Dad! Rex Is Saying Bad Words!

August 16, 2010 at 01:20pm by Scott   •  3 Comments »

I’m not even going to pretend this is Buccaneer-related, but it’s so fucking stupid I had to include it. Tony Dungy, a man who has been involved with the NFL since 1976, doesn’t think Rex Ryan should be swearing so much on TV.

“I’m disappointed with all the profanity,” Dungy said. “I think Rex can make his points without all that.”

The first edition of Hard Knocks that Dungy is talking about is from the very beginning of training camp. He’s not making a point there. The “point” is to win as many games as possible. If there was anyone on the Jets team that didn’t know that, Rex would have eaten them by now. Rex was trying to inspire his players to win. He does that through swearing. When I think of inspirational head coaches, Vince Lombardi, Bill Parcells, and Bill Cowher all come to mind, and all of them are seasoned swearers. Tom Landry, Joe Gibbs and Dungy may have been good coaches who never swore, but all of them were also noted for being sterile and robotic and not particularly inspirational. The only coach I can think of that never swore and was also inspirational was George Allen, but he was just so passionate about winning (or, more specifically, beating the shit out of the Cowboys) that it was contagious no matter what language he used.

Asked if he would hire a coach who talks the way Ryan does, Dungy answered, “I would not. I personally don’t want my players to be around that.”

Oh, hell no. You wouldn’t want to swear around a guy like Warren Sapp. That guy says hello by telling people to go fuck themselves.

“I don’t want to be around that. . . . It’s hard for me to be around that, and if I were in charge, no, I wouldn’t hire someone like that. Now, I’ve been around ‘F’ bombs, so it’s not like it’s new. I just don’t think that has to be part of your every-minute, everyday vocabulary to get your point across.”

Well, after the Bucs canned the non-swearing Dungy and hired Jon Gruden, a man who has a bust in the Filth Hall of Fame, the Buccaneer offense was sufficiently motivated enough to finally pull their own weight and win a Super Bowl. Was Gruden a master tactician or did he just swear loud and often enough that the offense was scared into a better performance? I think you know the fucking answer.

And not only does Dungy think Ryan should abolish his potty mouth, but he thinks Daddy Goodell should get involved, too.

“I would hope that he does,” Dungy said of the possibility of Goodell getting involved. “I don’t know that he will or not but I hope that he does because I just don’t think the league needs that. I don’t think our young people need to hear that that’s what’s done to be successful. Because it doesn’t have to be that way.”

But for Rex it does. That’s how Rex works. Read this quote from Hard Knocks when Rex was addressing his team for the first time in a classroom and setting expectations for the season.

“We know we’re better than you, we don’t give a fuck whether you know it or not, we don’t give a shit if you give us your best game, we’re gonna give you our best game and we’re gonna beat the fuck outta ya. How’s that? Let’s go get it.”

Now here it is without all the swearing. I’m not even going to make fun of it.

“We know we’re better than you, we don’t care whether you know it or not, we don’t care if you give us your best game, we’re gonna give you our best game and we’re gonna beat ya. How’s that? Let’s go get it.”

My god that’s boring. And coming out of Dungy’s mouth, it would be both boring and preachy. This is the NFL, a place for men. Men who swear. Men who eat raw red meat while smoking cigars and switching off between blond and redhead hookers on the balconies of their 8,000 square foot mansions. You already can’t hit quarterbacks or “defenseless” wide receivers or lead with anything but your shoulder pad. The game is already getting pussified more and more every year. Now you want to take away swearing?!? Fuck you!

ESPN Calls Dungy Best NFC South Coach Ever

June 15, 2010 at 01:27pm by Scott   •  6 Comments »

Thanks to Jeremy Trueblood‘s fair catch yesterday, there’s no OTA today and probably not a hell of a lot going on, so we have to dig into what the real writers are doing with their time to see if we can get some material. And unfortunately, Pat Yasinskas came up with the only thing worth reading at the moment. He took on the challenging task of doing the same shit we all do when we’re with our buddies and ranked things, in his case, the top six (six?) NFC South coaches of all time. But since the NFC South is only in its ninth year of existence, he considered the entire coaching histories of the four NFC South teams. His conclusion: Tony Dungy is the best coach ever in the NFC South.

Yeah, Dungy never won a Super Bowl until he got to Indianapolis (and that factored into my thought process). Dungy did set the table for Gruden, but he did so much more than that. He came into a franchise that hadn’t had a winning season in a generation, was beyond dysfunctional and was on the verge of moving to Cleveland, Sacramento, Orlando or anywhere that would give the Bucs a new stadium.

It’s hard to argue, especially in a division with such young teams. The Falcons are the oldest team and they started in 1966, so no one really has a long and storied history of coaching legends to pull from. But for how low the Bucs were when he took over and what he developed in Tampa over six short years, you have to go with Dungy. I also agree with Yasinskas that Sean Payton should be #2. After that it gets dicey.

3. John Fox, Carolina Panthers. Yep, I did it. I picked Fox over a guy who won a Super Bowl (Gruden).

Well, then, you suck. Fox has been just as up and down in his tenure as Gruden was, going to the playoffs one year and missing them the next. Gruden’s low (4-12) was lower than Fox’s low (7-9 three times), but Gruden’s high was the highest it can get. Fox is a good coach, but outside of Dungy who established a culture in Tampa, how can you put a Super Bowl loser over a Super Bowl winner?

4. Jim Mora, New Orleans Saints. I’m doing it again. I’m looking at the big picture. Remember what I said about Dungy and Payton about how they changed the climate of their franchises? Well, Mora did the same thing in New Orleans in the 1980s.

He’s above Gruden, too? I actually like this pick better than Fox’s.

5. Jon Gruden, Tampa Bay Buccaneers. All right, Gruden won a Super Bowl and you can never take that away from him. He put Tampa Bay over the top after Dungy couldn’t. He won a Super Bowl with Brad Johnson as his quarterback and no true superstars on offense.

You sure you don’t want to put Bobby Petrino or George Seifert in here, Pat?

And why do people talk about Brad Johnson like he’s some crippled kid who got lucky enough to land on a winning football team? Johnson was a very good quarterback up until the end of his career. After the Bucs cut him, he went back to Minnesota and went 7-2 with a six game winning streak in his first season back there. He has a career passer rating of 82.6, not shabby when you consider Kurt Warner‘s career rating of 93.2. I understand people saying “they even won with Trent Dilfer” about the Ravens because Dilfer had periods with the Bucs when he truly sucked ass. Johnson never had that, at least not until he was 38 or 39.

6. Dan Reeves, Atlanta Falcons. There was a part of me that wanted to put Reeves ahead of Gruden for this simple fact: He reached a Super Bowl with Chris Chandler as his quarterback.

And there’s a part of me that wants to see Pat dropped into an industrial meat grinder and turned into several dozen pounds of meat loaf mix. I didn’t realize the Gruden hate was so deep for him. And, really, Dan fucking Reeves on this list? He had a losing record with the Falcons. If we’re going to consider coaches with losing records, you’ve got to put John McKay on this list. McKay started out with less than nothing in the expansion season, total shit thanks to the rules for expansion teams. In four years he was playing for the NFC Championship with a defense that teams were legitimately scared of. And he went to the playoffs two more times even as the talent level he was working with was getting depleted rapidly. Reeves only went to the playoffs one other time in his tenure with Atlanta besides the Super Bowl year.

I’d also like to add an honorable mention for Norm Van Brocklin, who only went 37-49-3 for Atlanta in seven seasons, but the guy was just a bad ass. Injury was no excuse to not play, he could go through an entire pack of cigarettes on the sidelines in one game, and his swearing put Jon Gruden to shame. He was old school all the way, lived hard and died young. Fox may have a better win-loss record, but I know who I’d want on my side in a street fight.

So anyway, there’s Pat’s list. Basically, Dungy is the best, Payton is second, and Gruden can suck Pat’s balls because the only reason he’s on there is the Super Bowl victory he accidentally stumbled into. And Van Brocklin is cooler than all of them combined. In fact, I’m changing the banner pic. Dungy gets his mug on enough shit.

REAR ENTRIES: Super Bowl Edition

February 08, 2010 at 10:45am by Scott   •  4 Comments »

CURSE LIFTED: The trend had been that if your team lost to the Buccaneers, you weren’t going to win the Super Bowl. It was statistically insignificant, but it gave sportscasters something to say when the Bucs beat some powerhouse team, not that that had been an issue lately. But it became one when the Bucs beat the Saints in week 16 of this year after Garrett Hartley (who, right this very minute, is plowing a girl he doesn’t love) missed a gimme 37-yard field goal at the end of regulation. So now without this or the cold weather curse or the kickoff return thing, what are brain dead analysts going to talk about when they cover Bucs games? Won’t someone please think of the analysts?!?

DUNGY SHOULD STICK TO VISITING PRISONS: Though I was rooting for the Colts, I didn’t want to predict their victory because I knew the Saints had a good team and wasn’t sure how the Colts’ defensive line would hold up if the Saints went on a couple long drives. And I’m a guy who shoots his mouth off and any opportunity. Tony Dungy, on the other hand, is well-known for being reserved and politically correct (except toward the queers) and he went on the record a couple days ago with relative bombast.

“I think they’re going to be so far ahead that people are going to say, ‘Oh, ho-hum, he played a good game, they won by two scores, the Colts won their second championship,’ ” Dungy said of Manning on Thursday. “He’s going to have those rings Sunday night. I don’t think it’s going to be close.”

He didn’t count on Peyton‘s receivers dropping critical passes, Peyton making a poor decision on his interception, and Sean Payton having GIANT BUFFALO BALLS when it came to playcalling and taking chances. I applaud Dungy having the fortitude to make a call instead of just saying it would be a good game, but “I don’t think it’s going to be close” is bulletin board material for the Saints. As a Colts fan, he should have kept his yap shut.

WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN: I don’t have a link for this. I was just thinking back to the 2006 season when Drew Brees was allowed to walk away from the Chargers because they didn’t think his shoulder would heal and they had drafted Philip Rivers anyway. Jon Gruden, who gushed over Brees that year at every opportunity, very likely would have given one of his children for the Glazers to make Brees an offer to come to Tampa, but it never happened. Instead, the Saints got Brees and the Bucs played that year with Chris Simms, Bruce Gradkowski and Tim Rattay.

/sad slide-whistle sound

Bucs/Cowher Conversation Confirmed

December 27, 2009 at 03:23pm by Scott   •  3 Comments »

Jason LaCanfora confirmed the rumor that the Buccaneers have at least had a conversation with Bill Cowher about taking over the head coaching duties.

The Bucs have tried to gauge Cowher’s interest should they decide to make a move regarding Raheem Morris, who has endured a difficult first season as head coach. But Cowher’s stance through this season has been clear: He will not interview for any jobs during the season and will not talk about any positions that aren’t already vacant.

That’s a pretty cool position for Cowher to take. As a head coach himself, he doesn’t want to show that kind of disrespect to another head coach who still has a job to do. But as I write this, the Bucs are down 17-3 to the Saints, backed up against their own endzone and have not shown anything that could be confused with improvement from last week’s game in Seattle. If they’re in this same position next week, it’s entirely possible that the Tampa Bay head coaching position will be suddenly vacant. One thing to keep in mind, though, is that the Glazers are pretty slow on the draw when it comes to changing head coaches. The competition for Cowher is going to happen quick, so if the Bucs want to be in the running, they have to fire Morris while the players are still wiping the sweat off themselves next Sunday in order to meet Cowher’s requirement of the position being open.

Some within the organization believe that former Super Bowl-winning coach Tony Dungy, who used to coach the Bucs and still resides in Tampa, ultimately could be asked to return in a team president-type role in the vein of Bill Parcells (Miami Dolphins) or Mike Holmgren (Cleveland Browns). However, Dungy has said he is content with his ministry work and broadcasting career after he retired from his job as the Indianapolis Colts’ coach following the 2008 season.

LaCanfora mentioned this a couple weeks ago and it sounded just as dumb then. Dungy strikes me as the kind of guy who means what he says and doesn’t say things in the media just to increase leverage for negotiations. He said he’s happy doing what he’s doing and I’ve got to believe that he’s going to get more out of helping young men in prison than he would being the football czar for the family that fired him eight years ago.

UPDATE: The Bucs scored on a 98-yard drive and just got the ball back on a fumble recovery. So this may not be as big a runaway as I thought when I first started this entry.

UPDATE 2: Adam Schefter has his own take on the story here. It includes this bit, which is buried surprisingly deep without any expansion on it:

Over the past year, Tampa Bay has undergone more changes than any NFL team. More are coming. At the very least, their associate head coach/special teams coach Rich Bisaccia is on his way to join the University of Tennessee coaching staff.

I can’t get a hold of any of my Volunteer sources to confirm this, but Schefter is the only one reporting it and he doesn’t cite anyone, so I’m not believing it yet.

UPDATED: And So It Begins

October 13, 2009 at 10:46am by Scott   •  2 Comments »

I guess someone had to bring his name up in the in an 0-5 season, so it might as well be Chris Myers. In this podcast of the Myers and Hartman radio show at the 29:35 mark, Myers utters the words that will make the majority of the Buccaneers beat writers spontaneously masturbate.

“The rumor in Tampa is that they want to bring back Tony Dungy in some form, I don’t know whether to coach or consult or help run the team. But they are a mess.”

And then they start talking about the Raiders for some reason, so that’s the end of the Dungy segment. I have not heard this anywhere else and Myers even qualifies it as a rumor, but could you imagine?

This isn’t like the team bringing back Doug Williams. The guy that fired Williams was long dead by the time Williams came back and the team was under new ownership. If Dungy were to return, it would be to work for the same people that booted him after a playoff game. Dungy is a forgiving guy, but there’s a level of pride there that has to be considered. And if Raheem Morris continues to shit the bed week after week, it won’t take long for the fans to start flooding the sports talk call-in shows with demands for Dungy to return to the sideline as the full-time head coach. Hey, maybe they hire Jon Gruden as offensive coordinator while they’re at it.

I don’t see any way that the Bucs can bring Dungy on board for anything more than a lunch meeting to maybe give Raheem some pointers. More than that and the Glazers are essentially admitting that they fucked up HUGE and are willing to take drastic measures to correct it, or at the very least create enough of a media frenzy to make people forget how shitty the team is. I’m guessing this rumor dies pretty quickly, but it juicy enough to keep alive for one blog entry, so there ya go.

UPDATE: Dungy says he has had no contact with the Bucs other than with their trainer to help his son with an injury.

Dungy Is Doing Some Good Work

April 20, 2009 at 11:24am by Scott   •  1 Comment »

I know I’ve been hard on Tony Dungy before, and I still think all that stuff is valid. But regardless of all that, you can’t hate on a guy who turned down being a head coach and one of the most beloved men in the NFL to spend time trying to rehabilitate prisoners. He was recently at the Hardee Correctional Institution in Bowling Green, FL to try and get prisoners to think about life after prison.

“He could have absolutely been doing anything else, but decided to spend time with us,” said Traveguz Butler, 34, serving a 30-year sentence that extends to December 2028 for carjacking, robbery and false imprisonment. “It’s uplifting. I’m glad that he was able to lower himself down to our level.”

He even ate that crap lunch with them. Shredded turkey smothered in a bland, tomato-based sauce, cold pasta, carrots, cucumber salad and yellow cake. It’s gestures like that that get these guys to respect Dungy and listen to him. I’m sure a lot of well-meaning people come through and talk at the prisoners for an hour without really spending any time with them.

“We have to change the direction we’re going,” Dungy says. “And it’s got to start with the young people. We’ve got to put the emphasis back on education. There’s a 67% chance that if you don’t have a high school diploma, you’re going to end up incarcerated.”

Well, that’s sobering. There’s a statistic to share with your teenager when he’s giving you shit about doing his homework. YOU HEAR ME, BOY?!?

The whole article is about his visit to Hardee and the message he’s trying to get across. It’s a ministry-based message he’s delivering, but you get the feeling that it will reach even the non-religious guys in there. And if Dungy’s mild-mannered approach doesn’t get through to them, it’s probably time to call in the Read A Book guys.

Tony Dungy Knows How To Retire

January 13, 2009 at 10:10am by Scott   •  No Comments »

I know I’ve dogged on Tony Dungy in the past, but you have to admire a guy who finishes his season, takes a week to think about it, and then decides with conviction what he’s going to do about the next year. The last few years after his week of consideration, he said he’s staying. This year, he said he’s retiring. And you know he’s staying retired. ARE YOU SEEING THIS BRETT FAVRE, YOU FUCKING DRAMA QUEEN?!? THIS IS HOW AN ADULT MAKES UP HIS MIND ABOUT SOMETHING!

Anyway, the Tampa media is going to be pressure-washing Dungy’s balls for quite a while this time. The Tribune already has five articles up, including what guys like Derrick Brooks, Warrick Dunn, Monte Kiffin and Shaun King had to say about him.

“It’s unbelievable,” King said. “The way he allowed me to have my opportunity to realize my dream and when you look at me, and this speaks louder than anything I can say, here’s a guy who cut me in Indianapolis for a team I deserved to be on and a tear just welled up [thinking about him].”

Do you like how he slipped in how he should have made the Colts? Oh, please. You never deserved to be on that team, Shaun. Jim Sorgi beat you fair and square.

This is a good time for him to leave coaching. Before the outpouring of affection that he’s getting now that he’s stepping down, the local Indianapolis media was turning on him for another twelve win season with nothing to show for it.

One and done.

Or, should we say, one and Dungy.

Hey, Indy has their very own Martin Fennelly!

It’s the same as it was in Tampa up until the point where the Glazers fired him. Then everyone was all up in arms about how they were letting such a great man go. Now, he can just be the man everyone admires without the baggage of having to be responsible for an NFL team. The newspapers can gush over him harmlessly because all he’ll be doing is good deeds (well, good deeds and shouting down the queers) and no one will have to talk about how he went “one and Dungy” again. When football does come up, everyone can remember the Super Bowl season and how he finally got his day in the sun. Everyone wins.

I have a feeling that if I knew him personally, we’d politely keep the conversation away from anything controversial because we’d most likely be at polar opposites of every argument. And that’s fine. In all honesty, I’m sure he’s going to do some great things and make a difference in people’s lives. People in Tampa are going to benefit from his increased presence in the community. If so many of the Buccaneers that I respect feel so strongly about him, I have to give him that credit. I’d just like to remind everyone that other people also do good things around the community as well.

Hey, look at that. I did manage to find a picture of Dungy with a different expression on his face.

Golf Classic Cancelled, Poster To Blame?

January 03, 2009 at 01:28am by Scott   •  No Comments »

Derrick Brooks and Warrick Dunn have cancelled their Brooks & Dunn Inaugural Golf Classic that was to take place during the Super Bowl week. Natalie Boe, executive director for the Warrick Dunn Foundation, is blaming the poor economy.

“We had been fortunate in securing just over $100,000 in sponsorships; however, we were still short of our goal of $200,000,” Boe said. “Their concern was that with only six weeks to go before the event — and two of those weeks being holiday weeks, with a lot of people not having their budgets reevaluated for January — we were afraid we wouldn’t get that commitment for the event.”

Yeah, you can’t tell me that people saw the promotion poster and didn’t have second thoughts. Warrick Dunn in a sleeveless button-down shirt and a cowboy hat? Sponsors got scared that they were going to be forced to line dance.

It’s too bad this didn’t work out, though, because the Super Bowl week is an excellent opportunity to get people with too much money to give some of it to charity. But both guys will be involved in other activities during the week; Dunn will be working with Habitat For Humanity and Brooks will be part of the 2009 Super Bowl Breakfast. At the Habitat event, you can win tickets to the Super Bowl– the more you build, the better your chances. And at the Breakfast, for $20 you can meet Brooks, Tony Dungy, Lee Roy Selmon, Bart Starr, Anthony Munoz, Brett Jones, and other NFL legends. These are both things you can easily be involved in if you live in the Bay area. Bucs fans should seriously consider signing up to one or both of these events. Bonus points if you show up in a sleeveless button-down shirt and get your picture taken with one of the guys.

This Article Has No Reason To Exist

November 14, 2008 at 03:26pm by Scott   •  No Comments »

Some broad lawyer, Yolanda Young, somehow got USA Today to run her opinion piece comparing Tony Dungy and Barack Obama. And I honestly can’t think of a newspaper article that is less relevant or has less of a reason to exist than this one. The only reason I’m bringing it up is because I did the spot on John Lynch and John McCain yesterday and thought it was only fair. And because I don’t want to write the same “How will the Bucs defense stop Adrian Peterson?” article you’ve read a hundred other times elsewhere. So, in the spirit of the now defunct Fire Joe Morgan, let’s go through it line by line.

Read the rest of this entry »

Glazers Have Orangegasm

October 16, 2008 at 09:33am by Scott   •  5 Comments »

After twelve years of being in pewter and refusing to acknowledge Buccaneer history with a ring of honor or at least a throwback game, the Glazers have decided to unveil both in 2009.

The Bucs plan to introduce a Ring of Honor for the franchise next year as part of a 30th anniversary celebration of the 1979 Bucs, who went 10-6 and advanced to within one victory of a Super Bowl berth in only their fourth NFL season.

The organization also intends to play at least one game during the 2009 season wearing Tampa Bay’s throwback orange jerseys, according to an NFL source.

The Ring of Honor is long overdue and I hope they don’t just concentrate on the Tony Dungy and Jon Gruden eras. I realize they were the most successful for the team and that the majority of players selected will (and should) be selected from those periods, but the Bucs had other great players that got stuck playing for shitty teams. James Wilder comes to mind as a guy who would have thrived in a different system. Jimmie Giles, David Logan, Richard Wood… all of them should be locks. And the poor guys who suffered in both uniforms and then retired before the big Super Bowl payoff like Paul Gruber and Tony Mayberry and Hardy Nickerson should also get their consolation prize of having their names in huge letters at Ray Jay. Of course, if Lee Roy Selmon isn’t the first player enshrined, the whole thing is a sham.

But the bigger surprise is the announcement of a (*sniff*… I’m getting choked up…) throwback game next year. The Glazers have been adamant about not participating in the throwback weekends because of the stank stigma that surrounds Bucco Bruce. I understand it to a degree. It’s impossible to separate the team’s new success in the 90s from their new uniforms, even if it’s just a superficial association. But the fans who endured such disappointment in the orange and white for so many years have a sentimental attachment to it. It’s their badge of honor and every now and then they want to wear it on their sleeves literally. “You were in Iraq? Pffft… I was a Buccaneer fan in the 80s.” The rest of the league has at least one throwback game a year — the Bucs were the only team to completely ignore it year after year. But not next year, and I hope they make it an annual tradition. Derrick Brooks is the only player currently on the team to wear the orange, and he has been a supporter of the throwback for years. He may hold off retirement one more year just to be able to play in that game.

I’m just… I’m just so happy.