Its ok for Hos to be wrong,
I've been wrong myself many a time!
Tom E. Curran: Mangini, Pioli shun suitors to stay with Patriots
01:00 AM EST on Sunday, February 13, 2005
There are some who walk it like they talk it.
Eric Mangini and Scott Pioli are presented a chance to chase the dough. Both pass.
Just like so many of the three-time Super Bowl champion Patriots players are asked to do when they come to New England, these two key components of the New England success are taking less to stay.
Yesterday, Mangini accepted the Patriots' defensive coordinator position after being lured by Nick Saban in Miami and Romeo Crennel in Cleveland. Both places offered Mangini more money to leave. He will stay.
The Patriots, meanwhile, reportedly gave the Seattle Seahawks the OK to talk to Pioli about becoming their general manager for no doubt ungodly sums of owner Paul Allen's cash. But Pioli went on record two months ago saying he's staying, that the contract he signed runs through 2006 and that he intends to keep it. Those who know him well would be wise to count on that promise remaining intact.
It's been a strange six days since the Patriots won their third Super Bowl in four seasons. And we're too much in the midst of it now to know if it will have any lasting impact.
Funny isn't it? What people see as the biggest threat to the New England Patriots' run of on-field dominance is what's happening with the coaches on the sidelines.
Ironic, too, that just as we marveled at this team's selfless accomplishments in the salary-cap era, two key coaches on a staff unencumbered by league salary cap restrictions have flown the coop for power and money?
The departures of offensive coordinator Charlie Weis and defensive coordinator Crennel -- while imminent for a while -- seem more profound now that they've arrived.
And the weeklong tug of war between Crennel and Bill Belichick over Mangini made the staff exodus of the coordinators take on an unseemly air.
It's as if that three-way hug between Belichick, Crennel and Weis really did represent the end of something. Because less than 24 hours later Crennel -- who's candidacy for head coaching jobs was at least publicly advanced by Belichick -- was trying to raid the Patriots staff for Mangini.
If you're the Cleveland Browns, you know at that point you hired the right guy in Crennel. The fact that -- despite his smiling cuddliness -- he's willing to deliver a sideline haymaker to the Patriots (which were his Patriots just days ago) all in the name of improving his club shows his blood is the right temperature for this kind of work. Cold.
Just as Belichick's is and was.
Remember that in 2000 as he exited New York after stepping away from the head coaching job he was contracted to take (hence, the first-round compensation the Patriots had to give the Jets), he brought with him to New England Weis, Pioli, and Mangini.
Left to sort it out in New York were Bill Parcells and Al Groh (who became the Jets head coach) -- longtime trenchmates of Belichick and the rest.
It appears these things don't splinter neatly.
But maybe this is just the way it is in the NFL. The pool of coaching candidates is shallow and staffs travel from team to team like schools of fish. When someone wants to hire someone they feel they can rely on, they try and grab someone they know. Often, that someone they know is working for someone else they know. And it doesn't end with Crennel. In Miami, Belichick protégé Nick Saban was working to snare Mangini as well as his defensive coordinator. Given that Saban only worked one year with Mangini, clearly the reason Saban liked the 34-year-old is because of what Belichick told Saban about him.
Almost 50 years ago, the man Belichick resembles in style, demeanor and success, Paul Brown, had to deal with the same things Belichick is going through now.
In 1953, Brown lost assistant Weeb Ewbank to the Colts. After the 1954 season, Brown lost assistant Blanton Collier to the University of Kentucky.
"Brown feared that if coaches fully versed in the Browns' system took his organizational techniques to other teams, Cleveland would lose much of its edge," says the great new book on the NFL, America's Game. "He was right to be fearful.
"Brown's organizational mastery was now widely imitated," the book adds. "As other teams began employing the same principles they also began seeking their own distinct advantages . . . and the margin of error afforded the Browns became smaller and smaller. With Collier at Kentucky and Ewbank across the sidelines in Baltimore, Brown's network of topnotch aides was diminishing. Though they would be replenished with quality assistants, he would never again in Cleveland assemble a staff in which he had the same level of confidence and comfort."
People change jobs. They seek greener pastures and thicker wallets and life goes on. But it never goes on exactly the way it did before.
Then there are those who refuse to play "don't do as I do, do as I say." They have the belly to what they ask the people who work for them to do. And that's why Eric Mangini and Scott Pioli will be here a while.