NFL WEEK 16 – RAIDERS VS. BROWNS
Maybe Eric mangini isn’t happy unless he is being hated.
Mangini ticked off Bill Belichick by abruptly leaving the Patriots coaching staff a few years back, reportedly breaking an agreement the two had when Belichick made Mangini the defensive coordinator.
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Time: Sunday 1:05 ET
Venue: Browns Stadium, Cleveland
MoneyLine: Browns -170 (-110) / Raiders +150 (-110)
Spread: Browns -3.5 (-110)
Over/Under: 37.5
Maybe Eric mangini isn’t happy unless he is being hated.
Mangini ticked off Bill Belichick by abruptly leaving the Patriots coaching staff a few years back, reportedly breaking an agreement the two had when Belichick made Mangini the defensive coordinator.
After a playoff season as head coach of the New York Jets, Mangini’s dour personality then turned off the entire fandom in New York and New Jersey in 2008. No one mourned when he was fired.
Not content with wearing out his welcome in the Northeast, Mangini then turned his attention to the Midwest. Somehow he was named head coach of the Browns, and took about a second and a half to piss off the players and fans, which is interesting because it took him about two months to name the team’s starting quarterback. Talk of boycotts by season ticket holders was taken so seriously in Cleveland that the team’s owner resorted to private one-on-one meeting with grown men dressed in dog suits.
So it’s all coming to an end now for Mangini, who figures to be coaching his penultimate game in Cleveland on Sunday when Oakland comes to town in what can be called the Dysfunctional Coaches Bowl.
Some Raider fans are calling for Al Davis to awaken from his winter hibernation and fire Tom Cable, but has there ever been a coach and a franchise more on the same wavelength than Oakland the Cable Guy? Cable never had a winning record as head coach at Utah and was 4-8 as the interim cheese in Oakland last year. Despite some head-scratching victories (over Philly, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and Denver), Oakland and Cable drag a 5-9 record into Cleveland on Sunday.
Davis likes Cable because the unpredictable coach keeps the players on edge, and you can imagine how nervous the assistant coaches feel after Cable was accused of punching out assistant Randy Hanson before the season (charges were not filed). And apparently Tom is hardly warm and fuzzy with the opposite sex – it’s been reported that he has physically abused two ex-wives and a (hopefully ex-) girlfriend. Seems everyone within 50 yards of Cable has developed a nervous twitch.
Old man Davis loves speed (they say the only thing he cares about on Draft Day is a collegian’s time in the 40), and that may result in Cable’s ridiculous determination to implement a vertical passing game in which the franchise quarterback (JaMarcus Russell) is completely ineffective. Russell isn’t good in the short passing game, either, but that’s another story.
With a defense that isn’t awful and three solid running backs (Justin Fargas, Michael Bush and Darren McFadden), you’d think the game plan would be pretty obvious. Not to Cable, who just tells everyone to go deep until the quarterback is lying on his back and the ball is loose.
So what to expect Sunday when Cable and Mangini match wits on the sidelines? Pretty much more of the same, we guess, though the post-game handshake could turn into a fistfight. We can only hope.
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Lawrence Paul is a regular contributor to the Cappers Picks Blog, and is a free-lance gambling and travel expert from Massachusetts.
