Billick, Kirwan Take Bucs To Task

September 10th, 2009

Super Bowl winning coach Brian Billick and Pat Kirwan of Sirius NFL Radio indirectly lashed out at the Bucs Wednesday for firing offensive coordinator Jeff Jagodzinski.

OK, so Joe wasn’t going to bring up the Jeff Jagodzinski firing again unless something came up.

Well, something came up.

Early Wednesday evening Joe was driving around in his truck listening to Mad Dog Radio with Chris Russo as well as Sirius NFL  Radio. Former NFL coach Brian Billick has been making the rounds promoting his new book and did interviews with Russo, who went to a commercial right after the interview so Joe quickly flipped to Sirius NFL Radio.

Who did Joe hear right away beginning an interview with Tim Ryan and Pat Kirwan? Yup. Brian Billick.

Billick was outspoken in his disgust at how three offensive coordinators were canned just days before the NFL season began. With Ryan and Kirwan, co-hosts of “Movin’ the Chains” on Sirius NFL Radio, Billick said of the firings, “It astounds me. As a coach, I think to myself, ‘Can’t we at least lose a game?'”

With Russo, Billick told Mad Dog it was his belief with Jagodzinski (and the Bills with the firing of Turk Schonert) that “the owners and the general manager and the coach” were all in on Jagodzinski’s firing.

Billick called this move by the Bucs when he later spoke with Kirwan and Ryan as a “gang mentality.”

Billick also said that the NFL, being a copycat league, saw what the Chiefs did and the Bucs and Bills decided such a drastic move wasn’t so bad.

Kirwan went on to tell a story (likely referring to his time with the Jets) about how premature he though firing Jagodzinski was. He didn’t call out the Bucs specifically but he could only be talking about the Bucs. Joe will detail this shortly.

Kirwan said he once worked with an NFL team (Jets?) where a new offensive coordinator was disorganized and wasn’t doing much in practice. Kirwan thought the coach was a virtual train wreck with the upcoming season being the crash.

“But on game day, damn, this guy was calling a helluva game from the booth,” Kirwan said. “It was obvious then why he was hired for the job. Now with these guys, we’ll never know.”

These guys?

Kirwan had to be referring to Jagodzinski and the Bucs. Chan Gailey, who was fired by the Chiefs which seemed to start the snowball of offensive coordinators being fired, has extensive experience as an offensive coordinator. Schonert also has NFL experience as an offensive coordinator.

Jagodzinksi did not. So by process of elimination, Kirwan had to be referring to the Bucs.

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