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While a ball will drop in Times Square tonight, a bombshell was dropped in Buffalo tonight, with the announcement of Marrone opting out of his contract . . .
The Doug Marrone news is interesting.
Clearly he can’t stand working with GM Doug Whaley.
And also, he has no quarterback for next year with the retirement of Kyle Orton.
Orton isn’t a great quarterback, but he’s a lot better than E.J. Manuel, and did lead the Bills to a 9-7 record this year.
So now he has no quarterback and little future security.
You know darn well when a new owner comes to town, they generally want their own coach and/or general manager.
So Marrone probably figures he’d get out of dodge now, and throw his hat in the ring for other openings.
Bill Polian is likely going to go to Buffalo to help the Pegula’s fix this thing.
So now you have NFL insiders all over saying, “the Jets will have strong interest in Marrone,” as one ESPN article put it.
Clearly Marrone’s agent is putting this out there. The agent has a lot of surrogates in the media.
Within minutes of Marrone opting out of his Buffalo contract, the insiders were pushing the Jets’ angle.
How would they know that fast? It almost is borderline tampering if they knew that fast.
This Bronx angle is overrated. Who cares if Marrone is from the Bronx? If the Jets think that is a meaningful angle, they are mistaken.
Marrone’s not a bad coach, but he seems to exude mediocrity – .500.
The New York Post claims a source told them the Jets are interested in Marrone.
They have a high-ranking Jets source I know of. I think this falls into the category of they are going to look at everything, more than he’s now a leading candidate.
But be careful with the media coverage of “Marrone to the Jets.”
A lot of sportswriters went to Syracuse, so there is a slight bias here.
Also, one prominent Jets beat writer actually helped Marrone get the Syracuse job. I’m not kidding.
To me, it’s fine if he’s a candidate, but he’s just one of many right now . . .
The Gary Kubiak story today means very little.
Kubiak said about interest from other teams, “it’s not time for that.”
Kubiak told John Harbaugh to tell teams he’s busy coaching the Ravens’ offense.
This is just Kubiak focusing on the Steelers. It’s nothing more than that.
To me, it’s a feather in his cap. This is a very focused guy. Remember when he got sick in 2013 because he worked himself into the ground trying to fix a struggling Texans teams?
I suspect he will be free to talk after the weekend.
The Ravens cornerback situation is a horror show. Believe it or not, it might be worse than the Jets. So they are probably going to lose Ben Roethlisberger, Antonio Brown, Martavius Bryant and company.
I’m not going to lie. I really like this candidate.
He’s a top-shelf offensive mind, who comes in knowing how to be a head coach, after leading the Texans from 2006-2013.
He has a presence. He’s a leader.
He clearly should be one of the leading candidates.
GM candidate Mike Maccagnan would probably want him as the coach. They worked together for eight years in Houston.
Eric DeCosta, who is the assistant GM in Baltimore, and the Jets are interested in, would have a lot of interest in him as well . . .
December 31, 2014
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