Pep Hamilton was hired by the Indianapolis Colts to call the offense after the team drafted Andrew Luck in an attempt to make Luck’s transition from college to the pros go well and for a while it worked just fine. This year, it’s hit kind of a snag and after a third straight loss, the Colts and head coach Chuck Pagano decided to consciously uncouple with Hamilton, taking him down to the nearest creek to talk about the rabbits.
Or, you know, “look at the flowers” if you’re a Walking Dead fan. They canned him is what I’m saying. Hamilton will be replaced by associate head coach Rob Chudzinski, who was actually a hot prospect in the offensive coordinator market in the offseason.
Hamilton served as the offensive coordinator and quarterback coach at Stanford while Luck was there so the idea of bringing him into the Colts’ organization wasn’t a bad one. It’s just gone bad this year and like other head coaches on the hot seat, Pagano has decided to buy himself a week or two by firing his playcaller.
“As head coach of this team, it’s my responsibility to make sure I’m doing everything we can to put us in the best position to succeed,” Pagano said with no sense of irony in a statement. “We thank Pep for his service to the team and wish him all the best.”
At 3-5, the Colts are far from out of the playoff race in the pathetic AFC South and are still currently leading the division. Five or six more wins will probably lock the division and a playoff spot up, so there are worse things the Colts could do at this point, like bench Andrew Luck or something crazy. At this time, no one is that crazy.
Bradford rolled the dice only to watch them bounce off the table and roll down a sewer grate
Sometimes the best thing you can do in life is bet on yourself, but when you’re an injury prone quarterback who has never once led his team to a playoff berth or a winning season, maybe you want to hedge that bet just a little bit.
According to Howard Eskin, the Philadelphia Eagles were so enamored with Sam Bradford after acquiring him in a trade with the St. Louis Rams in the offseason that they offered him a four-year, $72 million deal to re-up with the team before the season. That comes out to around $18 million a season which is what Tony Romo makes a season with the Dallas Cowboys and more than Peyton Manning, Carson Palmer, Andy Dalton and Tom Brady make a season. So, you know, that seems insane.
And, of course, it was. Bradford had to think in Chip Kelly’s offense he’d put up numbers that would put him int he $20 million a year category, but his career at this point should have given him no reason to really believe that.
Currently Bradford is on pace for his worth season as a professional quarterback with the lowest rating, 76.4, since his injury-riddled second season. Before he was hurt in 2013 in Game Seven with the Rams, Bradford was at a 90.9 rating with 14 touchdowns and four picks in basically six and a half games. Right now he’s already tossed 10 picks and just nine touchdowns. That’s not an $18 million quarterback. It’s a quarterback that Kelly will have to work hard to convince management to even keep on the roster in 2016. Bradford will be an unrestricted free agent after this season.
49ers didn’t want to waste Blain Gabbert against a “good” defense
It turns out the benching of Colin Kaepernick was already in the works before his disastrous start against the Rams last week. But it turns out there was a method to the 49ers’ madness of continuing to start Kaepernick in spite of him being completely terrible; they didn’t want to hurt the confidence of future Hall of Famer Blaine Gabbert.
According to Kyle McLorg, the 49ers felt that the Atlanta Falcons defense was a better match-up for the talents of the rocket-armed Gabbert. McLorg tossed out a tweet about it that the Falcons found very interesting.
https://twitter.com/Kyle_McLorgBASG/status/661559398213398528/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
So sorry about that, Blaine.
