If you thought the N.F.L. lockout was tough as a fan, imagine being a head coach.
These men are accustomed to 20-hour workdays and sleeping in cots at team headquarters. They are not the kind of people who kick back with Angry Birds for an hour. Down time is not something they handle well.
For at least one coach, idle hands were the devil’s playbook. Green Bay’s Mike McCarthy added 47 new “schematic concepts” to his playbook during the lockout. Anyone who watched the Packers use everything from empty backfields to T-formations last year must wonder how many more schematic concepts there can possibly be: all that’s left is for receivers to stand on one another’s shoulders and fullbacks to dangle from trapezes.
At least McCarthy did not tattoo the innovations all over his body like Queequeg. Rex Ryan’s right leg is proof that the Jets coach spent a little too much of his forced leisure time in the tattoo parlor. Ryan has a frustrating talent for beating his critics to their own jokes, referring to his prominently displayed fractured fractal as “midlife hieroglyphics.” Ryan’s explanation of the meaning of the new ink was less than explanatory.
“You’ve got the mountains, you’ve got the waves and the shark tooth down there,” he said. “You’ve got it all working.”
It sounds as if somebody was working without a schematic concept. Or maybe with 47 of them.
Rob Ryan has lived in the shadow of Rex, his twin, for years, but he will now receive more attention as Dallas’s defensive coordinator. He took a thinly veiled swipe at the Eagles, whom the newly signed backup quarterback Vince Young called a “dream team” in his first mental error of the season. Philadelphia has signed so many high-profile players that all that’s left is to hire Anthony Bourdain to make team lunches and David Sedaris to type roster sheets.
“I don’t know if we win the all-hype team,” Ryan said from Cowboys camp, a well-known bastion of humility. “I think that might have gone to somebody else.”
He colorfully promised that the Cowboys would beat the “all-hype” team, a challenge that made Eagles Coach Andy Reid chuckle.
“You know, I would have been pretty upset if he said it was a hot-dog-eating contest,” Reid said. “I would have been ready then.”
There you have it: the lockout gave coaches time to increase their competitive-eating readiness. Luckily, a Reid-Ryan wiener throwdown is probably outlawed by the new collective bargaining agreement or the Geneva Convention.
Mike Shanahan might not be your first choice as a shadchen, but he tried to use his matchmaking skills to help Washington Redskins punter Sav Rocca. Rocca has had difficulty getting a work visa, so he spent the first week of training camp in his native Australia.
“I told him to get married to an American and that will make it easier,” Shanahan joked Wednesday. Rocca is married, but it is best not to argue with Shanahan, even when he mistakes the plot of an old Gérard Depardieu-Andie MacDowell movie for reality.
For Rocca, the holdout is not over until United States Citizenship and Immigration Services says it’s over, but a resolution was expected by Sunday.
“He’s got a job here in the U.S.,” Shanahan assured. And what a job it is. With John Beck as the Redskins’ starter, Rocca is going to be the busiest man on two continents once the season starts.
Rocca may be better off at home for now. A woman is suing Rocca and the Eagles, his former team, claiming she suffered “severe, diverse and permanent injuries” after he punted a football into the crowd a during fan-appreciation event in 2009. Rocca directed a fan who caught his punt to throw it back to him, and the errant pass struck the claimant, who is seeking $75,000 in damages. The fan who threw the dangerously inaccurate pass is not named in the suit, but he will not go unpunished. He is third on the Redskins’ quarterback depth chart.
Some coaches were so eager to get back to work that they could barely control their emotions. Mike Martz’s reaction to seeing Jay Cutler’s off-season progress sounded more appropriate for a Justin Bieber concert than a football field.
“I was kind of giddy, to be honest with you,” Martz, the Chicago Bears’ offensive coordinator, said, without adding if he made a little shrieking sound.
The return of football warmed even the dourest souls.
“After more than 35 years in the profession, Bill Belichick still loves coaching,” William Bendetson of CBSSports.com reported. “He often throws a blocking pad at the quarterback to mimic defensive pressure.”
Who wouldn’t get a kick out of throwing things at Tom Brady for a living? With Chad Ochocinco and Albert Haynesworth now in New England’s camp, Belichick’s assistants may soon have to provide heavier projectiles.
Detroit Coach Jim Schwartz may have watched a little too many Turner Classic Movies, judging by his reaction when veteran free agents returned to the practice field Thursday.
“I’ve never been in the Army, but when the cavalry comes, you feel good,” Schwartz said. Yes you do, if it is 1864.
With all of the binge eating, trash talking, giddiness and midlife hieroglyphics, it’s not surprising that some coaches turned to self-help. Minnesota Coach Leslie Frazier invited Al Franken to Vikings camp on Thursday. Franken played the therapy guru Stuart Smalley on “Saturday Night Live.” He is also a United States senator, but let’s stick with the positive. Franken told Joe Oberle of CBSSports.com that he and Frazier talked about strategy. Perhaps, in a rare instance of bipartisan consensus, Franken drew up the same play Richard Nixon supposedly called for the Redskins in the 1971 playoffs.
Franken’s services were needed more elsewhere. His Smalley character could counsel Miami quarterback Chad Henne, whose tenuous grasp on a starting job was underscored by the Dolphins’ public pursuit of Denver quarterback Kyle Orton. Fans even chanted, “We want Orton!” during practices.
“Deep down inside, it does hurt,” Henne said.
Fans later changed to “We want Henne!” though it might have been ironic chanting.
It’s O.K., Chad: you’re good enough, you’re smart enough, and doggone it, people like you.
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