Lurie, the owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, was expected Tuesday to deliver a lukewarm endorsement of Coach Andy Reid, acknowledging that he would return for a 14th season despite an 8-8 finish that fell miles short of expectations. Eventually, that is what Lurie did. But Lurie began with a 12-minute preamble, oscillating from anger to optimism and back again.
It was N.F.L. ownership as performance art, a think-aloud therapy session in which Lurie used words like “unacceptable” and “dismal,” called this season “without question, the most disappointing season since I owned the team” and labeled the Eagles’ four-game winning streak to end the season “fool’s gold.”
Lurie sounded like a man on the verge of dropping some bombshell. Was Reid fired? Would the whole front office be sacked? Was the bride really an evil twin with amnesia?
Lurie eventually reached the carrot at the end of his stick, sparing Reid for another season. Minutes earlier, on the other side of the continent, the Chargers’ owner, Dean Spanos, announced that both General Manager A. J. Smith and Coach Norv Turner would be back for the 2012 season, despite the Chargers’ 8-8 finish and a perception among fans that the franchise is on the decline. Spanos’s message was more direct than Lurie’s — an interpretive dance could convey a message more directly than Lurie did — but his conclusion was more surprising, as observers were already penciling Smith into jobs elsewhere in the league.
Score 2 points, and only 2 points, for the status quo.
At the end of the N.F.L. regular season, no coach or general manager who failed to reach the playoffs has any real job security except Jerry Jones, who said Wednesday that he was doing a swell job as the Cowboys’ G.M. and would not fire himself. Other caporegimes, powerful though they may be, are vulnerable to the Tessio treatment, and few see it coming. The firings are so common and brutally casual that the Reid and Turner retentions, coming on the heels of Spanos’s sometimes open frustration and Lurie’s dramatic monologue, were as shocking as the many dismissals.
Bill Polian was reportedly chatting with Peyton Manning about off-season schedules when he was summoned to a meeting with the team’s owner, Jim Irsay. You can imagine the gravelly voice of the hitman on the phone: “Boss wants to see ya. Bring your BlackBerry.” Polian, the president of the Colts and his son Chris, the team’s general manager, were both fired the day after the Colts concluded a 2-14 season. Soon, a new executive will receive a handwritten to-do list on a legal pad: 1) Get seat warm; 2) Learn how the copier works; 3) Engineer career-defining Manning trade.
In Chicago, General Manager Jerry Angelo was reportedly involved in draft preparation before the team’s president, Ted Phillips, fired him Tuesday. Outgoing executives are typically not involved in long-range planning, so you can imagine cold war-style disinformation at work, with Angelo getting memos on white paper when the team’s real plans were on goldenrod. (“This is not a list of draft prospects, it’s the end credits for ‘War Horse!’ ”)
Blame strikes with the randomness of a tornado once pink slips start flying: Angelo lost his job, but Coach Lovie Smith was spared, and the offensive coordinator Mike Martz tied bedspreads together and shimmied out the window before anyone could nab him.
The Polian and Angelo firings caught many by surprise. Less tenured coaches and executives barely merit a shrug when they are dismissed. Billy Devaney and Steve Spagnuolo left St. Louis on Monday with two bus tickets and a suitcase full of unsold Sam Bradford bobblehead dolls. There was so much speculation about who would replace Devaney and Spagnuolo in late December (Smith and Jon Gruden were the favorites; the odds are being revised) that it was easy to forget that they were still working.
The Glazer family stopped short of steaming off the wallpaper after firing Raheem Morris and his entire staff, though General Manager Mark Dominik kept his job, if only to warn the newcomers. This is the time of year when failed, fledgling regimes disappear like dead Christmas trees from the curbside.
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