Raheem Hasn’t Lost At Least 2/53 Of Locker Room
December 17, 2009 at 12:26am by Scott • 6 Comments »
Though there have been various rumors and hearsay that Raheem Morris has lost the confidence of the players, Jermaine Phillips and Jeff Faine have come forward to announce their support for their head coach.
“I think he’s done great. I really do,” Faine said. “For the first year, I think he’s done as good of a job as he could when you think about all the turmoil we’ve had, all the changes and things. And I give him kudos and credit for having the guts to make those changes as well. I think a lot of people in this position of being a first-year head coach, how do you fire both the offensive and defensive coordinators in the same year? With a first year general manager? I think it shows a lot of guts and a lot of confidence for them to say, “Hey, we made a wrong decision, we’re trying to right this ship and we’re trying to get it right and make the transformation and head in the right direction.”
Faine is a no nonsense kind of guy who isn’t given to just spouting the company line. So if he says Morris has done “great”, that means something. Then again, Dick Jauron had the support of a lot of his players as well, but after three consecutive 7-9 seasons and a 3-6 beginning to this one, it didn’t matter. Phillips also chimes in:
“You can’t judge Raheem off one season. When he got hired, a lot of the good coordinators were already taken. What do you expect him to do? We all make mistakes. Raheem saw his mistakes and tried to correct them.”
The thing about “players coaches” is that they are generally on good terms with the players. It’s kind of the definition. So it doesn’t surprise me that Morris is getting some public support from these guys. But I would guess that not everyone feels so positive toward him. After all, he’s called out a number of players by name to the media and has not always assumed his share of the blame.
There was talk that the Glazers spoke to several players before dismissing Jon Gruden and that their input had a bearing on that decision. This public support may be these players’ effort to do the opposite for Morris, which is very nice of them. But it’s going to take more than that to cover up a 1-win season. If the Bucs don’t win another game and don’t look any better losing them, the fans and season ticket holders will scream louder than any players possibly can, and their dollars will mean more to the Glazers than any kudos the players are lavishing on Morris.
And, yes, I’m still boycotting Morris pictures. Here’s another of Jael.
elsewhere:
Watching:
Reading:
Listening to:
Listening to right now:
Twitter Update:
6 Comments to “Raheem Hasn’t Lost At Least 2/53 Of Locker Room”
gatorbait (December 17, 2009 at 11:06am) :
wow, check out the photoshop job on the brim of the hat/chest area. I wonder what they were trying to conceal.
Louie (December 17, 2009 at 11:58am) :
Dang, a Tennessee girl with all her teeth!
TheBrainStem (December 17, 2009 at 12:01pm) :
Thanks to the people in alabama for the toothbrush, if was invented somewhere else it would have been the teethbrush. hahahahaha.
Jael (December 17, 2009 at 01:42pm) :
@gatorbait…nipples. the hat wasn’t big enough, even though I have zero boobs lol
Someone sent me a link to this website and I laughed when I read this and had to post. Thanks for the love and the posts, lol
-Jael
campyone (December 17, 2009 at 02:06pm) :
I guess that all other things being equal, it’s nice for players to like and support the HC. But when a team is 1-15 (projecting slightly) who cares? The point isn’t to have a popular coach, the point is to have a coach that wins games. And a coach doesn’t need to be popular to do that, he needs to be a good, effective coach – which Morris gives no indication of being.
Wordy Sanchez (December 18, 2009 at 11:47am) :
Look.
Faine is a straight up good soldier. I have no doubt that he’d step in front a bus for Morris, or whomever is his coach… poor bus.
He’s the kind of guy who’ll pull the arms off of anyone who tries to hurt his team, and Morris is on his team. This might have something to do with what makes him such a good center despite not having ‘ideal size’ for he position.
I don’t expect him to say anything else, but lets analyse what was said for a minute.
“For the first year, I think he’s done as good of a job as he could when you think about all the turmoil we’ve had, all the changes and things.”
And *WHY* do we have that change? Because of a very inexperienced and possibly inept leader.
“I think it shows a lot of guts and a lot of confidence for them to say, “Hey, we made a wrong decision, we’re trying to right this ship and we’re trying to get it right and make the transformation and head in the right direction.””
And here we see what Faine admires. Guts and confidence. No flys on that. But were guts and confidence enough to make an effective coach.
Maybe Morris will learn from these mistakes and become a effective HC. Maybe our owners, our players and our fans will have the patience to let that happen, I don’t know. I can say I don’t think anyone did any favours to Morris by putting him in the position to have to learn all of these lessons in the most visible post possible. Any of these kinds of mistakes in judgment would have been easier absorbed by the team if he was one of three coordinators under the leadership of an experienced HC, but wearing the big hat changes expectations, fairly or not.
Comment on this post:
You must be logged in to post a comment.