Rich Tandler's Real Redskins

Mariucci nervous on NFLN

I had the NFL Network on today while I was doing some things around the office (I'd call it work, but I try not to lie to the audience here). Early in the afternoon, Steve Mariucci was on the set with Bret Favre, Deion Sanders, and Rich Eisen. In a segment that was repeated several times throughout the afternoon and evening, Mooch asked Favre about his future and then Bret turned the tables on Mariucci, asking him about the Redskins job.

Mariucci is usually very smooth on TV, but the more Favre pushed him about a return to coaching, the more uncomfortable Mooch became. He kept issuing the non-denial denials he has been dispensing over the past few days. Soon, he looked like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

After seeing this a few times, it was obvious to me that there was more here than a potential interview in the next day or two. I think that Mariucci has been on Snyder's radar screen from day one and that there have been multiple conversations between the two. It's certainly possible that Zorn, who is of the Holmgren coaching family as is Mariucci, and Blache, whom Mooch wanted to hire when he went to Detroit, were hired with the blessing of Mariucci. Snyder's plane has been tracked landing at LAX on a few occasions; the airport is located near the NFL Network studios.

I'm not saying that Mariucci is the guy. But today on TV he didn't look like a guy who had a pending first interview; he looked more like a coach who was doing his best to dodge questions because he knew a whole lot more than he could say.

Spags

Three names have been the buzz in the Redskins coaching search over the past couple of days. Earlier, I looked at Steve Mariucci. Now the focus turns to New York defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo.

When the Redskins announced that the selection of a new head coach would not take place until after the Super Bowl, Spagnuolo jumped from a guy who was mentioned as a long shot possibility to one who is up there with the leading contenders. In fact, I even added his name to my spell check dictionary (something I do selectively since I'm afraid that eventually every possible string of letters will find its way in there and it will become useless). Why wait until after the Super Bowl unless you want to want to talk to one of the Super Bowl coaches.

Under normal circumstances, this would be a very straight forward process. The team would interview the coach and, if so inclined, offer him the job. The prospective coach would look at the contract terms and the situation with the team and decide whether or not to take the job.

It's that "situation with the team" part that gets sticky for Dan Snyder and the Skins. Vinny Cerrato, he of the questionable credentials, is in charge of player personnel. If Spags can get around that, there is the fact that the Skins have already hired the offensive and defensive coordinators.

If it comes down to it, will Spagnuolo decide that he can work with Jim Zorn and Greg Blache? Zorn is a West Coast guy and Spagnuolo spent seven years with the Eagles prior to signing on with the Giants. That doesn't necessarily mean that Spagnuolo likes the WCO or the variety of it that Zorn might run. Perhaps it would be a good idea if they could sit down and talk about it, but Spagnuolo likely will have to make his call yes or no sight unseen. Blache would be less of a sticking point; he's an old pro and he could adapt to whatever Spags wanted to do.

Steve Spagnuolo has a chance of getting the job, but there are a lot of land mines to navigate between the here and now and him stepping to the podium at Redskins Park to be introduced as the team's next head coach. It will be difficult but possible.

Mooch

Another day, another round of stories, rumors and dots to try to connect in the process of the Redskins' selection of a head coach. Three names have been the buzz the last few days. Here's one of them, the other two will be covered later today.

Steve Mariucci's name came up on Sunday night when my friend Jason LaCanfora did an excellent job of connecting some dots in his blog and saw a lot of indicators that pointed to Mooch. These indicators are tidbits like an odd conversation with Mariucci's agent, the fact that Jim Zorn and Greg Blache have ties to the ex 49ers and Lions coach and the fact that Mariucci and Vinny Cerrato worked together in San Francisco. This wasn't a case of LaCanfora adding two and two and getting seven. He couched it as pure speculation, but it was quite compelling.

Mariucci currently is employed by the NFL Network and, of course, he's working the Super Bowl this week. On the set on Tuesday morning, his response when asked about his candidacy for the Redskins job was very similar to one he gave to David Elfin of the Times. In short, it was very much a non-denial, although far from a confirmation. Here is the video of what transpired on the NFLN set.

Mariucci was 72-67 in nine NFL seasons from 1997-2005. In his six seasons in San Francisco he was 57-39 plus 3-4 in the playoffs. His record with the Lions was 15-28 before he was dismissed with 11 games left in the 2005 season.

He was fired by William Ford and Matt Millen. Ford has been writing checks to Mariucci to the tune of around $5 million a year ever since. The five-year contract that Mooch signed with the Lions ends tomorrow. Broadcasting pays well, but not that well. The gross income figure on Mariucci's 1040 is about to lose a zero from the end of it. That's pretty powerful incentive to put down the microphone and pick up the whistle.

To call him a good potential hire, you would have to write off his record in Detroit. Considering the lack of success in Motown since 1957 you certainly can rationalize doing that. He was fired from San Fran after 12-4 and 10-6 seasons; the Niners haven't won more than seven games in a season since.

His chances of ending up with the job could best be described as realistic. He wants to get back into coaching. There is one job open if he wants to do so in 2008. If the Redskins offer, it's likely that he'll accept.

OC —The Zorn Identity

Jim Zorn has accepted an offer to become the offensive coordinator of the Redskins.

Earlier this week, it was reported that Zorn interviewed for the position but returned to Seattle after that and it seemed likely that he would stay in his current position as the quarterbacks coach of the Seahawks. There, he could have been in line to become Seattle's offensive coordinator after the announced retirement of Mike Holmgren after the 2008 season.

Apparently, Zorn decided to go with the bird in the hand and take the job with the Redskins.

Of course, the Redskins now have this ex-bird in hand while they're still beating the bushes for a new head coach. A couple of days ago, the buzz was that Zorn would be one of a trio of new coaches with Jim Fassel manning the head spot and Rex Ryan of the Ravens becoming the defensive coordinator. It appears that Ryan will remain with the Ravens (although he has yet to sign a new contract with Baltimore), Zorn is in and Fassel remains in limbo.

So what might this move mean in terms of the top job? I'll give another shot at reading the tea leaves here. I'm not sure what it means for Fassel. On the one hand, it would appear (that phrase is used a lot since the Redskins are saying nothing) that Fassel has signed off on Zorn to be his OC since they were linked last Wednesday. On the other hand, if Fassel is going to be the guy, why not go ahead and pull the trigger, giving yourself at least two-thirds of the triple crown of coaches envisioned a few days ago?

Another possibility, one I see as more likely, is that the Redskins have decided that the new head coach will be a defensive specialist—Gregg Williams, Jim Schwartz, or the guy who apparently is holding up this whole thing, Steve Spagnuolo. It has been reported that Williams has signed off on Zorn as the OC. Presumably Schwartz and Spagnuolo would take Rip Torn or Joe Horn as the offensive coordinator if that's what it took to get a shot at a top job.

But why now? As I wrote yesterday, the pool of available assistant coaches is drying up. If the Redskins indeed are going to wait until after the Super Bowl to talk to Spagnuolo, they need to take care of some other areas before all of the quality candidates are locked up. Seattle didn't have to let the Redskins talk to Spagnuolo; permission is only automatic when an assistant coach is interviewing for a head coaching job. Perhaps in a few weeks they might change their mind. If they wanted Zorn, they had to move.

The Redskins can now start to plan for free agency on one side of the ball, at least. Let's say that they take five days to interview Spagnuolo, make their choice, work out the contract, have the press conference and get down to work. That will leave them with three weeks until free agency starts.

Sausage making

If the Discovery Channel series How It's Made ever did an episode about sausage, I'd quickly turn the channel. There's an old saying about sausage making—you never want to see it if you ever want to enjoy eating sausage again.

A massive operation that's very similar to making sausage has been going on in and around Redskins Park for the past few weeks—the search for a new head coach.

It hasn't been pretty.

Two high-profile, high-priced coordinators, thought to be the keys to keeping the legacy of Joe Gibbs II alive, were summarily dismissed. The once—and perhaps still—leading candidate for the job reportedly complained to an associate that he felt manipulated. There was an explosive negative reaction from all corners of Redskins Nation to the possibility of that top candidate getting the job.

The process has been done backwards with the coordinators being signed before the head man has been hired. Days, even weeks passed without communication from the principals making the decision to those most affected by it, the team's assistant coaches. And so on.

What makes matters worse is that those responsible for making the sausage are trying to do so in secret. That, of course, has the media digging for information and details.

The snapshots of the process that are getting the most attention are of the more unseemly parts of the process.

The details of long hours of fruitful conversation with prospective coaches don't get leaked out because such topics make for boring stories in the papers and bad fodder for talk radio. Smear campaigns, accusations of disloyalty, rejection, disagreements and the like get put under the bright spotlight because such things drive circulation, create ratings spikes and generate website traffic.

Many of those watching the process have been repulsed, annoyed, discouraged, and even angered by it. It's difficult to blame them, given what has come out about it.

The best advice, however, is to wait until the process is complete and then judge what comes out on the other end. Perhaps it will be a nice, well-seasoned Italian sausage. Maybe it will be a bland but decent German wurst. Better yet, wait until the fall, perhaps even until Christmas time, to pass final judgment.

Schwartz back in the picture?

A friend of a relative has an old college buddy who knows a guy who knows Tennessee defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz and he says that Schwartz is coming into town this weekend for another round of interviews.

Actually, the source of this information isn't quite that convoluted, but it's just as much hearsay.

I'm only passing it along because it would be a logical next step for Dan Snyder and the Redskins to take along the long and winding road that the coaching search has become. Of course "logic" and "Snyder" and "coaching search" don't necessarily belong in the same sentence, so there is that caveat as well.

Schwartz, as you may recall, was described as the frontrunner in an NBCSports.com article shortly after the process started. According to that article, he blew away Snyder in the interview, which lasted all day.

If after failing to secure a coach of the "retread who created a firestorm" variety, Snyder turns his attention to the "young assistant who could be around for a long time so that I don't have to go through this coaching search thing again anytime soon" it would seem that Schwartz is a good candidate.

Again, this is just a rumor, but one worth keeping an eye on.

Assistant coaches need action

Now that Jim Fassel has been put on the back burner, perhaps permanently, there is a sense that the Redskins are going to deliberate further on their choice for Joe Gibbs' replacement. It seems likely that a decision will not be made this week. There is talk—unconfirmed by the Redskins, of course—that Dan Snyder may wait until after the Super Bowl is over and have a chat with the Giants' Steve Spagnuolo.

The members of Redskins Nation, their finger weary and voices cracking from typing and speaking so much anti-Fassel rhetoric over the past 48 hours, seem to be fine with the break, too. Let things settle down for a while, seems to be the general sentiment.

It seems like a great idea. Retrench, revise the search criteria, take a deep breath, and go back at it next week.

It may seem like a great idea.

But it's not.

It's a terrible idea not because we're all tired of waiting or because the reporters who cover the team just want to be able to go home for a weekend. That's irrelevant in the long term.

Suffering long-term damage here are the careers of the twenty-some men who form the Redskins coaching staff. They don't know if they have jobs for this coming season. A new coach is likely to bring major changes to the coaching staff and even if Gregg Williams gets the gig he is likely to want at least to tweak the staff.

On top of that, every day that goes by means that assistant coaching positions around the league—and around college football for that matter—are being filled. The likes of Bill Lazor, Jerry Gray and others are hearing the sounds of doors closing every single day.

To be sure, most of them are under contract for 2008 and even if they are let go they will be paid. That takes care of the bills in '08.

But while sitting out a year and taking a long vacation at the beach and puttering around the yard in the fall might sound nice to a lot of us, it can be career poison for a football coach. In a highly competitive business where there are many more applicants than jobs the old saying "out of sight, out of mind" is a chilling phrase to these coaches.

If the answer to "what have you done lately" is "spent a month fishing in Florida and watched every one of both my kids' soccer games", you're not going to impress an potential employer in this business.

The flip side of this is that the Redskins will find a very small pool of new assistants to hire if they don't conclude their coaching search until mid-February. Even at this moment the logistics of finding new coaches with every other head coaching vacancy now filled might make the promotion of Williams, which would entail minimal coaching turnover, the only sensible course of action. We've seen the problems with finding assistants the past few days with the dramas with Jim Zorn, Rex Ryan, and John Ramsdell. Such issues will only get worse and worse as each day goes by.

Whether it's GW or Fassel or Meeks or Schwartz or any other mystery candidates, the decision needs to be made. Not only is leaving the staff twisting in the wind just plain the wrong thing to do, it's bad for business. You don't want to get a reputation as an organization that will do that.

Make the call, Dan. It's the right thing to do.

No, it ’s not--maybe

It looks like I may have spoken too soon.

The train that seemed to be racing towards the hiring of Jim Fassel to be the next head coach of the Redskins appears to be running out of steam. In fact, it may have become derailed altogether.

Usually, a story like this unfolds in predictable stages over a 24-36 hour period. The media reports that a particular coach is a "strong candidate" for the job, then that the team "is expected to hire" that person for the job. Next you hear of a job offer and then, usually, a contract being signed.

The Fassel story made it up to the expectation stage on Wednesday afternoon, but it stopped there. You could tell from listening to John Riggins on the radio and from following Jason LaCanfora's blog throughout the afternoon that each of them was very tempted to use a stronger term and say that Fassel was indeed the man.

But nobody could get a confirmation strong enough to go with it.

And, apparently, there were good reasons for that. It could have been that the "team and league sources" were misreading the information that they were getting about the situation or perhaps Dan Snyder simply changed his mind and decided to slow down the process.

Whatever the reason, the expected announcement of Fassel's hiring did not come Wednesday afternoon. It did not come that night. Sentences in the stories on the Post website and on ESPN.com were rewritten to characterize Fassel as a "strong candidate", but no longer the expected choice, not even the front runner.

There also were reports yesterday that Jim Zorn, Seattle's QB coach, and Rex Ryan, the Raven's defensive coordinator, were going to be part of the coaching team as offensive and defensive coordinator, respectively. It's been confirmed that Zorn was flown in for an interview, but he left without agreeing to take the job (if, indeed, it was offered). It's unclear if the Redskins have actually talked to Ryan. Apparently he was not fired when Brian Billick was canned and he remains under contract to the Ravens, who want him back as their DC.

There are reports—or rumors—that the Redskins will wait until after the Super Bowl and talk to Giants defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo. That would mean it would be a week into February before this situation gets settled.

There still is a chance that Fassel will be tabbed, but the longer we go the lower the chances are that this will happen. Take my handicapping for what it's worth, but I'd say that right now there is a one-third chance that it will be Fassel, one-third that it will be Williams, and the rest to the field, which includes Spagnulo and, perhaps, Ryan.

No Zorn, Ryan

On SportsRise this morning, the anchor said that Kelli Johnson is reporting that Jim Zorn will get "an offer he can't refuse" to return to the Seahawks as QB coach and offensive coordinator in waiting, getting the job after Holmgren retires at the end of this coming season.

He will not be coming to Washington, according to Johnson

The anchor also said that compensation issues make it highly unlikely that Rex Ryan will make the lateral move to become the Redskins defensive coordinator.

Fassel in the lead?

According to multiple reports, former Giants coach Jim Fassel has emerged as "a leading candidate" for the Redskins' head coaching job. In fact, as I type this, Adam Schefter of the NFL Network is saying that the Redskins are "zeroing in" on Fassel as "the leading candidate" for the job.

This development has the message board community and talk show callers and other vocal Redskins fans in an uproar. Actually, that's an understatement; they're in a state of meltdown comparable to that after any Dallas loss. The objections to Fassel are many, but here is a summary of the main ones:

• The hiring of Fassel would mean that any modicum of continuity would be out the window. Since Fassel is an offensive guy, Al Saunders would be out and Jason Campbell would be learning his seventh offensive system in eight years. And since it's doubtful that Gregg Williams would want to stick around after being passed over for the job, there would be a new defensive guru as well (Schefter reported that the Skins are interested in Rex Ryan, ex of the Ravens, for that job).
  
• Fassel was fired as the Ravens' offensive coordinator by his best friend, Brian Billick, during the 2006 season. Billick didn't just take the play calling away from his buddy, he canned him in the middle of October.
  
• It's been four years since anyone has expressed any serious interest in hiring Fassel as a head coach. That interest four years ago came from Dan Snyder, who reportedly was on the verge of having Fassel replace Steve Spurrier before he gave Joe Gibbs one more call just for the heck of it. Since then there have been over two dozen NFL head coach openings and the words "Jim Fassel is a leading candidate" has been used in conjunction with none of them.
  
• In his final year in New York, the inmates were running the asylum. Fassel lost the locker room at some point and he was unable to find it.
  

These certainly are valid concerns and, in sum, the negatives may prove to be fatal to a potential Jim Fassel coaching stint. However, it's not all bad news when it comes to Fassel. Here are some pro's to go with the con's:

• In 1997, his first year as head coach of the Giants, he took a team that the year before had gone 6-10 under Dan Reeves to the playoffs. As NFC East champs with a 10-5-1. With Danny Kannell and Dave Brown at quarterback. Let that sink in for a minute and tell me that the guy isn't capable of a pretty good coaching job.
  
• In November of 2000 with his team's season hanging in the balance, he "guaranteed" that his team would make the playoffs. None of this "well, if we compete real hard and fight out there we might be able to get in" stuff. Nope he said they would make it. His players reacted very well to what was both a challenge and a statement of confidence. Not only did they make the playoffs the won the division, earning a first-round bye and home field throughout the playoffs. That is something that the Redskins have not accomplished in 16 years. And they got to the Super Bowl, something that the Redskins also haven't done since 1991.
  
• He had a very good record, 54-41-1, until a 4-12 collapse in 2003, his final season in New York. Injuries played a pretty big role in that last ugly season—he had to start Jesse Palmer at QB for three games. Still, the season is on his record so it's a respectable 58-53-1.
  
• This is a bit more abstract, but both of the coaches who took their teams to the Super Bowl this year were run out of previous NFL jobs in the same manner as was Fassel. Browns fans were offering to pack the moving van to get Bill Belichick gone and there were parties all over Jacksonville when Tom Coughlin left. That doesn't mean that Fassel will get the Skins to the Super Bowl, but it does mean that other coaches in similar circumstances have done so.
  

If anyone has any more pros or cons, please feel free to chime in with them.

What's my opinion? I'm not bothering to form one until things begin to firm up here (which means that I could be forming an opinion tomorrow morning, at the rate things are going). I will say that I'm not 100% aboard the continuity bandwagon. I have all the respect in the world for Joe Gibbs, but he's not leaving a juggernaut behind. It's a team that in four years had to put on odds-defying winning streaks to pull out two six seeds. Maybe they need a shake up to push them over to top so that words like "home field throughout" don't seem to have been spoken in a foreign language.

I also think that what the players want is of little relevance. Whenever the boss leaves, the workers in the office want his top aide to take over. It's only natural to want to know what you're getting into, to want to minimize the change. But if someone from the outside gets brought in, people don't quit their jobs or anything like that. They go along, adjust to the new way of doing things and get on with their lives.