Sounds like just another irresponsible blogger trying to create headlines with a sensationalistic story with little foundation in fact.

Wait, this was from ESPN?

Ah, the offseason.

So Jeff Fisher (the head coach) gets the blame for conceding two touchdowns (including one late one) to one of the greatest ever offenses in the Superbowl. But Monte Kiffin (the co-ordinator) gets the credit for only conceding one TD (a late one) to the very same team.

Why Kiffin not Dungy? And coming back from a 16-0 deficit wasn't impressive?

And that's just one of the inconsistencies in this piece, which reads like it's from the Coulter/Hitchens school of "say something controversial and then back it up with 'because I say so'" journalism.

paolantonio has been writing terrible, weakly substantiated pieces since i began reading the WWL online. his work boils down to the latest rumors put forth by undisclosed sources. it's school girl politics at its best. no chance i get the book.

Wasn't Moore the offensive coordinator for the Lions when Scott Mitchell (I think I have that name right, but if I don't I am referring to the giant statue from NFL Europe) went to the Pro Bowl? Yes Sanders might have had something to do with that offense, and it may also have been the year they brought Lomas Brown in to finally put a decent line in front of him, but still Mitchell was garbage and got to Hawai. So Moore has a track record independent of Captain Laser-Rocket-Arm.

Similarly as far as I am aware Kiffin was the defensive coordinator for Nebraska during their reign as one of the most dominant teams in college ball history. I read somewhere that he fine tuned the scheme at Nebraska before he brought it into the NFL. Again a good track record.

His beef against Fisher is bewildering. For my mind he is clearly one of the better coaches in football, I used to have him as one of the best, back when his roster was any good. His teams were always well prepared and came out ready to play. If they can sort out the kinks in that roster there aren't many coaches I would want in charge of a team ahead of him. The only knock you could put against him is that whilst the Titans' deenses under Fisher have been good, so have his coordinators (Buddy Ryan, Jim Schwartz).

Who is there left that rates Lewis anyway? I could have coached that Ravens defense communicating only using a penny whistle, dressed in a clown outfit and making baloon animals for the kids. Lewis, McAllister, Woodson, Boulaware, Sharper, Adams, Siragusa, Burnett and no real weaknesses (or major injuries); not hard to coach.

2,

You might want to actually read Coulter before making baseless accusations. She's a very bright person.

#2 Right on.

Far as this Colt fan is concerned, Moore is a deity. I look at Manning and Moore as a super F1 race car and a gifted driver. Put me (Brian Billick?) behind the wheel and you have a bad accident. Put the best driver (Moore) with the best vehicle, and you have something amazing. Older than dirt but still innovative. He gets the most out of his talented crew. But without him, they're just a talented crew--a Ferrari looks pretty sitting in the garage, but it doesn't win any races. I'd no sooner trade Tom Moore away than I would Manning.

And Jeff Fisher deserves a ton of credit and accolades. He's the kind of divisional opponent I respect and I enjoy having a worthy rival in the div. Even when bereft of talent, his teams are always tough. Yes, I loathed him for his 3 on-side KOs in the first half a few years ago, but putting myself in a TN fan's shoes, I have to say I'd admire his moxie.

2,5

Please respect our discussion threads by refraining from the following:

1. comments about politics

I agree that Moore probably doesn't get enough credit for the Colts offense, but I feel like Kiffin and Lewis have been rated appropriately for a while. And doug hit the nail on the head about whats wrong with sal's criticism of Fisher who I've always considered one of the upper echelon coaches in the league.

I'd just like to point out that the NFC East is actually the toughest division in football, although the AFC South is very close.

I have had a steadily growing dislike for Fisher and the Fisher-coached Titans the last few years--I think they're one of the dirtiest and least classy (on the field) teams in the NFL, and I blame Fisher for a lot of that--but I have to admit that he does coach winning football. I do agree that maybe he's a little overrated--you hear about him being one of the greatest coaches in the game, which I think is a bit off--but he is solid. (Even if he is kind of a jerk).

In my opinion, Fisher is one of the better coaches in the NFL (clearly above average). That said, it drives me crazy when people give him a break because of the salary cap purge in Tennesee without also recognizing that he benefitted by their 'overspending' in the years prior to the purge. If his record was artificially depressed by the need to escape salary cap hell, it stands to reason that it was artificially inflated by their pushing spending into later years.

It case it isn't already obvious to you people, ESPN long ago discovered the tabloid rule, he truth interested demographic is MUCH smaller than the controversy demographic.

Re: 4

"Similarly as far as I am aware Kiffin was the defensive coordinator for Nebraska during their reign as one of the most dominant teams in college ball history."

When was this? He was the DC in the mid-70's when Nebraska wasn't even the best team in its own conference (Big 8). The guy who led Nebraska's defense in the mid-90's was Charlie McBride.

Also, Fisher has experimented with a series of mullet-and-facial-hair looks which have been sadly lacking in the modern game. One more reason for respect.

7: Mine was intended as a comment about journalism.

7: Mine was intended as a comment about journalism.

:: ammek — 6/2/2008 @ 2:00 pm

Then pick a sports journalist as an example. Keep the politics out of here.

I always thought Fisher was a very good coach, currently neither over nor under rated.

I speak from experience: don't bother reading Paolantonio's book. It's pretty bad. Brief "review" I did in name, looking at his argument for why the 85 Bears are overrated.

In no way do I think that Marvin Lewis is an above average head coach, but let's look at the Bengals' past a little bit.

Pre-Lewis:
3-13
5-11
3-13
3-13
7-9
8-8
7-9
3-13
4-12
4-12
6-10
2-14

With Lewis:
8-8
8-8
11-5
8-8
7-9

Although there's cherry-picking going on here, that tells us that at least Marvin Lewis isn't as terrible as the Bengals' previous head coaches.

Re: #5. You misspelled "Hitchens."

I think the worst part of this for me is his argument about the Ravens' Defense. His stats seem to suggest that Lewis inherited a bad one, slowly built it up to a great one showing steady improvement each year, and then the season after he left they dropped to 22nd in the league. Fair enough, there was a recovery after that but how is subsquent co-ordinators' success a criticism of Lewis?

Hey # 17!! Lets keep the site clean ! No politics !

SalPal has a habit of making ridiculous statements to get attention. He tried doing it with his book on overrated and underrated players, and it seems like he's doing it here with his assessment of coaches. He takes well-respected players and coaches, and calls them overrated.

Jayson Stark did a similar book for baseball first, and it was pretty successful (and well-written). SalPal tried to take the concept and copy it, except for the "well-written" part.

"Jayson Stark did a similar book for baseball first, and it was pretty successful (and well-written)."

no, that was pretty much garbage too. this kind of stuff is pure hackwork, and any writer who goes out of his way to catalogue overrated players/teams is a joke~~~

@ langsty

I can understand the sentiment; it seemed like Stark had a lighter touch on the "overrated" side, but I can see your point.

Just a word to the Extra Points people. It's June, and there's not much being written of any value, as the comments for this thread suggest. Any chance you could trawl around and find us some interesting blogs or bloggers that we may not be aware of - on individual teams that we may not support, for example - as well as the corporate stuff? Apart from Drinen the off-beat material has kind of disappeared from Extra Points and, you know, I miss it.

Ammeck, For some good seahawk blogs try www.seahawkaddicts.com or fieldgulls.com

Re #23
If you check out the Links Outside the Outsiders section, there are links to a team-specific blogs and some more general NFL resource-type sites. If you're really bored, you can read my book reviews (Paolantonio Report is direct-linked in my name above, and the rest are listed on the side). Alternatively, if you only started reading FO in the past couple years, take a look at the archives and read the pieces from the site's earliest days.

If for some reason you're interested in following the Bucs, one of the local papers actually runs a pretty decent blog. Some of the reader commentary is actually pretty reasonable, too, as far as most sports sites go. Don't expect too much, though. Like I said, some of it's readable.

http://blogs.tampabay.com/bucs/

Fisher deserves to be taken to task for a team that, well... doesn't display a very good level of class, either on or off the field. Albert Haynesworth especially.

However, I don't think anyone can reasonably downplay the performance of his teams. Although the Titans last year have the most "bogus" 10-6 record ever, Fisher has managed to make his teams regularly overachieve.

"most bogus 10-6"...

that got me thinking, what is the greatest difference between Estimated and Actual wins we've seen...

"I have had a steadily growing dislike for Fisher and the Fisher-coached Titans the last few years–I think they’re one of the dirtiest and least classy (on the field) teams in the NFL, and I blame Fisher for a lot of that–but I have to admit that he does coach winning football."

100% agree MJK.

I'll keep Marvin Lewis, thank-you. He has totally revised the culture of the Bengals and reinvigorated the fanbase. From 1993 through 2002 there was NO expectation of making the playoffs and very little hope of even keeping it interesting when the team got off to a 1-5 or even 0-8 start every year.

NOW there is an expectation of winning. I agree that the man's not perfect and I agree that he'd probably be better off moving on to a different team, but I don't think it's time to run him off from Cincinnati, especially now that we're not fooling around with Odell Thurmans and Chris Henrys as high draft picks.

You might want to actually read Coulter before making baseless accusations. She’s a very bright person.

Aha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha, oh my God, ha-ha-ha-ha, please make it stop, ha-ha-ha...ha....whew.

Sorry, I'm not supposed to be commenting on this, but, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-oh-it-hurts-haha...

19,

I wouldn't bring it up if there weren't always idiots out there trying to bash certain political viewpoints on a football message board. But if thats allowed then I'm gonna comment on it. And when 3/4 of the American media are hacks, to go ahead and pick out one strong conservative commenter, its pretty obvious there's an agenda there.

31,

Well I gaurantee you she's smarter than 90% of the people here, but go ahead and feel as you will. Your ignorance is the hilarious part. I would love to hear the enlightened thinkers who you read.

People often forget that the two losing seasons always attributed the roster blow up actually was only one season.

The Titans blew the team up in the spring of 2005. The previous season (5-11) was actually the result of the most disastrous injury season ever to hit an NFL team. I remember that season broke a few injury related NFL records.

Keeping that in mind, Fisher managed one losing season before getting back to 8-8 after the cap purge. How many head coaches can say that?

Re: 16
How much of that has to do with the emergence of Palmer?

Over in the Travis Henry ExPnt, I put forth the opinion that its really tough to have a completely lousy team when you have a good QB.

Given the relatively close level of talent throughout the league, I think a good, veteran QB can make up for MANY holes leaving an otherwise sucky team at least average. Even if the whole rest of the team was ravaged by injury, can we really see Peytom Branning losing more then 8 or 9 games? Hell, currently when Kitna is healthy, Detroit is almost respectable and capable of winning 6-8 games. I'm not even talking about All-Pros... just solid, above average NFL QBs.

The only case I could think of where an otherwise solid QB led a true bottom-feeder team was the Pack in 2005 (who won 4 games). If I recall, besides losing Green, Walker, Ferguson, etc. Farve was also a bit banged up (though not out), also limiting the applicability of that case....

Anyway, I wonder if there is a way to test this hypothesis... say, take a QB who consistently was above average DPAR and see how many times, if ever, their teams in future years lost more than X number of games.

Do folks this is just selection bias on my part (i.e. the QBs I judge as "good" is because they win, not because of any intrinsic "solidness" on their part)?

Re: 23
For a Denver blog, try the "Broncos Bus" on the Denver Post site (linked in my name)...

There is a fair amount of random, worthless comments to wade through, but in general the discouse is is intelligent and respectful. Definitely is not the FOX comments, etc.