Running NFL Week XVI thread

Is that Bates guy related to Ladell Betts?

 

No. He's a practice squadder who will be thrust into action when Betts gets hurt. :-[

 

Sorry dude. Couldn't resist.

 

No offense taken. I would have done the same thing!

 

Random thought I had this evening: What are the odds the new coach of the New York Giants is............Bill Parcells?

Coughlin's gone. Parcells goes year-to-year with the Cowboys. Maybe he's disgusted with Jerry Jones thrusting T.O. upon him and has decided he's had enough...yet isn't ready to retire for the third time. He can always spin the decision to return to the Giants as a Jersey boy finally returning home.

Who knows? Hard to imagine Parcells putting up with the idiocy of Shockey or Strahan or the milquetoastness of Eli Manning. But the Giants have been soft as Charmin since Parcells left. Who better to fix it than the last guy to get it right in Jersey? Stranger things have happened, and Parcells-to-the-Giants would unleash all sorts of romantic prose from writers who fondly recall 1986 and 1990.

 

I don't see it. If Parcells isn't successful immediately with the Giants, it sort of becomes Jordan-with-the-Wizards. If he becomes available, Bill Cowher might be a really interesting alternative for the Maras. The X factor in all of this is who the next GM is. Whoever inherits the job will want to bring his guy in.

 

Parcells is immediately successful everywhere he goes. He's made the playoffs within two years at every stop. The guy can flat-out coach.

I sometimes wonder if Parcells regrets leaving the Giants in the first place. Then I realize what a greedy bastard he is. But returning to the Giants would allow him to continue making fistfulls of money while returning home.

 

Yeah, but taking New England, the Jets and Dallas to the playoffs after lean years is different than not guiding his franchise--don't be fooled; his shadow looms large over that team--team to the Super Bowl. If he's the coach and they don't go to the Super Bowl in his first year, is it a failure? Every NY/NJ/LI writer will ask that question.