April 23, 2020
OUR THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS GO OUT TO ONE AND ALL AS WE TRY TO MAKE OUR WAY SAFELY THROUGH THE PANDEMIC
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I ask you to strongly consider supporting local businesses as much as you can. Stay safe. Be careful. Follow all of the precautions that have been mentioned. But, there are a lot of businesses that are the backbone of our communities that could really use you as a customer in these challenging times. Purchasing gift cards at these restaurants would also be a wonderful idea. Here is the status of our restaurant sponsors in the Denham Springs Community:
Buddy’s Bar B Q
Drive-Thru
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THE WIZARDRY OF OS
Did you see the first two episodes of The Last Dance? I can’t decide if it was as awesome as I think or if I am just that desperate. Maybe it is a little of both.
If that is any indication, watching the NFL draft is going to be fabulous even if we are missing out on the spectacle that was going to be the draft in Las Vegas of all places.
The NFL draft is hard to predict, but for LSU fans it will be as legendary as the 2019 season. LSU will have multiple players picked on each day of the draft, and most will be steals where they are picked.
Justin Jefferson is going to be the third wide receiver taken in the deepest wide receiver draft in recent memory. Unfortunately he will probably get picked a little before the Saints have a chance, but his skill and will are going to make him a great pro. Also, by going to a playoff team, that means he will be going to a place that has a quality quarterback.
Edwards-Helaire and Cushenberry will be the steals of the draft. Both will produce like first round picks, but won’t be drafted in the first round because of the positions they play. I still challenge anyone to show me another offensive lineman that finishes plays like Cushenberry and then jumps off the ground and runs back to the huddle.
Burrow is going to continue to be the biggest story, but will have the most challenges in the beginning of his career.
Since this is the NFL draft, my focus will naturally be on the Saints. This regime has been together for so long and their patterns have become highly predictable. There is no reason to think anything will change this year.
The Saints will pick the best player available for where they are selecting. They will trade up if they love a player and don’t think that player will get to where they are selecting. Finally, the Saints value the quality of the pick over having a quantity of picks. Therefore, they have no worries about trading away picks in future drafts.
We also know what Loomis and Payton think of their team. In free agency, the Saints committed significant money at defensive line, offensive line, wide receiver, and safety. To them, these were the biggest weaknesses. We have also heard Payton talk about the speed of Kansas City and San Francisco in various interviews this off season. So the Saints know they have to improve in these areas, which would mean improving at linebacker and corner.
Most likely, the Saints will trade into the second round. If the Saints were another team, I would predict them to trade down from the first round to acquire an extra pick. Knowing the Saints though, I am very confident they will do what they did last year with Eric McCoy. I just can’t see them sitting there on Day 2 with a late third round pick, and watching players get drafted they know can help the team win a Super Bowl next year.
There is always talk of the Saints drafting a quarterback, and I know the Saints were going to draft Mahomes before Kansas City made it happen. Still, I just don’t see it happening this year for a couple of reasons.
First, no quarterback that will be available at number 24 is a better prospect than Taysom Hill. That includes Jordan Love. Second, because Taysom Hill is so valuable to the team in the many roles he fulfills, the Saints can’t take a chance on the third quarterback being a project. The third quarterback has to be a veteran. Even if Brees were to get hurt, and Payton went with Hill, there would be a high risk of Hill getting hurt because of the style of offense the Saints would run with him.
I suspect the Saints will find a way to get a linebacker, wide receiver, and cornerback in the first three rounds. Even more so than other years, it should be a lot of fun.
HEY REF
Just when I think things couldn’t get any worse comes an article printed in the Wednesday April 22, 2020 Baton Rouge Advocate newspaper. On page 4C in bold print are the proposed salaries for the 2020 LSU coaching staff. This is an extreme case of negligent misguided journalism. With all that not only our country is going through but the entire planet with the COVID-19 virus killing thousands the Advocate thought it was the right time to educate the masses and print the wishes of LSU athletic director Scott Woodward.
Let’s take a look at this outrages wish list. First off Head Coach Ed Orgeron will get a 50% increase from his present paltry yearly take of $4 MILLION in base pay to a 2020 salary of $6 MILLION. New defensive coordinator Bo Pelini will start his second stint at the Baton Rouge campus and ride to the bank where he’ll see a balance of $2.3 million. That’s $200,000 down from last year’ coach Dave Aranda s salary of $2.5 million.
Offensive coordinator Steve Ensminger will get a small boost from last year where he was paid $800,000 to an even cool $1 million. Of all the pay rates requested for the 2020 season Ensminger’s bump is a reasonable request for the job he turned in so “Hey Ref” has no problem here. Offensive line coach James Cregg gets a 45% boost going from 2019 salary of $410,000 to an impressive and unwarranted increase to $657,000.
But things really get crazy when we look at just four other coaches and their wished new paychecks. New Passing game coordinator, Scott Linehan, takes over from Joe Brady who basically hand delivered a National Championship to the Tigers. Brady jumped ship for a chance to bring an NFL Championship to the Carolina Panthers. Carolina could be just a year or two away from making a Super Bowl since they booted out their Super QB Cam Newton. If Woodward gets his way the Tigers will plunk down $807,000 a hike of 96.83% for Linehan’s services. Of course this is an insane increase just because Linehan was an NFL Head Coach. I can’t be the slightest impressed with his hire or salary since he was the head coach of the St. Louis Rams from 2006-08 to an 11-25 record. Forget his work with the Detroit Lions and the Dallas Cowboys as neither won a Super Bowl while he was on the payroll.
You might be saying things can’t be any worse but you’d be wrong. Last year’s defensive line coach Dennis Johnson was a huge bargain for the Tigers at $210,000. Let me rephrase that, his salary was an embarrassment to the profession and the only way any decent coach would dare come to south Louisiana would be to boost the salary to at least half a million. So, once again Athletic Director Scott Woodward opened up the checkbook and offered something just over the half-million dollar figure and will increase the new defensive line coach’s pay some 175% to $578,000.
But the saddest (and I do mean the saddest) and the most embarrassing amount being offered to one of the new assistant coaches will be the inexcusable amount being offered one of Louisiana’s own and THREE TIME SUPER BOWL CHAMPION, KEVIN FAULK! The same KEVIN FAULK that holds LSU’s all-time rushing record! Here’s a coach that has no equal at his position on the Baton Rouge campus who then had a stellar professional career yet is basically “thrown a bone” to join his alma mater’s coaching staff. It’s an injustice of the maximum degree and one that needs to be corrected. Maybe Coach “O” will read this “Hey Ref” column and agree Faulk’s salary should be no less than that $800,000 dollar contract given newbie coach Scott Linehan.
If Scott Woodward gets his way the 2020 coaching account will need something slightly north of $13.5 MILLION DOLLARS. Earlier I wrote that Kevin Faulk’s contract offer is the saddest and most embarrassing thing being done but I do believe I miss-spoke or miss-wrote. Because the thing that really makes me sick with all these dollars being thrown around is the fact not a single dollar is going to those that were responsible for the undefeated National Championship season of 2019 and that’s the players. The very ones that did almost all of the sacrificing and work will get not a single penny.
Again we see where the workers on the field (the players) can’t accept a ham sandwich on rye or they’ll be guilty of violating NCAA law. The BILLIONS of dollars that are cut up and passed onto the people that never break a sweat once again make out like bandits! It’s a crime and I hope in my lifetime this gets turned around because the vast numbers of NCAA Football players are from poor black families and they are the ones that should be compensated for all they sacrifice. Many of these families can’t afford to buy the needed textbooks and supplies. I always hear “do the right thing” and its way past time we demand the NCAA do the right thing and include the players when those few rich people get to slice up a ten billion dollar pie!!!
Till next week…
FINE IDEAS
“Say it Ain’t So Joe”
Joe Burrow, the Heisman Trophy winning quarterback from LSU, will, in all likelihood, be selected #1 overall in the NFL Draft tonight. Unlike prior #1 overall draft selection quarterbacks John Elway and Eli Manning, Burrow has no reported issues with the team prospectively selecting him--the Cincinnati Bengals--and embraces playing in Cincy.
Elway, the Heisman Trophy winner out of Stanford, told the Baltimore Colts in 1983 he would not play for their team. Undeterred, Colts owner Robert Irsay proceeded to select Elway with the #1 overall pick. It was only the following week, when it dawned on the Colts that Elway was not bluffing, that they traded his rights to the Denver Broncos.
Ole Miss star Eli Manning (and his dad Archie) wanted no part of the San Diego Chargers. Perhaps Archie might have had nightmarish flashbacks of his days with the New Orleans Saints, where half the time he was running for his life, and projected that onto Eli in San Diego? The Chargers paid heed to the wishes of the Mannings and selected Eli #1 overall in the 2004 draft, but traded his rights to the New York Giants. (Ironically enough, the Chargers QB from 2002—2005 was future Saints superstar Drew Brees. Imagine how NFL history gets rewritten if Eli had agreed to play with the Chargers.)
“A man who represents himself has a fool for a client”. This is often stated when someone is dumb enough to be their own lawyer while on trial. We’ll amend this cliche for our purposes… ”An NFL owner who makes himself GM and/or coach has a fool for an owner.”
We believe the NFL has 2 owners at present who are owners/general managers. One of them is Jerry Jones of the Dallas Cowboys. Since Jones got jealous of the respect given to Jimmy Johnson in 1994 and fired him, the Cowboys--despite spending more on players than anyone else--have often been very average.
Al Davis is another case study. Davis built up the Oakland Raiders in the 60s and 70s and they excelled. But, either he spent too much time in court (battling the NFL) or the changing nature of the game (free agency, salary caps, powerful agents, the computerization of the NFL) caused the game to pass Davis by. “Pride and Poise”, “Commitment to Excellence” and “Just Win Baby” were still uttered by the Raiders brass, although their performance on the field did not merit these classic Raiders mottos.
Even some of the all-time historical greats… some of the legends of the league’s early days… have sketchy records when they tried to own and manage/coach… George “Papa Bear Halas” did coach 2 championship teams (1946 and 1962) in his last 20 seasons as Owner/GM/Coach of the Chicago Bears. The other 18 seasons, the Bears did not make the playoffs…
Art Rooney presided over a mediocre franchise for decades as owner/GM. He finally saw the light by hiring Chuck Noll, and letting him do his thing, in 1969. The 1972 Steelers won their first playoff game in franchise history.
Maybe the only consistent owner/GM/coach winner was Paul Brown. He won big with the Cleveland Browns (4 NFL championships and 4 in the AAFC). With the Cincinnati Bengals, he never won it all, but the team was consistently an upper echelon club. Brown was a part-owner of the Browns and Bengals. He was GM of both teams. And Brown was head coach at Cleveland the entire time he was there (1946-1962) and his first 8 years (1968-1975) with Cincinnati.
For those of you paying attention
WAKE UP NOW if you’re not. Go wash your hands and come back here!
You might have noticed that I referred to 2 owners/GMs in the NFL in 2020. One is Jerry Jones. A second was not named. Also, the name Brown and the city of Cincinnati mentioned in the preceding paragraph is pertinent.
The apple apparently fell far from the tree in Cincinnati. Paul Brown died in August 1991. His son, Mike, took over in that season as owner/General Manager. The Bengals have been astoundingly wretched since. How bad? They have made the playoffs 7 times in 29 seasons. Their record in the post-season is 0-7. That’s right, the Bengals have not won a playoff game since Mike Brown took over as owner/GM
This season (if we have a season, knock on wood) should make it 3 decades of ineptitude under Mike Brown at Cincinnati. To steal a line from Sid from Jefferson—a caller on a New Orleans sports-talk show I hosted on WTIX Radio at the turn of the century… he asked me if he could sing the theme song of the then woebegone New Orleans Saints. I told him he could. No, Sid was no Pavarotti. But, what he bellowed out was profoundly applicable to the Aints of yesteryear and the Bungles of today
I’ll Be Home For Christmas!
The 29 straight seasons without a playoff win by the Bengals are only topped in NFL history by the Cardinals (Chicago, then St Louis) from 1948-1997 (40 years), the Steelers franchise from 1933-1971 (38 years) and the New Orleans Saints (1967-1999)—33 years. The Bengals present streak is the longest active one in the league. Cincinnati’s 29 years of non-playoff winning football is well ahead of everyone else. For their AFC brethren, the Buffalo Bills are closest, having not won a playoff game since 1996 (24 years). In the NFC, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have not experienced postseason success since 2003 (17 years). This is only one metric, and not a definitive analytic, but it is a significant one. The Bengals, under Mike Brown, have their place in NFL and professional sports ignominy, both currently and historically. Think about it—Cincinnati’s last playoff win was 30 years ago. That means that Joe Burrow was not even alive—in fact, 6 years in the making-- the last time the Bengals prevailed in post-season play!
How can you have pretty good quarterbacks yet not have good football teams? The Cincinnati Bengals have somehow accomplished this feat over much of the last 2 decades. Carson Palmer (2003-2010) and Andy Dalton (2011-2019) have been upper tier quarterbacks in the NFL. Yet their team, the Cincinnati Bengals, did not win a playoff game during their times under center. Palmer’s teams were 0-2. The Bengals are 0-5 in playoff appearances with Dalton as their QB.
Cases could be made either way for sitting or playing a rookie quarterback. An example of this would be Palmer’s and Dalton’s rookie seasons, which provide an interesting contrast. In 2003, Palmer watched Jon Kitna, a free agent signee, quarterback the club. Palmer took over in 2004. Dalton led the Bengals to a 9-7 record in 2010, making the playoffs and was a Pro Bowl alternate.
So, if Dalton remains a Bengal, should Burrow play or sit in 2020? Maybe it is best that he redshirts this season, instead of operating behind, prospectively, one of the most porous offensive lines in the NFL (50 sacks allowed last year
26th in the league). Yet Burrow might not even see much of the field this year, as Dalton seems pretty fairly entrenched. Again, that is if the Bengals don’t trade Dalton.
A further look at football history might provide some source of hope to Bengals fans. The best QB in team Bengals team history, Kenny Anderson, excelled in his early years in the league with Bill Walsh as his quarterback coach, in the West Coast offense. Walsh would get his first shot as an NFL Head Coach in 1979 with the San Francisco 49’ers. The Niners went 2-14. Two years later, they were Super Bowl champions, led by a young quarterback named Joe Montana.
So, if offensive guru Zac Taylor, 2-14 in 2019—his first year as head coach with Cincinnati, can have the same career path as Walsh, the Bengals will be in good shape… perhaps led by Joe Burrow, who was Montanaesque, at times, in 2019 at LSU. So, if you buy into this admittedly unlikely contrived scenario, the Bengals may be winning the Super Bowl in the 2021 season.
Unfortunately, I’d be remiss in not pointing out a big difference between Walsh’s Niners and Taylor’s Bengals. Walsh had 18 years of NFL/major college coaching experience before taking over as GM/Head Coach at San Francisco in 1979. He was regarded as a cutting edge offensive innovator (largely bolstered by his work with Cincinnati and Kenny Anderson). Taylor has 7 years of NFL/college coaching experience (11 if you count his 4 years at Texas A&M as a graduate assistant… feel free to submit your Aggies jokes to ASK JON) and is considered a bright young offensive mind, but is very much unproven. Even more important, the Niners owner was future NFL Hall of Famer Eddie DeBartolo Jr. Their GM from 1979-1982 was Bill Walsh. The Bengals owner/GM in 2020 is Mike Brown.
Other examples of coaches who got off to a slow start, but ended up having great careers, include Chuck Noll, who debuted in 1969 at 1-13 and didn’t have a winning season until 1972. The Steelers won 4 Super Bowls under Chuck Noll, starting in 1974. Tom Landry’s Dallas Cowboys went 0-11-1 his first season. His first winning team was in 1966. The Cowboys, under Landry, won its first Super Bowl in 1971, winning again in 1977. Bill Belichick was run out of Cleveland, but has become an all-time great with New England. Sometimes the best coaches show meager production at the outset. So, there is hope for Zac Taylor and the Bengals. Of course, there are precious few Walshs, Nolls, Landrys and Belichicks out there. And, if the Bengals have one in the making in Zac Taylor, will his efforts be undermined by suspect management?
Burrow will be the 6th quarterback the Bengals have taken in the first round (Greg Cook, University of Cincinnati-- 1969—AFL Draft), Jack Thompson (Washington State--1979), David Klingler (Houston--1992), Akili Smith (Oregon--1999) and Palmer (USC--2003). Like Burrow, Palmer won the Heismen Trophy and was the first overall selection. Cook was the AFL Rookie of the Year, but had a promising career cut short due to injury. Thompson (The Throwin Samoan), Klingler and Smith were busts. Besides Palmer, the Bengals have had their most success at QB by selecting them in the second round. Boomer Esiason (1984, Maryland), Anderson (1971, Augustana) and Dalton (2010, TCU) were all second round picks.
Burrow is the 3rd Heismen Trophy winner the Bengals will be selecting (Palmer and Archie Griffin—Ohio State--1974 and 1975) are the other two. This will be the 4th time the Bengals will have had the first overall pick (1994 Dan Wilkinson—Ohio State, 1995 Ki-Jana Carter—Penn State and 2003 Palmer). Griffin was a disappointment. Big Daddy Wilkinson was impactful, yet had a stormy 4 year tenure in Cincy. Carter had an injury-shortened career.
“Joe You Coulda Made Us Proud”
The Chicago White Sox fixed the 1919 World Series. Outside a courtroom, legend has it that a young fan approached star player “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and uttered, ”Say It Aint So, Joe”.
The quote “A man who represents himself has a fool for a client” is often attributed to Lincoln. Abe, not Keith (for you geriatric Chargers fans who might remember their former standout AFL running back).
Talented but troubled Joe Pepitone sabotaged his career by over-indulging the nightlife scene. And, the supposed next Mickey Mantle never lived up to the billing on the field with the New York Yankees (Off the field, he more than held his own with the Mick for his nocturnal exploits). His biography is named “Joe, You Coulda Made Us Proud”.
I’m hoping that Joe Burrow has a great career at Cincinnati. His ascension to a Heisman Trophy and national championship winning quarterback at LSU is remarkable. And, all reports say he is a real good, quality young man with proper perspective. Plus, if he can lead the Bengals to sustained success, it will dwarf his accomplishments at LSU. Maybe his bio can be called “Joe You Made Us Proud”, a must read for the town of Athens Ohio, and LSU, Cincinnati Bengals and sports fans all over the world. Perhaps down the line
15 to 20 years from now… oh wait, we’re in the Era of Brady and Brees… make that 20 to 25 years from now
Joe Burrow will have made his legion of fans proud.
”Joe, Make Sure the Money is Guaranteed”. That would be my advise to him today.
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I’d imagine that if the pandemic hit the world last year, the duo-connotation would be unavoidable. It would forever be referred to as the Covid 19 NFL Draft… Maybe the NFL should have conferred with John Calipari about his 1996-97 New Jersey Nets. Being that this will be a virtual draft, shouldn’t the NFL be piping in crowd noise like the Nets did? Of course, the Nets were piping in cheering. That’s not the sound that fans make when Commissioner Roger Goodell is at the podium. So, maybe the NFL should have reached out to fans of the Baltimore Colts in the early 70’s who loved chanting the nickname of cult hero running back Norm “Boo” Bulaich
Yes, I have too much time on my hands
Arrested Development Sports Trivia Question
Last Week’s Question: What player had a lot of success in Detroit, finished his baseball career as a pitcher with a Won-Loss record under 500, and is a Hall of Famer?
Answer Dave DeBusschere was a terrific basketball/baseball player at the University of Detroit and basketball player with the Detroit Pistons. He also was a player/manager early on in his career with the Chicago White Sox and had a lifetime record of 3-4, although his ERA was 2.90. He is a member of the Pro Basketball Hall of Fame.
This week’s question: What year and with what organization was Bill Walsh’s first head coaching job?
ASK JON
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You did make me laugh with your response!
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