I love your mailbags, Mike. I don’t know if it’s because your readers ask interesting questions, that fact that it’s always a two-parter, or the relative scarcity, but they’re a lot more fun than other NFL mailbags out there.
I do hope you tell us the story another time of how/why you finally left teaching.
So, just hear me out here, what if there was a punter who was so precise that he could drop a punt on, I'm just spitballing, the one yard line from anywhere on the field every time he punts, almost like, how would I put this, a robot - would that punter change a team's strategy?
So happy for you getting the Super Bowl! Been a fan for years(November journey of middle aged self discovery still gets me) and I'm glad to see you're back in the limelight. Love your work, Mike
As someone who has spent time as a coach, I find the coordinator-to-head-coach discussion fascinating. I truly believe that the reason so many coordinators fail as head coaches is because the two jobs are completely different. Being a coordinator is about details, X's and O's, strategy, etc. Being a head football coach is about being a leader of men; I've always believed that someone can be a great head football coach without knowing a whole lot about football, as long as you have the right lieutenants and staff in place.
I think the best modern example of this to some degree is Dan Campbell - not that he doesn't have a good football IQ (maybe he is brilliant coordinator for all we know), but he spent most of his career as a tight ends coach and an "assistant head coach" (whatever that means). But he can motivate a team like nobody's business and those guys will go to war for him (plus, going back to the "right lieutenants" piece he's got Ben Johnson and Aaron Glenn doing their thing), and we see how that's turned out. Just my two cents.
100% agree. The skills needed to be a succesful OC or DC are not the same as the skills needed to be a successful HC. It happens in the world outside football and sports too. Often, the best salesperson is promoted to sales manager when the skills required are completely different. Or teach to vice principal/principal.
And even though his antics rub a lot of folks the wrong way, I think Nick Sirianni falls into this category too. I don’t even recall what he did before being the Iggles’ head coach. Those nincompoops who want him fired don’t understand what it means for an Eagles head coach to take the team to the playoffs every season he’s been there.
Who cares if he’s a jagoff to other jagoffs. IMO he fits the city’s personality and I mostly enjoy his nonsense.
Mike, No particular comment or question....just wanted to say I appreciate your insights, whether they are about a lineman's stats, the peculiarities of a fanbase (the Ravens' bar is spot-on), or your own journey through your career. And it's all written in a mix of seriousness and humor that keeps me reading (and subscribing). Enjoy New Orleans!
Seconded, and you are right, of course the Eagles are Paddy’s Pub. I’m looking forward to visiting the real one Super Bowl week, mostly because my wife from CA enjoys the novelty of a bar you can still smoke in.
Arguing that someone should not make the HOF because they weren’t the best in their era while ignoring their overall performance feels to me like the argument that wild card teams that had the misfortune of playing in the same division as the 1 seed deserve to be punished, even if they ended up with 12-14 wins. IMHO, it shouldn’t be graded on a curve.
Regarding what makes a good head coach, as a Bears fan I have had many opportunities to ponder this. I am of the mindset that it takes someone who can do more than just run an offense/defense, but at the same time the “leader of men” thing is overrated. Head coaches who fail and are retroactively viewed as poor leaders have in common the fact that they weren’t good at the Xs and Os either.
To look at it from the opposite perspective, can anyone think of a head coach who was doing well with scheme, in game decisions, etc, but was undone by poor leadership specifically? It feels like we look at guys like Dan Campbell and attribute their success to the vague concept of leadership and ignore the specific football things they do to win games. (Conversely, when, say, Matt Eberflus, Matt Nagy, or Marc Trestman flop, we criticize their leadership and maybe don’t pay enough attention all the bad coaching).
Michael Strahan's name on the sack record is a crock. At the end of the game, Brett Favre kept the ball on a run play (Packer O Line clearly fire out to run block), moved down the line and fell to the ground at Strahan's feet. Both TV announcers knew it was rotten. As the game was in NY, the game paused and a big to-do was made of this phony sack. The NFL should have negated the sack that same week. Still reeks after all these years.
Oh, and Mike, if you come this April to the NFL Draft in Green Bay, man, I'd love to meet you for one cold one somewhere. Been following you for years. The Draft will be Green Bay's only equivalent to the Super Bowl That Will Never Be Played Here. I'll have my Nitschke jersey on to mill around the stadium crowd. On my tab, of course! I'll even give you the receipt for you to deduct.
"As an Eagles fan, do you find more pleasure in the Giants’ complete and utter ineptness or the Cowboys running in place while going nowhere?"
Such a great question! As a 56 year old lifelong Eagles fan, to me the answer has changed. 20 years ago I would have picked the Cowboys running in place. Our generation of Eagles fans grew up surrounded by a ton of these fake Cowboy front runner fans in Philly. This was because the Eagles mainly sucked from 1962-1987 (except for the all too brief Vermeil years) and because the Cowboys were ALWAYS on TV back when you only had 3-4 games a week on the TV.
Now with the Eagles being one of the strongest franchises in the NFL for the past 35 years, you really do not see as many of these Cowboy fans in the city. And the Cowboys now going 30 YEARS!!! without making the NFC title game, the jealousy and hate arent there with me at least anymore. There are more Giant fans around than Cowboys fans and I for one very much enjoy the decadelong incompetence from them.
Yeah that Cowboy “fan” horseshit lasted right through the 90s in eastern PA once you got outside the Philly metro area.
On the flip side, the last two Rams-Eagles games at SoFi had more Eagles fans than Rams fans. The sea of Kelly Green (and it definitely was more of that than Midnight Green) was a beautiful sight, even if most of them were probably fair weather fans as well. But LA had a quarter century without a football team so it seems less egregious to me.
Oh, I might as well be the one to make a joke about Philly functionally not having a football team for about a quarter century, but sometimes I think having a perennially terrible local team is worse than not having one at all.
- establish team rules and handle player discipline
- set overall tone-at-the-top, build team morale ("winning culture")
Moving up the coaching ranks is an understandable background to potentially prepare you for success in these duties, but a former NFL player could cover a lot of it even without much direct coaching experience (especially if they played for multiple coaches during their career). And front office experience could cover enough, especially if they have the ability to hire and manage competent coordinators and position coaches.
But would a GM lack "street cred" without a background as a player or coach? John Lynch or Ozzie Newsome could take the coach's whistle, but a guy who moved from scout to head of player personnel to assistant GM to GM without high level player or coach bona fides, I don't think so.
A buddy of mine was a sports reporter years ago for a small paper in Colo. He went to New Orleans for a Broncos Superbowl and ran into Elway, with his offensive line, at Pat O’Sheas. They invited him over, then stuck him with the tab for the first round of drinks, which he said was most of his per diem for the week- have a great time
I read a story once, possibly apocryphal, where Angus Young was told he was getting an award or being named a top 10 guitarist or something by a publication, and he laughed and said “Thanks, but I’m not even the best guitarist in my own band.”
Noted without comment (from my friend Alan's blog):
"Tuesday, January 14, 2025
So, the Green Bay Packers are playing the Philadelphia Eagles in a professional football playoff game in Philadelphia and a couple of Packer fans, a man and a woman, are in the stands and a male Eagles fan is behind them and, in spite of or because of the Eagles’ dominance on the field, the Eagles fan is saying some pretty ugly things to the woman and he happens to work for a management consulting firm focusing on diversity, equity and inclusion issues and he don’t work there no more.
Thanks for answering my question. The insight about being credentialed is really interesting. There are a lot of conversations in my workplace about the value of being on site. It seems like the Superbowl is a good example of hard to quantify but undeniable value in running into people and overhearing things.
Let us know if you start a gofundme for a new jacket.
The on-site question is VERY legit for outlets these days. The question boils down to "what will you get while you are down there." But also, there is a difference between me, one person sharing a hotel room and going back early, versus sending a 4-to-5 person coverage team with equipment. The Messenger was going to send 5 people. On the one hand, that is great. On the other, we had no over-arching coverage plan, and (I kid you not) readership on a Messenger article was often lower than the readership for yesterday's Mailbag.
SI is probably sending a half dozen guys. Those listicles and three graph "stories" don't write themselves! (I go there for Albert Breer and the occasional Andrew Brandt. The rest of the site resembles Pacific Palisades now.
Man, the Messenger was a sh!t show! On the one hand, I’m sorry you lost that job and that we’re in such a sorry state of sports journalism, on the other hand, I’m so glad that you’re here and seeming to have success!
I love your mailbags, Mike. I don’t know if it’s because your readers ask interesting questions, that fact that it’s always a two-parter, or the relative scarcity, but they’re a lot more fun than other NFL mailbags out there.
I do hope you tell us the story another time of how/why you finally left teaching.
Thanks! The questions are everything. They force me to think outside the box at things.
Second on the teaching follow-up
So, just hear me out here, what if there was a punter who was so precise that he could drop a punt on, I'm just spitballing, the one yard line from anywhere on the field every time he punts, almost like, how would I put this, a robot - would that punter change a team's strategy?
And would he merit a first-round pick?
Hmm. Some sort of . . . robo-punter?
I don't see any mentions of our old friend robo-punter on the Discord. I was wondering if all of the kids had forgotten about him.
Robo Punter married Catholic Match Girl. Their children are already applying for college. It was THAT long ago!
PS - I can still picture Catholic Match Girl staring into your soul and saying “go to Mass.” I would have if any girls at my parish looked like her!
LOL but also holy shit am I old because get this whole bit. In the immortal words of James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem - “I WAS THERE!”
So happy for you getting the Super Bowl! Been a fan for years(November journey of middle aged self discovery still gets me) and I'm glad to see you're back in the limelight. Love your work, Mike
As someone who has spent time as a coach, I find the coordinator-to-head-coach discussion fascinating. I truly believe that the reason so many coordinators fail as head coaches is because the two jobs are completely different. Being a coordinator is about details, X's and O's, strategy, etc. Being a head football coach is about being a leader of men; I've always believed that someone can be a great head football coach without knowing a whole lot about football, as long as you have the right lieutenants and staff in place.
I think the best modern example of this to some degree is Dan Campbell - not that he doesn't have a good football IQ (maybe he is brilliant coordinator for all we know), but he spent most of his career as a tight ends coach and an "assistant head coach" (whatever that means). But he can motivate a team like nobody's business and those guys will go to war for him (plus, going back to the "right lieutenants" piece he's got Ben Johnson and Aaron Glenn doing their thing), and we see how that's turned out. Just my two cents.
I think you are right.
And while media types tend to grade coordinators according to "Those plays look cool", so do the teams!
100% agree. The skills needed to be a succesful OC or DC are not the same as the skills needed to be a successful HC. It happens in the world outside football and sports too. Often, the best salesperson is promoted to sales manager when the skills required are completely different. Or teach to vice principal/principal.
And even though his antics rub a lot of folks the wrong way, I think Nick Sirianni falls into this category too. I don’t even recall what he did before being the Iggles’ head coach. Those nincompoops who want him fired don’t understand what it means for an Eagles head coach to take the team to the playoffs every season he’s been there.
Who cares if he’s a jagoff to other jagoffs. IMO he fits the city’s personality and I mostly enjoy his nonsense.
Mike, No particular comment or question....just wanted to say I appreciate your insights, whether they are about a lineman's stats, the peculiarities of a fanbase (the Ravens' bar is spot-on), or your own journey through your career. And it's all written in a mix of seriousness and humor that keeps me reading (and subscribing). Enjoy New Orleans!
Thanks!
Seconded, and you are right, of course the Eagles are Paddy’s Pub. I’m looking forward to visiting the real one Super Bowl week, mostly because my wife from CA enjoys the novelty of a bar you can still smoke in.
"After all, what else would they be? Insurance salesmen? Underwear models? Vampire slayers?"
This should have been "Firewood cutter? Department store floor cleaner? Doormat salesman?", each with a link to Jim Tomsula.
On punting, quick Stathead query on # of punts attempted on plays between opponent's 40 and one's own 40:
In 2024: 683 punts (in 17 games/team)
In 2019: 746 punts (in 16 games/team)
In 2014: 813 punts (in 16 games/team)
In 2004: 932 punts (in 16 games/team)
Arguing that someone should not make the HOF because they weren’t the best in their era while ignoring their overall performance feels to me like the argument that wild card teams that had the misfortune of playing in the same division as the 1 seed deserve to be punished, even if they ended up with 12-14 wins. IMHO, it shouldn’t be graded on a curve.
Regarding what makes a good head coach, as a Bears fan I have had many opportunities to ponder this. I am of the mindset that it takes someone who can do more than just run an offense/defense, but at the same time the “leader of men” thing is overrated. Head coaches who fail and are retroactively viewed as poor leaders have in common the fact that they weren’t good at the Xs and Os either.
To look at it from the opposite perspective, can anyone think of a head coach who was doing well with scheme, in game decisions, etc, but was undone by poor leadership specifically? It feels like we look at guys like Dan Campbell and attribute their success to the vague concept of leadership and ignore the specific football things they do to win games. (Conversely, when, say, Matt Eberflus, Matt Nagy, or Marc Trestman flop, we criticize their leadership and maybe don’t pay enough attention all the bad coaching).
Michael Strahan's name on the sack record is a crock. At the end of the game, Brett Favre kept the ball on a run play (Packer O Line clearly fire out to run block), moved down the line and fell to the ground at Strahan's feet. Both TV announcers knew it was rotten. As the game was in NY, the game paused and a big to-do was made of this phony sack. The NFL should have negated the sack that same week. Still reeks after all these years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_C2W62HNNsc
Oh, and Mike, if you come this April to the NFL Draft in Green Bay, man, I'd love to meet you for one cold one somewhere. Been following you for years. The Draft will be Green Bay's only equivalent to the Super Bowl That Will Never Be Played Here. I'll have my Nitschke jersey on to mill around the stadium crowd. On my tab, of course! I'll even give you the receipt for you to deduct.
"As an Eagles fan, do you find more pleasure in the Giants’ complete and utter ineptness or the Cowboys running in place while going nowhere?"
Such a great question! As a 56 year old lifelong Eagles fan, to me the answer has changed. 20 years ago I would have picked the Cowboys running in place. Our generation of Eagles fans grew up surrounded by a ton of these fake Cowboy front runner fans in Philly. This was because the Eagles mainly sucked from 1962-1987 (except for the all too brief Vermeil years) and because the Cowboys were ALWAYS on TV back when you only had 3-4 games a week on the TV.
Now with the Eagles being one of the strongest franchises in the NFL for the past 35 years, you really do not see as many of these Cowboy fans in the city. And the Cowboys now going 30 YEARS!!! without making the NFC title game, the jealousy and hate arent there with me at least anymore. There are more Giant fans around than Cowboys fans and I for one very much enjoy the decadelong incompetence from them.
I love the vitriol with which you describe Cowboys fans of 40 years ago. I got into fights with many of them as a teen. Because they deserved it.
Yeah that Cowboy “fan” horseshit lasted right through the 90s in eastern PA once you got outside the Philly metro area.
On the flip side, the last two Rams-Eagles games at SoFi had more Eagles fans than Rams fans. The sea of Kelly Green (and it definitely was more of that than Midnight Green) was a beautiful sight, even if most of them were probably fair weather fans as well. But LA had a quarter century without a football team so it seems less egregious to me.
Oh, I might as well be the one to make a joke about Philly functionally not having a football team for about a quarter century, but sometimes I think having a perennially terrible local team is worse than not having one at all.
I'm surprised that front office / GM to Head Coach hasn't been a path to Head Coach, particularly in the modern era.
What are HC core duties? My thoughts (please add things I'm missed):
- hire coordinators and position coaches
- supervise coordinators and position coaches
- select your starting QB
- select the week-by-week roster (practice squad call ups, etc.)
- during the game, manage time outs
- during the game, make 4th down decisions (go, punt, kick)
- manage pre-game and post-game media relations
- manage inter-player conflicts, handle unhappy players
- establish team rules and handle player discipline
- set overall tone-at-the-top, build team morale ("winning culture")
Moving up the coaching ranks is an understandable background to potentially prepare you for success in these duties, but a former NFL player could cover a lot of it even without much direct coaching experience (especially if they played for multiple coaches during their career). And front office experience could cover enough, especially if they have the ability to hire and manage competent coordinators and position coaches.
But would a GM lack "street cred" without a background as a player or coach? John Lynch or Ozzie Newsome could take the coach's whistle, but a guy who moved from scout to head of player personnel to assistant GM to GM without high level player or coach bona fides, I don't think so.
I dunno, after reading this, I feel like the Eagles could make Howie Roseman the coach and it would work out fine.
A buddy of mine was a sports reporter years ago for a small paper in Colo. He went to New Orleans for a Broncos Superbowl and ran into Elway, with his offensive line, at Pat O’Sheas. They invited him over, then stuck him with the tab for the first round of drinks, which he said was most of his per diem for the week- have a great time
omg. I run into VIPs often and sometimes share a drink with them. But they always put it on THEIR tabs.
I read a story once, possibly apocryphal, where Angus Young was told he was getting an award or being named a top 10 guitarist or something by a publication, and he laughed and said “Thanks, but I’m not even the best guitarist in my own band.”
Noted without comment (from my friend Alan's blog):
"Tuesday, January 14, 2025
So, the Green Bay Packers are playing the Philadelphia Eagles in a professional football playoff game in Philadelphia and a couple of Packer fans, a man and a woman, are in the stands and a male Eagles fan is behind them and, in spite of or because of the Eagles’ dominance on the field, the Eagles fan is saying some pretty ugly things to the woman and he happens to work for a management consulting firm focusing on diversity, equity and inclusion issues and he don’t work there no more.
https://x.com/Basaraski/status/1878695599484346675"
I am very happy your going to the Super Bowl, can wait to get your take 🏴☠️
Thanks for answering my question. The insight about being credentialed is really interesting. There are a lot of conversations in my workplace about the value of being on site. It seems like the Superbowl is a good example of hard to quantify but undeniable value in running into people and overhearing things.
Let us know if you start a gofundme for a new jacket.
I found one that fits really well.
The on-site question is VERY legit for outlets these days. The question boils down to "what will you get while you are down there." But also, there is a difference between me, one person sharing a hotel room and going back early, versus sending a 4-to-5 person coverage team with equipment. The Messenger was going to send 5 people. On the one hand, that is great. On the other, we had no over-arching coverage plan, and (I kid you not) readership on a Messenger article was often lower than the readership for yesterday's Mailbag.
That tracks, because the only articles I read on that site were yours.
SI is probably sending a half dozen guys. Those listicles and three graph "stories" don't write themselves! (I go there for Albert Breer and the occasional Andrew Brandt. The rest of the site resembles Pacific Palisades now.
Or do they?
Man, the Messenger was a sh!t show! On the one hand, I’m sorry you lost that job and that we’re in such a sorry state of sports journalism, on the other hand, I’m so glad that you’re here and seeming to have success!