When it rains it pours this season in Atlanta.
The day after a brutal performance on Monday night against the Jets, word has begun leaking that star wide receiver Julio Jones may be out for the season with a foot injury.
Jones appeared hobbled briefly late in the contest last night but returned to put on a heroic performance that almost brought the Falcons a win. Apparently the injury was worse than it originally looked.
Add that to the list, which also includes several offensive linemen, running back Steven Jackson and wide receiver Roddy White. Heading into the season, the Falcons looked to me to be the easy favorite for a repeat as AFC South champs. That has been quickly eclipsed by their 1-4 record and the fast start of the New Orleans Saints.
And it would likely get progressively worse if Jones does, in fact, miss significant time. Pretty soon Tony Gonzalez could be the only relatively healthy offensive weapon Matt Ryan has left. I wonder if he is rethinking his comeback?
Coaching hot seats?
Speaking of the Falcons, head coach Mike Smith has got to be close to the top of the coaching hot seat.
Smith has enjoyed a great deal of regular season success in recent years, but he’s also been criticized for time management, for some game day decisions and for having little success in the postseason.
Nearly one-third of the way through the season, the Falcons have to be at the top of the list of most disappointing teams to this point. He seems like a great guy but at 1-4, it’s fair to question whether the window is closing. The significant injury issues the team has dealt with along the offensive line and along the offensive skill position talent may draw a reprieve, but that provides no explanation for what has been an embarrassingly bad showing for the defense through five games.
The bottom line is wins and losses. He won’t be out anytime soon. And some disagree that his job should be on the line. But if the season goes further south, I could see a change at the end of the year.
Also in the mix has to be Carolina coach Ron Rivera, whose Panthers have looked terrible through four games. Cam Newton has been ridiculously up and down through his first two-plus seasons and he helped fumble away Sunday’s loss to Arizona.
Rivera barely survived Black Monday last season and it seems as though the team is not showing the significant improvement in performance it would take for him to hang onto the helm for yet another year.
Finally, Tom Coughlin may be back on the brink. The Giants fell to 0-5 Sunday against Philadelphia and New York’s defense has been abysmal. Two Super Bowl championships have helped the perpetually maligned Coughlin from stave off a firing, but with this year’s team showing little sign of coming together, management may deem it time to move on.
The play of Eli Manning, who also slumped through the last half of 2012, isn’t doing Coughlin any favors either. This team looks to be in trouble.
One whose backside is probably a bit more comfortable at the moment is Rex Ryan. The outspoken Jets leader has benefited from a strong defense and a seemingly unflappable rookie QB in Geno Smith.
I don’t think the Jets have the offensive skill talent to make the playoffs, but I also thought they’d be 0-5 or 1-4 rather than 3-2 at this point. And New York thoroughly outplayed Atlanta Monday night. So Ryan can probably breathe a bit easier for now.
It’s just a hunch, but I also don’t think Mike Tomlin is in any danger in Pittsburgh. For one thing, the Steelers are one of the slowest teams to change coaches in sports, having had just three head men since Chuck Noll took over in 1969. Second, Tomlin has a Super Bowl championship and another appearance in the big game over his seven years with the team.
And third, it looks pretty clear to me from watching that the Steelers are still playing hard but are simply aging and short on the talent necessary to compete for a title this year. My guess is that Tomlin is safe. If he’s not, there would be a dozen teams lined up at his door to interview him for their vacancies at season’s end.
I sent a tweet out about this on Sunday night but I’ll expand on it here. I thought Terrelle Pryor would never be anything more than a third-string/gimmick QB in the NFL. I was wrong. Way wrong.
I’d read the reports about how good he had looked in the early going. But Sunday night I got my first chance to see him in some live game action. He looked really, really good. Is it possible he’s a tease? Maybe. But the team seems confident he’s turning into the real deal. It released Matt Flynn on Monday morning.
There might still be some rough edges to smooth out, but Pryor looks like the 2013 version of Colin Kaepernick in his ability to combine good arm strength, decent accuracy and the ability to run. I was really impressed with how dominant Oakland was in the first half of the game. The late start caused me to miss the second half, but it looked to me like the Raiders are going to be a tough beat for anyone in 2013, save for maybe the Broncos. This isn’t a playoff team, but Pryor’s development significantly speeds up this team’s rebuilding timetable – which is good, in my mind, because the league is more entertaining when the Raiders are relevant.
Condi Rice on college playoff committee?
We pay more attention to the pro game than college football, but I want to shift gears for just a second. I’m a little bit confused as to why the comments of former Georgia and Cincinnati Bengals linebacker David Pollack are raising so much controversy.
He told College Gameday last week that he thinks those put in charge of determining who plays in a college football playoff tournament should have some tie to the game itself. Why is that so wrong?
Full disclosure: I didn’t actually see the full interview on television, but read about it online and watched the partial video posted at yahoo and linked to here. Pollack may not have helped himself by shrugging his shoulders when asked specifically if that meant he didn’t think women should be on the panel. However, what is wrong with the statement that those in charge should actually have some tie to the game?
Enter Condoleezza Rice, who is expected to be named to the panel. Rice is a brilliant woman and she is eminently qualified for many things. She’s often expressed her passion as a fan and even has mentioned that she would like to be NFL Commissioner. But despite what this Yahoo post suggests, being a passionate fan is not enough of a credential for Rice to be a legitimate candidate for choosing who would be in the college playoffs. Nor is being a professor at Stanford or being among the first female member at Augusta National.
I see no hostility toward women, or specifically toward Rice, in Pollack’s belief that the people who choose the participants should have played or been around the game in a significant way. That’s not chauvinism, it seems relatively common sense. It also may not rule out all women either. There could be female athletic directors or administrators or women in the college football media who would be perfectly qualified to sit on the selection panel.
And maybe Rice has something in her background that makes her eminently qualified for the panel. But, for the little it is worth, the case has not been made strongly enough to convince me. I just don’t think being a passionate fan is enough.
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My problem with the Rice selection (and with anyone else in a similar position) is the element of doubt that would creep into any playoff if Stanford (or any appropriate team) were to get in. If an 11-1 Stanford was picked over an 11-1 Oklahoma or a 12-0 Louisville, for example, how can we be sure that she has put aside a natural inclination toward Stanford aside and looked at all the teams objectively.
That goes for any member of the committee. There is unlikely to be any transparency in the selections, and we will not know what goes on behind closed doors and we cannot be sure to what extent bias has or has not been overcome.