Mike McCoy
Oh, man. Let us count all of the ways in which Mike McCoy gave this one away.
First of all, why was Ryan Carrethers inactive? Was it crucial that Adrian Phillips be on the field? The Cincinnati Bengals ran the ball over and over and over and over, right at Sean Lissemore (who played terribly) and the Inside Linebackers (see the thing above about Te'o), and it resulted in a first down basically whenever they wanted one. Carrethers exists solely to make it harder for opposing offenses to run the ball up the gut, and McCoy left him on the bench because....he was afraid of Andy Dalton?
Second, the lack of a timeout at the end of the first half. Try to read these tweets without your head exploding.
I asked McCoy why no time outs at the end of the half. Sure enough, he said he had confidence in the offense starting the 3rd quarter.
— Derek Togerson (@DerekNBCSD) September 20, 2015
I followed up with why not let Philip take a shot. His respons: "I made the decision I made."
— Derek Togerson (@DerekNBCSD) September 20, 2015
Let's ignore the stubbornness of McCoy, and the arrogance he has when he blatantly states that he doesn't have to defend or explain his awful decision. Let's focus on the decision itself.
McCoy said that the rest he didn't give his offense a chance to score points at the end of the first half is because he was confident that they would score points in the second half....
Okay, hold on.
Mike McCoy said, in no uncertain terms, "I didn't want to give my team a chance to score 14 points because I had confidence that we would score 7 points." Excuse me for going all caps lock for a second, but THE CHARGERS WERE LOSING WHEN HE MADE THIS DECISION.
Not only did McCoy not understand that the point of a football game is to score more points than his opponent, he also did not seem to understand that the Bengals would also be trying to score points in the second half.
What. The. ####.
You can blame the Chargers players all day for this loss, and there will be plenty of that going on, but at the end of the day the coach is responsible for putting them in a position where good execution equals out to a victory. Not only did McCoy not put them in that position, he literally was handed that option and decided to throw it in the trash instead of taking it. And this was after his team went 31 yards on their previous offensive drive, so it's not as though he thought there was no hope of moving the ball.
Is McCoy a mole? Was he trying to prove a point? Is he trying to tank in hopes that Los Angeles won't want the Chargers anymore? McCoy is too smart of a guy for this to be a thing that has happened, and it's not as though it's the first time he's made this call. In 2013, it was almost a regular thing, and back then I said that it was McCoy and Whisenhunt protecting Rivers from himself, trying to keep him from throwing picks (like he did at the end of the half in Week 1). Maybe that was still the case here, but that argument holds a lot less water when your team is losing.
Mike McCoy may be an excellent coach Monday through Saturday, but he is easily one of the worst coaches in the entire league on Sunday. Easily. If you're wondering why his team can never get past 9-7 when they have oodles of talent, this is why. He's no better than Norv Turner on Sundays.
McCoy did a ton of other things wrong in this game. Kicking a 32 yard field goal on 4th & 1 from the Cincinnati 14 yard line when your team is down by 4 points? That's stupid. However, it doesn't compare to the stupidity of giving up an offensive opportunity because you don't really feel like trying to score points. That's a fireable offense.
at the bolded
Along with Kyle (one of my favorite Minion names) Miller.
Unrein - who needs DTs in a 3-4 set anyway?
