The Fox and the Russell

Above: when your coaching staff should have pulled itself up by its bootstraps

Before we get to more current events. given that we have a city’s fanbase well-represented here, we can start with this very entertaining story of a belligerent former NFL coach yelling inane reactionary talking points at an alcohol-soaked event at an Indianapolis steakhouse during the combine:

It was the 2014 combine. Another one of those scene-and-be-seen nights. I wasn’t quite hammered, but bourbon flowed. It was late, as it always is at Prime, located as it is on the blue area of the moon. At a certain time of morning each year, tables disappear and a makeshift dance floor appears in the middle of the dining area. A few of the dazzling ladies and bolder, younger men might briefly wiggle in this open space, but it’s more of a staging area for the alphas to address their retinues. 

I find myself in the semicircle surrounding an NFL coach whose identity has been oh-so-cleverly concealed. He is pontificating in a way predictable for men of his age and socioeconomic status.

The problem with society is that young people suck and poor people suck harder.

Sure coach, whatever.

Everyone else is lazy but me and my golf buddies. We should be actively cruel to the needy. 

Uh-huh. Yeah. I am woozy. You are 6-foot-3 and red-faced with indignation. Arguing with you would be bad for my health and career. I’m gonna just nod …

And the worst part? Our taxes are too high because teachers are overpaid.

Excuse me? (Eyes turn green. Muscles begin to bulge).

As I remember it, I stunned the coach with a series of brilliantly-argued points about the nature of public services – fire companies, highway maintenance crews, public schools – and how they cannot be run like bottom-line for-profit industries because they must serve the needs of the entire community to function probably. The coach, again in my infallible memory, was left sputtering by impeccable rhetoric.

Are you f***ing kidding me?

Why no, coach. In fact, anyone with even a cursory knowledge of macroeconomics understands this fundamental principle. 

That’s f***ing bull***t.

You know what’s really bulls**t, coach? Ordering a Hall of Fame quarterback to kneeling to force overtime in a playoff game with 31 seconds left.

Of course, the real exchange likely involved more growls, grunts and burps than bon mots. 

The argument with this impossible-to-identify-so-don’t-try coach ends the way most drunken arguments that don’t escalate into fistfights end: with one party or the other distracted by a loud noise, an empty glass or a fluttering skirt and forgetting the topic of discussion, if not the other party’s existence. 

Anyway, that was all a decade ago, the coach is long retired, and sensing a potential conflict, I probably introduced myself to him that night as Doug Farrar.

Some fans of this coach’s former franchise will have already IDed the coach; for everyone else, I’ll give you between 8 and 43 seconds to figure it out.

To get to more recent news, we can now officially close the books on the Russell Wilson trade and — contrary to my expectations at the time — call it one of the worst of all time from a Broncos perspective. (I agree that the Walker trade remains #1, and I also think the Ricky Williams trade was worse, but it’s up there.) With this being a sunk cost, however, we can ask which of these deals you’d prefer:

• Russ to the Steelers for 1 yr/$1.21 million
• Cousins to the Falcons for 4yr/$180 million ($100 guaranteed)

Just looking at basic rate stats from last year that looks like a no-brainer, but that’s misleading — both QBs benefit from the NFL rating overrating empty-calorie behind-the-sticks completions but the 2023 Wilson benefits more, and the NFL rating also doesn’t penalize Russ enough for the sacks he takes. More advanced metrics show Wilson as average or a bit below last year, with Cousins better than average but clearly non-elite, which I think is right.

Still, I like what the Steelers did more. The fundamental problem with Cousins is that he’s a good player, but not good enough that it’s viable to build a championship team around him when he’s taking $45 million in cap space. The Steelers were a 10-7 team last year with awful QB play — getting ordinary performance for the league minimum would be a material improvement. And contrary to this analysis the fact that they’ve stopped kidding themselves about Kenny Pickett is a feature, not a bug. Given his performance last year I do have serious doubts about Arthur Smith as an OC, but that would be a problem no matter who the Steelers acquire.

The Steelers can see if Russ has a little more left than he’s showed over the last two years, and if it turns out he’s completely washed they can easily move on after the year. He can be a pain in the ass but Mike Tomlin has made it work with much more disruptive figures than Wilson. The Falcons, OTOH, now have a ton of money tied up in a QB who will be 36 on opening day and was a good but not championship-quality QB in his prime. I can understand Atlanta thinking they’re a real QB away from being seriously competitive in a thin conference, but I think they’re going to regret this deal, and the Vikings are right to finally pull of the band aid.