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The Washington Redskins promoted quarterbacks coach Matt Cavanaugh to offensive coordinator on Monday. He was the Jets quarterbacks coach from 2009–2012.
During that time he was routinely criticized by fans for not doing a better job with Mark Sanchez.
A lot of offensive coordinators and quarterback coaches have been run out of Jetsland. I’ve lost count of all the offensive coordinators who turned into war criminals. Paul Hackett and Brian Schottenheimer are a couple of names that come to mind. It got real ugly.
Where am I going with this?
Simple. Look at the Conference Championship games. Four teams – four elite quarterbacks.
We are so quick to anoint certain coordinators and quarterback coaches “geniuses.”
Like Josh McDaniels and Kyle Shanahan. McDaniels could have had the San Francisco 49ers head coaching job, and Shanahan will likely to get it. They are both solid coaches, but don’t you think it’s a resume enhancer to have Tom Brady and Matt Ryan under center?
Cavanaugh is a good coach. He didn’t become a bad coach with the Jets. Mark Sanchez is a heck of a guy and he works his tail off, but like SO many middle-tier quarterbacks, he struggles reading defenses. It’s a common problem. There was only so much Cavanaugh could do with Sanchez. He can’t go out on the field and read defenses for him, just like Chan Gailey and Kevin Patullo couldn’t do that for Bryce Petty.
With all the GM openings recently, you heard the names of Packers executives Eliot Wolf and Brian Gutekunst mentioned with a lot of jobs. If I hear the name Eliot Wolf one more time I’m going to scream. Enough already. With all due respect to these men, do you see the Packers on Sunday? They looked awful. Did that look like a team with great talent to you? Look, I know they have some injuries, but all teams do.
The Packers are another situation with the future Hall-of-Fame QB is embellishing resumes. Without Aaron Rodgers, that team gets nowhere near the NFC Championship game, and would probably be in the running for the first pick in the draft. After a 4-6 start this season, Rodgers said they would run the table and make the playoffs and they did. He put the team on his back. They streak ended yesterday, but not because of Rodgers, but because of their defense, which isn’t very good.
The reason I’m going on this rant today is because of Cavanaugh, and all the rhetoric I heard during this time with his Jets about how bad he was. It was nonsense. He’s a good coach. Redskins coach Jay Gruden knows that and promoted him today.
People expect coaches to makes pedestrian quarterbacks into better players than they are, and if they don’t, they are bad coaches.
Brady has embellished a lot of resumes of the years. Think of all the assistant coaches that came out of New England over the years and flopped as head coaches.
They couldn’t bring Brady with them.
January 23, 2017
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