Blaming The Players; Lauding Mike Sullivan
Monday, July 9th, 2012
Former New York Giants wide receiver Amani Toomer raved about the Bucs hiring Mike Sullivan as an offensive coordinator.
There have been many stories in recent weeks coming from a variety of sources — Jeff Faine and Aqib Talib being a couple — referencing what a country club-like atmosphere there was around One Buc Palace under the Raheem Morris administration.
But two former NFL players, Tim Ryan and Amani Toomer, while co-hosting Movin’ the Chains Friday, heard exclusively on SiriusXM NFL Radio, pointed a finger at Bucs players for the grotesque 10-game losing streak to end the season, not on Morris.
A caller mentioned to Ryan and Toomer he found it odd all of the stories that have been typed in recent weeks condemning Morris.
Caller: Kellen Winslow leaves and all of a sudden, things come out about a lack of leadership. Talib comes out and talking about how loose things were…
Tim Ryan: He’s got no room to talk! Talib should just put a cork in it.
Caller:… Right right, but is that an indictment on Raheem?
Ryan: It is.
Amani Toomer: Yes.
Ryan: I think the biggest indictment Amani is the 10 consecutive losses last year and the play they were putting on the field. It was putrid.
Toomer: No question. If you are a head coach, the one thing that people up top, the executives, are most scared of is they are scared the team is going to quit on your head coach and obviously with 10 straight losses in a row, that team quit on their head coach, there was no way they could bring Raheem Morris back. There is no coming back from losing 10 games in a row, especially when you have the talent which they showed the year before that they can be a contender. To go from that to being a laughing stock — Tampa Bay has come way too far from where they were at in the 70s and 80s and then to win their Super Bowl, they did so much to get that fanbase to be on board and to go backwards was just not acceptable.
Ryan: Alright, Vincent Jackson comes in, Carl Nicks comes in. They draft Doug Martin, Dallas Clark comes in for K2, your thoughts on what the Bucs did on offense and does it parlay into more points scored and more W’s for the Bucs.
Toomer: Oh, I think it really does, especially when they got their new offensive coordinator Mike Sullivan. He is going to put this thing together. He was my position coach at the Giants for a while. I really respect him a lot. I know he understands how to deal with personalities and to deal with people. I think he will get Josh Freeman — he is the guy credited with changing Eli Manning’s fortunes around, to cut down on Eli Manning’s 25 interceptions he had the year before (Sullivan was the Giants quarterback coach). So I am really looking at Josh Freeman being a much better quarterback than he was last year; more of the quarterback he was in 2010. With Carl Nicks on the inside and Vincent Jackson on the outside, this team, they show signs of being reckoned with in the near future.
Joe’s of the mind both Ryan and Toomer have a point. One can debate whether Morris was cut out for the job or not (his overall record after three seasons suggest he was not) but it wasn’t Morris that was dogging it on the defensive side of the ball, a pattern that sickened new Bucs coach Greg Schiano as he studied tape of last season, flatly saying in his first full-length interview after getting the Bucs job that such cowardly play against the run “will not be tolerated.”
Joe also was intrigued by how strongly Toomer spoke about Sullivan. In Joe’s eyes, that’s high praise coming from a guy that practiced with him for years.