Barber Defends Morris

November 24, 2009 at 01:28pm by Scott   •  2 Comments »

Apparently, there is talk that the Jim Bates demotion was the result of players revolting against his system and demanding a change. Ronde Barber has gone on the record to say that wasn’t the case.

“I don’t think any players, save a few, knew about this until today,” Barber said. “There wasn’t any player input, it wasn’t a mass revolt against Jim Bates. That’s conjecture and fun to write, but completely false.”

I’ve looked around and can’t find anything that initiates the revolt theory, so maybe it’s on the radio or a blog or somewhere less reputable. But it was loud enough that Barber thought he had to respond and stick up for his buddy Raheem.

And, hey, that thing we were talking about last week regarding the defense’s lack of identity. Ronde agrees.

“Let’s not get it confused, we’re still trying to form an identity,” Barber said. “You can say it yourself, there’s not anything we’ve done particularly great to say we have an identity. We know we’ve had a lot of turnover on this team, so we’re still trying to establish that for the rest of these six games and going forward. Identity will be what it is from here on out. If it’s good, it’s good. If it’s the way it’s been, there probably will be more changes.”

Yeah, big ones.

“You know what? We’re a 1-9 football team,” Barber said. “I don’t think anybody ever expects to be that. Obviously, you’d rather have stability, but you live with your decisions, you know? At a time like this, I wouldn’t say they made a bad decision on Jim Bates. Jim’s done some great things for this defense.”

NAME ONE! God, why didn’t someone ask him to cite just one example of something great Bates did for the defense? Did he switch from store brand donuts to Krispy Kreme in the morning? That must have been it, because it certainly wasn’t anything we could see on the field.