Brock Lesnar signs with the Vikings

[#1-norm-fan]

Mike Tice is not a bad coach. The team simply fell apart last year. They were stunned by the Giants at home and never recovered. It wasn't all Tice's fault though. He's a pretty good coach.

[AlphaBean]

Originally Posted by #1-wwf-fan Mike Tice is not a bad coach. The team simply fell apart last year. They were stunned by the Giants at home and never recovered. It wasn't all Tice's fault though. He's a pretty good coach.

Nah, see, he stuck with his gameplan and didn't change it, saying it was the players, not the coaches, who were at fault.

When opposing defenses knew to line up several steps off tackle, because Mike Rosenthal couldn't stop the rush, Tice didn't give Rosenthal help, not against Michael Strahan, not against Leonard Little... had he put a TE there, or ran a few plays in the gap to keep the line honest, then Rosenthal would have been better off.

To blame Rosenthal for not blocking a speed rusher who is like five yards to your right? Bullshit.

And then in the Giants game, the Giants run screen pass after screen pass, short dump pass, everything is under 10 yards, forcing our players to make the tackle rather than play the ball.

Do we try to throw them off their route? Do we try a shallow zone to disrupt the short pass? No. We stick to our gameplan of playing center field and hoping for an overthrow. Bullshit. That was O'Leary's fault. He didn't adapt. He stuck to his gameplan and hoped for the best. It wasn't the players who were choosing the plays. Could they tackle? Not really. But they had been placed by the Giants in a position where they had to tackle, because they couldn't play the ball. It's up to the coaches to fix that. To mask the deficiencies of their players.

And then Tice takes it to the media that it's not his or his coaches' fault.

But on the plus side, the Vikings have a legitimate #2 receiver, and Bennett is a bigger threat out of the backfield, so defenses won't have as much time to get to the QB. Hopefully.

But seriously. Every week I saw in the paper that Tice refused to change his gameplan one bit. While I respect that in principle, it's not going to win football games. When teams figure out what you do and counteract it, it's up to YOU as a coach to keep them guessing.

It's the Dennis Green approach to football... be boring, but be consistent. Don't make waves, and pray that your whole team will play 100% all of the time. I hate it.

But what I hate most of all is when Tice went to the media and talked shit about his players, when a lot of them were injured, and forced to do more than they should, i.e. the offensive line giving Pep 20 seconds to throw the ball. Even if the players are at fault, you deal with that in the team meetings. If you're dealing with that in the press, that means you're afraid of what people think of you, and are using scapegoats. As a coach, you can't admit responsibility because it's YOUR ass on the job. Who cares whose fault it is? Even if it's never your fault, and your team can't win, you're still getting fired.

Tice is too afraid of losing his job that he's not willing to let it all hang out. You have to have balls. Shanahan stone-face lied about Plummer's injury. You have players like Belicheck, Billick, Gruden, players you know have huge, hairy balls. That sort of confidence spills over onto your players.

Tice doesn't have it. His schtick is that he's a "student of the game." that means he's learning with the team.

If that's the case, he's pretty much consigned himself to the fact that this will be his first coaching job, but he will be fired regardless. But that will open him up for a nice cushy college football head coach job he'll be better suited for.

We need a guy who's ready to win now, who knows what he wants, and knows what to do. We can't have a coach who makes mistakes and either blames his players, or says "Oh well, chalk it up to learning experience."

And when a player has half a dozen defensive players with alcohol-related criminal offenses IN THE LAST YEAR, then no matter how hard you try to pull off the "I'm a student of Parcells and Gibbs," shit, you just aren't the same. You don't command the respect of your players if they break rules and play nevertheless.

Players weren't this reckless even under Denny Green. I mean sure Warren Moon beat his wife, but that's normal. The Vikings can't have "one of the guys" as their head coach. They need a head coach as their head coach.