[Idgit]

Originally Posted by Risen Star

I have to agree, CL. He's clearly making concessions to keep his job. I'd bet money on that...

Why is this clear?

It could just as easily be him making a concession because it became clear that running the defense the way he wants the team to run it requires more of his time that he thought he'd have to give.

Or it could be that it took a year of working with Callahan to get to a point where the thought handing over the play calling reins made sense.

Or it could be that the calling of the actual plays is more done by several on the offensive staff and that 'turning it over' is actually more a matter of who tells the conclusion to Tony than anything else, and that handing that over frees him up to do other things he's decided he needs to make time for during games.

Or it could be that the new defensive organization under Kiffin requires him to do something during games that he didn't want to have to do under Ryan.

Or it could be that, after two years, he evaluated his own work and decided it was an opportunity to improve and he was going to take advantage of it.

Or it could be that it's up in the air right now because they don't know who the whole offensive staff is going to be and he wants to reserve judgement until he's got a staff in place.

Or it could be that his boss wants him to spend more time on coaching process and technique in all three phases of the game, and JG thinks he's the best person to oversee that total emphasis.

Or it could be that his boss has changed his mind and is making him hand over play calling duties.

The reality is, we just don't know. We don't know that he's even handing over play calling. And we don't know if that's going to be a good or a bad thing. We might have suspicions, but at the end of the day, they're only suspicions.

Honestly, I don't really care how the staff is organized or how the play calling duties are meted out. I imagine this is something that changes somewhat from year to year, anyway, depending who's on staff and what's needed across the team and depending on what technology is available. I think it's all a tempest in a tea cup. What matters are the new DC hire (which I can live with, but I don't love) and the new ST coordinator hire (which is a hugely important position where we just lost a very good coach and which is still vacant). These coordinator jobs are a lot more important than who's calling plays on an offense that JG is still going to be running, at the end of the day.

'Play calling' is mostly important as a symbol to unhappy fans who want to see some sign that the HC's authority is getting called into question, so they can later complain about an organization that hires puppets instead of actual leaders to run the team. That's a boring argument, in my opinion.