Sad, Sweaty Jets, Silly Giants: Black Monday Musings

Featuring a poem about Brian Daboll and Joe Schoen, thoughts on Doug Pederson and more.

The New York Jets are a very serious professional sports organization run by mature adults who totally know what they are doing and do not base their decisions on video games, ayahuasca hallucinations, Tarot readings or whatever the owners’ sons think will get them laid.

Need proof? Look at their tight, coherent list of head-coaching interviews and requests as of 4 PM on Monday: Ron Rivera, Rex Ryan, Josh McCown, Brian Griese, Arthur Smith, Brian Flores, Matt Nagy, Bobby Slowik, Vance Joseph, Aaron Glenn and Mike Vrabel.

That’s a team that knows what it wants: someone with experience. Or a newcomer. An offensive coach. Or a defensive one. A quarterback whisperer. Or someone who genuinely hates quarterbacks. Or some TV guy who coached them 15 years ago.

The Jets are also interviewing GM candidates: Alec Halaby, Ray Farmer, Jim Nagy (the Senior Bowl director; no relation to Matt), Mike Greenberg, Louis Riddick and Mike Borgonzi. That last name is a real person, not someone I made up, though Borgonzi sure sounds like a name I would make up. (He’s a Chiefs front-office deputy). It’s the usual collection of semi-anonymous Assistant This/Director of That types, plus Riddick, an exec from the late 2000s who has been a television personality for many years. Think of him as Rex Ryan with dignity. Though not enough dignity to turn down an interview with the Jets.

Speaking of dignity and turning down interviews, Lions offensive coordinator and reluctant debutante Ben Johnson signaled that he has no interest in the Jets job. Never let it be said that the Jets didn’t recognize a signal of disinterest: the team has no plans to interview Johnson, the NFL’s Commander Riker.

The Jets are being very loud and very public about all of their interviews because they want to look very busy and reassure the fans that neither Brick Johnson nor Aaron Rodgers will be running the team next year. It’s part smokescreen, part wish list, part sweaty would-be lothario broadcasting all of his theoretical paramours in an effort to look and feel sexy. Also: Jets news clicks among both their long-suffering fans and their ever-amused rubberneckers.

But seriously … Bobby Slowik? I wouldn’t let him organize my sock drawer after what I saw from the Texans this season. Arthur Smith is just the Brick Johnson of overnight shipping. Ryan’s shtick grew tiresome a decade ago. So did Rivera’s no-nonsense detective sergeant routine, frankly. This isn’t due diligence. It’s blind darts. It’s randomly interviewing anyone with a recognizable name.

In other words, the Jets are doing what they don’t want to appear to be doing: looking like a team run by youngsters who have one hand on the PS5 controller and one eye on their DraftKings teasers.

Elsewhere on the Coaching Carouselambra.

Giants Retain Brian Daboll and Joe Schoen

I have been moved to write a blank-verse poem by this decision:

When I think

Of Evan Neal

And Darren Waller

And Danny Dimes

When I remember

Wink Martindale

And that game

Without a kicker

When I am watching

Tommy Cutlets

And Fake-won Singletary

And wasted Nabers

I can’t help asking

Where is Saquon?

Where’s McKinney?

Where’s Leo Williams?

What are you thinking

What are you thinking

What are you thinking

Why why why?

Now imagine Thom Yorke singing that over some minor-key synthesizer and 13/8th time drum-machine noodling. It can be the new Giants fight song.

Jaguars Fire Doug Pederson

Pederson is the most normal human being among NFL head coaches. That’s an asset and a flaw. His teams initially respond to his personality, then backslide because his practices are short and infrequent and he’s about as detail-oriented as the guy who sells samurai swords and water bongs at your local flea market. Pederson is loyal to his subordinates, which means he ends up surrounded by subordinates reliant upon his loyalty. And when the going gets tough, Pederson gets ice cream.

Pederson would make a great quarterback coach or coordinator for some team with a mercurial prospect. He could work well with Shedeur Sanders; Coach Prime’s incessant V-22 Osprey-dad “suggestions” would go in one ear and out the other. Pederson could also make a fine confidante for an established quarterback. If Brian Flores somehow gets a head coaching job, Pederson should come bundled with him as a buffer and good cop. But if Pederson gets another head coaching gig, he’ll just produce another team that comes unglued because of poor execution caused by working neither harder nor smarter.

Trent Baalke remains the Jaguars general manager and man in the hot dog suit. Baalke will be seeking a coach he can push around. I’m not sure what a more milquetoast version of Pederson would look like. It may actually be a slice of toast floating in a bowl of milk.

Patriots Fire Jerod Mayo

Public messaging should be the easy part of a head coach’s job. If he cannot get through a few highly-choreographed press conferences per week without pouring accelerant on some little brushfire, a coach probably isn’t getting his point across in more difficult, emotionally-fraught situations.

Mayo was a press-conference disaster. He called players “soft.” He took potshots at his assistants. If a reporter baited him, he leapt into the boat. Mayo was the greatest source of drama in Foxborough. He never sounded like he was in control of the message, which was just about the only thing that was really within his control during an injury-riddled season for a talentless rebuilding team.

I would be critical of the Mayo firing if he did not demonstrate many of the same prickly characteristics of Joe Judge, Matt Patricia, Brian Flores and other Bill Belichick lieutenants whose interpersonal communication skills ran the gamut from drunk divorcee to Ignatius J. Reilly to the dad in an after-school special about runaways. Something about Belichick’s system rewarded men who were openly contemptuous of other people. Mayo offered no reason in 2024 to believe he was any different.

The Patriots really need to fire Eliot Wolf, architect of some very meager draft classes (both with and without Belichickian oversight), and start over in the front office as well as on the sideline. Kraft said that is not happening, as Wolf and Alonzo Highsmith will continue to run the personnel department.

Kraft also accepted blame for Mayo’s failure. It takes a big man to blame himself for a bad decision, then continue making decisions with zero accountability or consequences, while his “mistakes” scramble to find new jobs.

Colts Keep Shane Steichen and Chris Ballard

This is fine. Really. The Colts roster is solid. Ballard has managed the cap very well. Steichen is a clever game-planner. It’s not like Anthony Richardson would be helped by a regime change and a new system.

Ballard, Steichen and Jim Irsay need to sit down and talk real turkey about Richardson and their 2025 expectations before they roll into the new year. They must articulate goals and hash out contingency plans and “What If?” scenarios. They cannot afford to be fumbling around for solutions again if Richardson is completing 47.7% of his passes next October.

The Colts need a ripcord veteran quarterback with more gas in the tank than Joe Flacco. Andy Dalton may have genuine mentor value based upon how Bryce Young turned things around this year, while Mason Rudolph has established himself as the Grim Reaper for failed prospects. Richardson himself should be unequivocally told just how short his leash will be, sooner rather than later. Mumblings out of Indy suggest that he thought he was on scholarship for a little too long.

Browns Fire Offensive Coordinator Ken Dorsey

Dorsey was a scapegoat, of course: Bill Walsh, Vince Lombardi and Socrates could not have fixed the Browns’ existential quarterback problems this year. The Bills also scapegoated Dorsey in 2023 for a Josh Allen slump; Allen never acted too broken up by the decision.

When someone gets scapegoated twice in two years, maybe it’s a sign that he had it coming.

Bengals Fire Defensive Coordinator Lou Anarumo

Captain Lou’s best asset was his unobtrusiveness: his defenses were never bad enough to be noticeable before this year, and they were usually roughly as effective as the talent he had to work with. The Bengals defense ranked seventh in DVOA in 2022, and the organization immediately let Jessie Bates and Vonn Bell (and D.J. Reader one year later) skip town so they could focus on their efforts to not pay Tee Higgins and Ja’Marr Chase. And so it goes.

Anarumo was more of a sacrificial rook or bishop than a pawn. Zac Taylor may not make it through October if the Bengals get off to another of their entropic starts. And don’t be surprised if Taylor is assigned a big-name defensive coordinator in an effort to turn up the heat a bit.

Seahawks Fire Offensive Coordinator Ryan Grubb

The most anonymous coaching staff on the NFL’s most nondescript team just got more anonymous.

I have no deep insights about Grubb. My eyes glazed over whenever I watched more than 30 seconds of Seahawks tape in 2024, which in itself may be revealing. But one statistic may be worth 1,000 words:

• Geno Smith, inside the opponent’s 10-yard line: 7-of-26, 38 yards, 7 touchdowns, 2 interceptions, one sack, three rushes for -6 yards, zero rushing touchdowns.

Come for the 26.9% completion rate. Stay for the negative rushing yardage.

There’s a long conversation to be had about how the Seahawks move forward with Smith and their offense under head coach Mike Whatshisface. I cannot wait for someone else to have it.

Too Deep Housecleaning

Have you checked out the playoff previews? They are more like a pair of meals than a snack. You can find them here and here.

Next week, the Too Deep Zone Mailbag opens up! There should be plenty of coaching carousel, hot-stove league and playoff action to discuss. I’ll tease it again in next Monday’s Walkthrough, then be on the lookout for an email and a chat thread! (I won’t forget the email this time.)

Coming soon: Eli Manning and the Pro Football Hall of Chaos, my annual feature based off conversations with anonymous Hall of Fame voters. You won’t want to miss it.

I’m not sure what the end of the week will bring. But heaven knows there is plenty going on!

Photo by Marianne O’Leary, via Creative Commons Share-Alike