Was it JR?

I'm thinking it was a lot of PSL owners writing letters to JR telling him how unhappy they were with this season and how angry they were to be hit up for PO tix when we had NO CHANCE IN HELL of making the POs.

Kind of like when Seafart was fired and Foxy was hired--the "energy has been sucked out of this franchise" deal.

 

Nah. While the fans were vocal (and apparently right), I don't think the least bit of this happens because of fans.

 

No, I disagree. I think the fans played a SMALL part. It's all about the benjamins. If JR feels a little bit of heat from $$ disappearing, he'll do something to bring the $$ back into his pockets.

 

No, don't believe so. I think fans were unhappy with the product, which was the problem - the product. If the offense were running well, the fans disagreed, Henning's here. That JR's going to do his best to put the best product on the field goes without saying.

 

He did not take over play calling against Atlanta, that's total fiction. I know you said some nonsense about Fox mouthing "run," but that's not accurate. Henning called the plays, and he's also the one who came up with the DeAngelo formation.

Henning has been a loyal soldier, did what was asked of him, and didn't deserve to be fired. So no, I don't believe that Fox would choose to throw him under the bus to spare himself some heat, and that is a credit to him.

You act like you don't even know who our coach is. This is the guy who keeps players he likes on the team for years longer than they should be. It's blindingly obvious that he wouldn't just dump Henning, just as it should be obvious that getting rid of Henning does not make us a better team. If we replace him with someone even better, then it will, but that's far from a given considering that Henning was an above average OC.

I think it's pretty clear that we have made contract decisions because of the fans (Sean Gilbert because the fans wanted a Super Bowl, expensive Morgan & Delhomme extensions because they were highly popular, etc), so I don't think it's a stretch that JR would be influenced by the fans regarding Henning. Fox wouldn't, but if JR felt like the public needed a head to roll and passed it along, that's plausible.

 

you never know, Fox may have done it to cover his ass

 

Statistically, he was not above average. We set out to run, and only ran well one year. Agreed that the next step is the important one.

I disagree. All of those sound driven by what JR wanted. Do you think Foster got a big contract because of the fans, or because of JR?

I just don't buy the excuse of firing that he was scapegoated. He was in charge of the unit that, every year, finished below the defense, and was much of the failing of this year. That was his job, and that job wasn't being done to satisfaction.

 

We were in 3 of those 5 seasons, and the other two were easily explainable. It's very true that we haven't been as effective a running team as we should have been, but I don't fault the play-calling for that.

It certainly could be, but my point was that Jerry Richardson is influenced by the fans.

Hardly any, actually. He had a few games where most of us felt that he abandoned the run too quickly, but most of the time the play-calling was the same stuff that we've had success with for years and several times he came out with things that were downright inventive. The problem was that this year we had some key injuries and the players flat out didn't execute.

 

No, not really. Of course, we differed on this before, so I don't expect you to go differently now. Seriously, if we were above average in three seasons of five, we wouldn't have made a coaching change.

It certainly could be, but my point was that Jerry Richardson is influenced by the fans.

but when it doesn't work, that's still right? No, it's not. Yes, it was a major failing of this offense to not be able to run and not get the ball to Steve Smith effectively.

And Henning's ultimately responsible, under Fox himself, for execution. It's not all on him, but certainly, he's responsible.

 

Believable.