A HEART, A TANTRUM, A THREAT AND DAVANTE ADAMS: NFL COACHES CRY FOR HELP
When a mean Jerry Jones might replace talk hosts, dumping Mike McCarthy seems as easy as firing Nick Sirianni, who can’t last while Aaron Rodgers wastes Adams and Jim Harbaugh deals with an arrhythmia
Would you prefer to be Jim Harbaugh’s heart, Nick Sirianni’s temper, Jerry Jones’ index finger or, hot damn, the new coach of the Jets for co-existing with Aaron Rodgers, Davante Adams and Woody Johnson? Many of the 32 jobs are safe, for now, in regard to running an NFL team. Others? You worry — and don’t want to be anywhere near an arrhythmia, or a fan in the Philadelphia stands, or a Dallas talk host, or anything to do with Rodgers.
The second month of the season brings outrage, health concerns or laughter that Adams’ acquisition Tuesday can solve woes for Jeff Ulbrich. At least the interim coach keeps his job while Rodgers tries to save his career death-spiral by throwing the ball to Adams, with whom he enjoyed success in Green Bay, which came many ayahuasca trips ago. We can’t say the same for Sirianni and Mike McCarthy and, for all anybody knows, Harbaugh, who is doing a nice job in Los Angeles unless he keels over.
If anyone fails, say hello to Bill Belichick, who is 72 and available for hire if his 24-year-old girlfriend says OK and wonders why his sweat socks are older than her. Jones might want him to replace McCarthy, another poor hire by Jones himself, who continues to serve as a shoddy general manager — don’t trust a Jerry over 80, right, Chicago? — of the world’s highest-valued sports franchise. Three men who host a morning radio show asked Jones why the Dallas Cowboys were so blase in finding offseason talent.
Stan Shariff, R.J. Choppy and Bobby Belt soon will be collecting unemployment, if Jones has his way. “Now if you think I'm interested on a damn phone call with you over the radio and sitting here and throwing all the good out with the dishwater, you'd have got to be smoking something over there this morning. I'm not,” Jones said Tuesday. “And I really don't ... and I don't even want our listeners listening to me talk about. This is not your job. Your job isn't to let me go over the reasons that I did something and I'm sorry that I did it. That's not your job.
“Or I'll get somebody else to ask these questions, men. No, no. I'm not kidding.”
Not sure what is a more rewarding conclusion for a good journalist — outlasting Jones or Jerry Reinsdorf. En route to the fall ownership meetings, he challenged the hosts to join him. “You're not going to figure out what the team is doing right or wrong,” Jones said. “If you or any five or 10 like you, you need to come to this meeting I'm going to today, the 32 teams here. You're geniuses. OK. Y'all really think you're going to sit here with a microphone and tell me all of the things that I've done wrong and without going over the rights?”
The rights of what? Whether people who work at 105.3 The Fan can ask questions of a lousy football owner? At some point, Jones will look at his 3-3 bunch and realize the Cowboys have lost four straight home games after being outscored 110-35 in the first half. He gave Dak Prescott the biggest seasonal contract in league history — he is the quarterback of an offense with 11 giveaways, at $231 million guaranteed for four years — and seemed to forget more troops were necessary on an injury-clogged defense.
He will call Belichick. He may have to call Jordon Hudson in Nantucket.
So will Jeffrey Lurie, owner of the Philadelphia Eagles. This is a much better bet for Grandpa Bill, who has to fix the lingering poison caused by Sirianni. Rare is the coach who almost wins a Super Bowl in February 2023 and keeps wrecking chemistry, to the point he might not last the month. A coach can be a hothead when he wins. His anger doesn’t work during a 4-8 crash and a 3-2 start, especially when he turns around at his home field and yells at paying customers. It happened Sunday, as the Eagles survived a weak Cleveland team, when he put his finger up to his ear while yapping at the people. Sirianni didn’t like loud boos from bewildered fans, who ask why Jalen Hurts and the Eagles are averaging 18 points the last four games.
“We thrive off the crowd when they cheer for us. That's all I'll say. We hear them when they boo,” Sirianni said after a 20-16 victory. “We don't necessarily like it. I don't think that's productive for anybody. But when they cheer for us and when we've got them rolling, we love it.”
He apologized Monday. Welcome to Philly, silly.
“I was trying to bring energy and enthusiasm, and I'm sorry and disappointed at how my energy was directed at the end of the game,” Sirianni said. “My energy should be all-in on coaching, motivating and celebrating with our guys. And I've got to have better wisdom and discernment of when to use that energy and that wasn't the time.”
Plus, Jordon and her friends can make the quick Amtrak trip to Lincoln Financial Field. They won’t like turning on the radio if Belichick stumbles.
One phone call that won’t be coming at present is from the Spanos family, which likes Harbaugh’s leadership — the Chargers are a bigger story than the Rams — as long as his heart beats. He left the sideline in Denver to have his “atrial flutter’’ administered, which created an episode with pounding in the upper chambers. How many has he dealt with as a coach and player? Three. His brother, John, paused a post-game media conference in Baltimore to make contact. Harbaugh continued on the sideline and finished his third victory for an AFC team that should make the playoffs.
But.
“That’s the issue I’ve had: It spikes way up for a certain amount of time and then it goes too low,” Harbaugh said Monday. “So there’s medicine now that it’ll keep right in the sweet spot. It’s a common medicine that doesn’t let your heart spike.”
Medicine? As in, retiring from the sport at 60? Stress hasn’t been beneficial since he left Michigan, where he was in charge of a spy-corrupt program that finished 15-0 and won the national championship. His family knows not to interrupt, evidently. “They know how deeply committed I am,” Harbaugh said. “It would take my heart stopping for me not to be out there on the sideline.”
Damar Hamlin, we lived through. Not Harbaugh. “I have a real good understanding of just what to do, how it needs to be treated,” he said. “Pretty confident on this one that I know what it is and how to deal with it. But as always, we’ll trust the doctors and they’ll tell me what to do.”
If he requires a cardiac ablation, then Dean Spanos might phone Belichick, whose girlfriend would like Manhattan Beach.
As for Rodgers, no one is certain Adams has noticed the quarterback can’t throw anymore. It doesn’t matter who coaches the team. The Jets are 2-4 and heading south when they should win the AFC East. Rodgers didn’t explode on the media, as he did last week, but blamed poor officiating for a 23-20 loss to Buffalo. Now he can focus on Adams, who doesn’t understand the growing inferno.
“We're back, man. We’re back,” Adams said.
“Obviously, I'm really excited," Rodgers said. “It's on us now. We're going all in.”
Johnson was asked about the move at the ownership meetings. “Salvageable? We’re going to kick … you can add words after that,” he said. “We’re going to do really well.”
In consequential order, we’ll likely watch Sirianni lose his job and the Jets fall apart before McCarthy loses his job at season’s end. Harbaugh?
The blood thinner must work. The common medicine must work. The cardiologist must approve. Justin Herbert must stay healthy.
I will say the heart wins.
They all can’t lose.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.