02-22-2019, 01:47 PM
(02-22-2019, 10:50 AM)fredtoast Wrote: When you are in direct compatition with other who are hiring at the same time you usually try to prioritize your interviews so you can hire your first choice.
During free agency fans never say "Wait until you interview a bunch of players before signing one" insteadd they want to bring in the top target first and "don't let him leave town without signing a contract."
So who should they have hired?
Look around the league at the other DCs that have been hired this year.
Cardinals hire Vance Joseph... he wasn't coming here after losing out on the HC job.
Bears hire Chuck Pagano... meh, retread
Browns hire Steve Wilks... was just fired after one year
Broncos hire Ed Donatell... seems like a good hire
Patriots hire Greg Schiano... meh, people laughed it off when brought up here, and Belichick runs the defense anyways
Jets hire Gregg Williams... a lot of people on here didn't want him
Bucs hire Todd Bowles... seems good
Dolphins hire Patrick Graham... who?
Most of these positions were filled before the Bengals had their HC... that's a sacrifice you make when you decide to wait for your top candidate to coach in the Super Bowl. A lot of those teams who did hire more known DCs had to make some questionable HC hires (see: Gase, Kingsbury, the Packers hire) in order to be able to do so. I'll take that tradeoff.
Heck, compare is to the only other team in the same boat as us - the Dolphins. They also had to get a late start because they hired a Super Bowl coach. How many time was Patrick Graham's name brought up in the lead to our DC coach? How many people do you think would be excited if the Bengals hired the Packers linebackers coach?
Folks can get all pissy about it being a weak pool of candidates if you want, but I think it's pretty silly to jump down the Bengals throat because the guy they decided was the best of the bunch isn't good enough for us messageboard general managers. Maybe next year or two years from now there are stronger candidates out there, and then if Lou's not working on you move on - they've proven they're willing to do it. But the Bengals had to hire *somebody*, and until someone starts actually telling me who that *somebody* should have been I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt.
...and you KNOW that if they *hadn't* hired Lou the Bengals would be getting killed on her for *that*! Damned if they do, damned if they don't.
