Coaches who didn’t get second chances

Tarheel-
I never really thought Dilfer was a terrible player. He was a good thrower and decision-maker often surrounded by poor offensive talent.
What made Billick look bad is that he failed with so many different quarterbacks, from Elvis Grbac to Kyle Boller to Steve McNair.
The one non-variable was Billick.

 

The biggest mistake Marty Schottenheimer ever made was giving Grbac the QB job when he came back from injury instead of sticking with Rich Gannon. Fans were ready to hang Marty from the 435 when he made that boneheaded decision.

 

I still clearly remember Ray Lewis in a postgame locker room after McNair had cost them a game with turnovers. He was ranting how their defense was so good that they didn’t need the offense to do anything — except not turn over the ball. “That’s it!” he snapped several times.

I remember thinking how emasculating that must have been for McNair, a former co-MVP. Not sure if that was the year they went 13-3 or the following year when they went 2-4 in mcnairs last year.

 

George Blackburn was a coach who got a second chance.

He was the coach of Cincinnati football from 1955-1960. He left the program and got into the insurance business in the Cincinnati area. My father was also in the insurance business in Cincinnati from 1961-1963 and worked with him, before being transferred to North Carolina. Blackburn went back into coaching and wound up becoming head coach at Virginia.

In 1968 I went with my Cub Scout troop to my very first football game in Chapel Hill between UNC and Virginia. I remember my Dad reading the program and telling me, in a surprised tone, that he knew the coach of Virginia.

So when Virginia won the game we ran onto the field and my Dad took me up to Blackburn to shake his hand. A thrill of my childhood. But impossible today because college coaches have more security on them after games than the President.

 

Boogie-
I've seen Sapp say the same kinds of things.
I'm sure Dan Fouts groused that all he needed his defenses to do was hold the other guys under 35 points.
That's football.
If you spend money to preserve the talent on one side of the ball then the other side's going to suffer.
But Billick's offenses were not even pro-level for some of those years.

 

Bill Russell managed the Dodgers for parts of three seasons in 96, 97 and 98, finishing second in the division twice.

He coached at Tampa Bay for one season and managed in the minors but then disappeared from the dugout.

 

Russell's ouster came on the eve of FOX buying the Dodgers. He was working for MLB supervising umpires last time I heard. May still be.

 

Buck Martinez managed the Jays for a season and a half from 2001-2002, got fired, then hasn’t managed in the majors since. As somebody who has to listen to his PBP quite often, I wish somebody else would give him another shot.

 

And the exact opposite of this thread is Lane Kiffin.

 

Paul Evans - Led Pitt to five NCAA tournaments and an NIT in eight years with players like Charles Smith and Jerome Lane. 147-98 record during that time. Got pushed out in 1994 and never got another head coaching gig.

Mike Gottfried - went 27-16-1 at Pitt and loaded the roster with talent in the late 1980s, got into a never-ending battle with the media and school administration and was fired.

 

Send it in, Jerome!
— Bill Raferty

 

Was the knock on Gottfried that he didn’t win enough like the pitt teams of the mid 70s to mid 80s did? Because the floor dropped out after him.