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Monday, May 09, 2005
Border battle boring?
Ah, the web -- what a wonderful thing to be able to scroll on past the things you just don't care about.Today's Strib courtesy Jim Souhan:
You don't need to be a psychic to see the future.
Brett Favre is the primary reason for the Packers' outrageous success since 1992. This year he will turn 36, and last year he often looked more interested in avoiding a hit than making a play.
While his durability and talent remain above question, Favre possesses an ill-concealed Achilles' heel: When he feels compelled to win games by himself, he becomes the worst great quarterback of all time....
The Packers' coach, for once, might have less job security than Mike Tice. The former employers of Andy Reid and Jon Gruden somehow wound up with Mike Sherman as their head coach, which is better than what they used to have -- Sherman as their head coach and general manager.
Let me get this straight: The Packers refused to give the dual role to Holmgren, their best coach since Vinny Lombardi, then they give it to Sherman, who displays the personality of a garden gnome, without the painted-on smile. ...
All of these developments are a shame, really. It was such an entertaining rivalry.
There's a prominent place in newspapers for analysis, but Souhan isn't engaged in analysis. He's engaged in prognostication, which is more or less a waste of column inches. He lists a few facts, adds a few assumptions, and makes a prediction. There's no real thought there. No effort. That, perhaps, is the point -- opinion without foundation is so much easier to escape from when it proves untrue.
It's not just risky to predict the NFL season at this juncture, it's spurious. The first full-scale practice is still two months away. Players will change teams. Some guys will show up in shape, others will eat their way out of football. Promising players will get hurt on day 1. Unpromising players will surprise.
Here's actual analysis of one of Souhan's claims -- that Sherman is a lesser coach than Andy Reid or Jon Gruden and undeserving of the general manager title. Sherman is 53-27 (66.3% winning percentage) in 5 years as the Packers head coach, and a disappointing 2-4 in playoff games. Sherman was the coach for the only two home playoff losses in Packer history.
Jon Gruden is 62-50 (55.4% winning percentage) in 7 years coaching Oakland and Tampa Bay. He is 5-2 in 3 trips to the playoffs. Andy Reid is 64-32 (66.7% winning percentage) in 6 years with a 5-4 record in the playoffs. Gruden has won one Super Bowl, Reid has lost one.
Sherman has a substantially better regular season record than Gruden, though Gruden has a better post-season record. Reid and Sherman have both won 2/3 of their regular season games. Again, Reid has a better post-season record, though Reid has never won a Super Bowl. There is no doubt that Gruden and Reid have both enjoyed more talent on their Super Bowl teams than any team Sherman has coached. On the coaching side, then, it's hard to find fault with Sherman, who has a better regular season coaching record than Bud Grant, Hall of Famer, who sports an equally disappointing post-season resume.
Did Mike Holmgren deserve the general manager title that Sherman was given? Holmgren coached the Packers while Ron Wolf -- a potential Hall of Famer as an executive -- served as general manager. Holmgren could have waited a year or two for both titles. Instead, he went to Seattle, where he failed as a general manager. Holmgren's departure opened the door for Sherman to be the successful head coach when Ron Wolf stepped down. Rather than bring someone new in, the Packers decided Sherman was a good fit as general manager. That decision has not worked out as well as Packer fans had hoped. Of course, there are fans of 28 or so other teams who would love to endure the relative failure of winning three consecutive division titles and making the playoffs four consecutive years.
