“Disgrace”
January 3rd, 2012
There were a lot of reasons why the end of the Raheem Morris era came yesterday just over 12 hours after one of the most horrific losses in Bucs’ chequered history, coughing up 42 points in the first 22 minutes of the season-ending game to the Dixie Chicks.
For longtime Sports Illustrated columnist Peter King, Team Glazer terminating Morris was a no-brainer, he wrote in his weekly must-read Monday Morning Quarterback yesterday.
Points allowed, Tampa, last eight games: 37, 35, 23, 38, 41, 31, 48, 45. A disgrace is what it is. How does a head coach with a defensive background allow that to happen?
Try to pin the blame elsewhere, try to make excuses, but the bottom line was, no matter what level of talent anyone thinks Morris had, that talent never improved, in fact it got worse by the week. “The progress of the team,” as Bucs co-chairman Joel Glazer said yesterday. That falls squarely on the coaching staff, not a suit in the front office.
Team Glazer had tens of millions of dollars invested in said talent with zero return. It was almost like buying real estate at the height of the boom and walking away from a house that is terribly underwater with no hope of any return on your pricey investment.
Team Glazer cut the losses. Quickly.
January 3rd, 2012 at 9:21 am
We only gave up 23 to the Titans? My yangus feels like it was much more.
January 3rd, 2012 at 9:28 am
Just wanted to post my recent comment from your last article:
Joe,
Gonna take the high road and not pile on Rah or his staff. It is in the past. Great feeling waking up today. I am going to, once again, put my faith in the Glazers to make good choices. I will support the owners until they give me a reason not to.
With that said, we can dissect yesterday’s rpess conference and fine contradictions. But for now, it is time to hbe hopeful.
Jon
January 3rd, 2012 at 9:31 am
Raheem will never be a def cord in the NFL again
January 3rd, 2012 at 9:35 am
Our defense was a disgrace. I still don’t think the entire issue was talent. We managed to beat the Saints and Atlanta this year with essentially the same group but the caoching scheme was terrible. Last year we made adjustments in the second half to get better. This year by the second half it was beyond repair. Wish nothing but the best to Raheem and his staff but my hope is we bring in Tom Clements and let him turn Freeman into a pro bowler. He’s done it with nearly every QB he’s worked with. I’m sure they’ll bring in a good DC and OC to work with these guys. I’m still a firm believer that we have a good core of talent to work with.
January 3rd, 2012 at 9:46 am
I think you had about half the defense not playing their assignments. I think we have descent talent in some key areas. We just need to get them to produce.
The LB and secondary needs an overhaul, we need a speed WR and RB. I’m very curious what the new coach does and what the #5 pick will be.
January 3rd, 2012 at 9:47 am
I thought Raheem could grow into the role, obviously it didn’t happen. He’ll end up a secondary coach again for the foreseeable future.
As for the Bucs, the more I look into it, the more I think they absolutely should go all out for Jeff Fisher. He wins, takes no crap, has no learning curve (as another article here states), and the money can be there because Gruden and raheem’s contracts are off the books.
Also, why not Tampa? Other than the notion that the Glazers won’t spend money (which is a moot point to me because with the salary floor coming, they will HAVE to), why not Tampa? Great stadium, alot of good young players who need direction, great area, etc…
What opening is better? Jax? Miami? Indy possibly? St Louis?
Basically… why not?
January 3rd, 2012 at 10:03 am
Bobby:
Joe’s a big Tom Clements guy too but if he is offered the Penn State gig, to be bluntly honest, that’s better than the Bucs gig right now.
Clements will likely get a four- or five-year contract for $10-12 million and he will be his own boss. Additionally, he won;’t have to play Drew Brees, Matty Ice and Cam Newton twice a year.
January 3rd, 2012 at 10:04 am
And he can take Haynseworth fishing on Tuesdays!
January 3rd, 2012 at 10:22 am
I wonder about Keith Millard…I know the whole staff got fired, but he had gotten the Warren Sapp stamp of approval, if you will. Was he just overhyped? Or perhaps he needed more time to work with the DLine? Oh well, either way he’s gone and I can’t make a case for him or anyone else on the coaching staff staying, for reasons said above.
January 3rd, 2012 at 10:34 am
Morris is the new Gruden. The whipping bot for what no longer matters.
Can we move on? I think we all get why Raheem had to go by now. But ripping a man when he’s down is kind of low IMO.
Or……we could bash Sam Wyche for kicks!
January 3rd, 2012 at 10:42 am
I listened to Sileo this morning rail against Dominick for not giving Raheem any talent, but I don’t remember lack of talent being an issue when we were 10-6 and 4-2.
January 3rd, 2012 at 10:51 am
Richard:
Funny how that works, huh?
January 3rd, 2012 at 10:52 am
The one thing you never here anyone talk about is the system that was in place. What System? This was the problem with the former coaching staff! Your pro bowl players can perform in any system where as MOST of your good to average players are a product of a good system. This team had no rhyme or reason for anything it was doing. There was no system and especially no structure on either side of the ball. Sometimes you can overcome lack of preperation, (used to be called flying by the seat of your pants) but without veteran players adjusting on the fly; there was little or no hope even coming back from half time. A proven NFL system needs to be put into place on both the offense and defense. This team was adjusting the entire system on a weekly basis. Kind of like a professional golfer adjusting his swing in the middle of a PGA event. Disaster!
January 3rd, 2012 at 11:32 am
@joe.. Why on earth are you continuing to make excuses for the failures of Mark Dominik? It’s like your trying to convince all of us that Morris was the only reason. The fans are much more knowledgeable than that. Yes Raheem was a disaster and deserved what he got but to try and put all the blame on him is ludacris. Everyone knows it was the entire organization that failed and all deserve blame. Mark Dominik is living on borrowed time and may only be in his current position until the new coach is hired.
January 3rd, 2012 at 11:42 am
Brad:
Joe is a Dominik guy, yes, but as Joe has explained many times before, Dominik is not a deity either. Joe has repeatedly pointed out his decision to not bring back Barrett Ruud was likely the single reason this defense collapsed. Not bringing back Cadillac was another bad move and Joe called out Dominik for his hard sell on The Great Lumpkin from Day 1. So not sure how you come to the conclusion that Joe is letting Dominik skate.
Dominik, you may recall, just got reupped for four years. Just a hunch, but that tells Joe that perhaps Dominik is doing what Team Glazer wanted him to do.
Try as you might, no one who wears a suit on weekdays at One Buc Palace was the defensive coordinator for a team that got absolutely seal-clubbed week after week.
January 3rd, 2012 at 11:55 am
” I listened to Sileo this morning rail against Dominick for not giving Raheem any talent, but I don’t remember lack of talent being an issue when we were 10-6 and 4-2.
Funny how that works, huh?”
What’s even funnier was that lack of coaching wasn’t an issue then either. Were there rumblings of lack of coaching? Sure. Were there rumblings of lack of talent? Sure (remember the arguments about Black, Biggers, etc). But neither were an issue then because we were winning. Why is only one an issue now?
January 3rd, 2012 at 12:04 pm
For the Dom bashers, here’s something interesting to think about. This past off-season he signed two of the more impactful free agents available. We all know about Sproles to NO, but he had no intention of playing anywhere other than NO or SD. What about Jonathon Joseph? Let that one get away… But, signing Davin Joseph, who made the Pro Bowl from a team that lost 10 straight is pretty good. It cost us though, in having to sign Trueblood, but we can cut him now and still have Joseph. So we wasted one year at RT, but we kept a Pro Bowl RG. And of course Koenen. Not only was he excellent for the Bucs this year, he also left the Falcons with Bosher. That move basically won us the first Atlanta game by itself as Bosher averaged about 31 yards on 3 punts, and netted only 21.7 average. Thankfully the first game we were still able to make other teams punt.
January 3rd, 2012 at 12:26 pm
BamBam:
Ten straight losses to end a season, brutal losses on top of it, some to garbage teams, would make even Don Shula look dumb.
And Raheem didn’t exactly have Don Shula’s pelts on the wall.
January 3rd, 2012 at 12:48 pm
Raheem Lost this team.
maybe as soon as the London trip.
but regardless of when,
nobody (except Ronde) on Defensive was buying into Rah anymore.
Most of them should be gone next season anyway,
Including unfortunately Barber.
The pathetic “three and out” offensive game plan of Olsen did not help either.
You cannot establish any type of game plan playing from behind all of the time
and the Bucs First Quarter ineptitude can only being attributed to bad coaching / preparation.
This team was lost and these coaches proved that they could not control the downward spiralling situation.
The complete flushing was in order.
January 3rd, 2012 at 2:52 pm
Joe, did you miss the “one”? Why is only ONE to blame now? It’s all coaching after the 10-6 last year and 4-2 start this year. Why not the talent (or lack of)? You say it’s the same talent we had during that run, but it’s mostly the same coaches as well. Only OL and DL coaches were changed in the middle. So, if you say it had to be coaching, what changed in the coaching? The DL and OL coaches? Other than that, nothing was different. What changed in the talent? Well, Ruud and Caddy were gone. GMC was injured. Price wasn’t 100% through any of it (good or bad).
Seems to me there was more change in talent level than coaching. The coaching remained pretty consistent throughout (whether that was good or bad). The talent, however, was depleted with the losses of two veteran players, a key cog in the DL, leaving us with no backup RB (Lumpkin doesn’t qualify and Graham got hurt), a rookie MLB that wasn’t even ready to call the defense yet, and serious depth issues at DT.
Why is everyone so content to point the finger at coaching AFTER week 6? The coaching didn’t change. I’m not saying the coaching was good, but it wasn’t different than last year. Neither was the play of Quincy Black or Geno Hayes or Jeremy Trueblood. They were all just as bad as last year and the first 6 games of this year. But, you take out a couple veterans and a promising DT and talent issues arise.
Now, that said, you can put the blame on Dom for not getting enough talent in to provide the depth in just such a situation, but Dom was working on getting some talent to be starters, not depth. We didn’t have adequate starters, you can’t just go spending in FA for depth when you need it for starters. We didn’t get much in the way of starters either, except a punter and RG in FA. We did get Clayborn and Foster. Foster wasn’t ready, but Clay did fine. Bowers came on at the end. Some players didn’t “regress” because of the coaching. Which ones did? The ones that should have been backups anyway (Black, Hayes, Jones), a guy that was out of work for a year (Jackson), and maybe some young WRs (although I thought Parker improved at WR and Briscoe didn’t regress any).
So, again, why blame only the ONE aspect, coaching for the collapse after 6 games? The talent (or lack thereof) should be obvious to everyone.
January 3rd, 2012 at 3:09 pm
Buc Neckid, I’m not one to support Olsen. I thought his “gameplan” was usually horrible. But I can’t blame him entirely for the 3 and out gameplan or playing constantly from behind. I went back through a lot of the gamebook stats. What I found out was that part of the reason we were behind so much was turnovers. Freeman interceptions didn’t help keep the defense off the field at all. For example, in the 49ers blowout loss, we were down 7-3 when we forced a fumble by the 49ers to stop their drive in our territory. Two plays later, Josh Freeman throws a pick that leads to a TD. Down 14-3. We get the ball, start to drive and another INT leads to another 49er TD, down 21-3. We’re playing from behind, but not because of gameplan or 3 and out, but because of early turnovers.
I will agree that the coaching staff never got that corrected. Part of that I believe was because Freeman started off feeling like he had to throw the team on his back and make them win. He was forcing it. That’s what happens when players with the desire to win are on a losing streak. If Freeman got more conservative, we had 3 and outs, when he was aggressive he turned the ball over.