Orleans, this game is a gimme. In Philadelphia, under emerging star Nick Foles, it’s a shootout won by the Eagles. For neutrals, it’s also probably the game of the weekend. Eagles (-2.5) San Diego @ Cincinnati (Sun., 1:05 p.m.) Every year, there’s a team in the playoffs that just sort of appears — like that cousin you definitely didn’t invite to your wedding. The Chargers bee-doop bee-dooped their way through the season, losing to the likes of Houston and then beating the likes of Denver. They were im- possible to get your arms around. They’re a neither/nor team — neither good at home (4-4) nor bad on the road (4-4).
Which brings us to the last team to beat them — the Bengals.
The Bengals are an and/or team. Cursed and/or blighted. They haven’t won a playoff game since 1991. Andy Dalton suffers from what in baseball they call a ‘bad body’ problem — he doesn’t look like a quarterback. It’s probably the hair.
However, there are two mitigating factors — the weather (cold) and the Bengals home record (perfect).
This will be closer than it should be owing to inexperience, but Cincinnati finally crests its post-season hump. Chargers (+7) San Francisco @ Green Bay (4:40 p.m.)
Like so many great acts before him, 49ers QB Colin Kaepernick’s sophomore release was what the critics call ‘difficult.’ This was due in large part to San Francisco’s efforts to turn him from a running back that can throw into a quarterback who actually does so.
Over a full season, Kaepernick’s pass attempts doubled, while his runs increased only marginally. After all the hype about the readoption, the 49ers ran that play only 54 times this year.
If Kaepernick has settled down into an excellent, if not quite elite, quarterback, that would still be news to the Packers. He tore them up in last year’s playoffs. Then, given an entire off-season to prepare for him, he did so again in a Week 1 win.
Packers QB Aaron Rodgers is the better of the two, but he looked pretty damn human last week in a must-win against Chicago and their 30th-ranked defence. Things are going to speed up quick against one of the best defences in football.
49ers (-3)