DAVIE, Fla. (AP)—A text message Chad Pennington(notes) received at home provided the first hint of a promotion.
“Can you stop by please,” read the message from Miami Dolphins coach Tony Sparano.
“That ‘please’ kind of threw me,” Pennington said later.
Starting quarterbacks enjoy deferential treatment, and Sparano announced the change Wednesday, pulling the plug on the Chad Henne(notes) experiment in favor of a 34-year-old coming off the latest operation on his right shoulder.
“They both have strengths, and certainly weaknesses,” Sparano said. “At this particular time, my decision is Chad Pennington’s strengths might be suited a little bit more for where we need to be.”
The Dolphins (4-4) play host to Tennessee on Sunday, when Pennington will make his first start since his season-ending shoulder injury in Week 3 last year. He contemplated retirement but re-signed with Miami, where he has won praise as Henne’s mentor.
The two are good friends, and they met for an hour Tuesday after being informed of the lineup change.
“We got teary-eyed, because we have a really good relationship,” Pennington said. “The good thing about this situation is he’s on the front end of his career, and I’m on the back end of mine. So we’re not two dogs fighting over the same piece of meat.”
Henne agreed that his bond with Pennington remains strong.
“I’m going to stick by him and help him out as much as I can, and we’re in it together,” Henne said. “We’re in it to win a championship.”
The Dolphins began the season believing they were set for years to come with Henne. He became the starter in his second NFL season last year and threw for 2,878 yards, and he was on pace for 3,800 this year.
But the offense has scored only 11 touchdowns, which ties for second-worst in the NFL.
“The quarterbacks a lot of times are the ones put on the cross if things aren’t going well,” running back Ronnie Brown(notes) said. “They get the brunt of the backlash. But we’re all responsible for what we’re supposed to do.”
In 21 career starts, Henne has topped 300 yards five times, which is more than any passer in the Dolphins’ 45-year history except Dan Marino. But Henne threw 23 interceptions and only 20 touchdown passes while leading Miami to a record of 11-10.
“There are obviously things that I can want back,” Henne said. “Turnovers glare at you, and some of the decision-making.”
The offseason addition of Brandon Marshall(notes) gave Henne a Pro Bowl target, but they hooked up for only one score. Henne has 10 interceptions this year, including three in Sunday’s loss at Baltimore, and only eight scoring passes.
The switch caught Tennessee coach Jeff Fisher by surprise. Henne threw for 349 yards but also had three interceptions in an overtime loss against Tennessee last year.
“We’ll have to shift gears a little bit,” Fisher said. “I personally didn’t feel like Chad Henne was playing that bad. I’ve always been a Henne fan.”
If Miami’s productivity fails to improve under Pennington, Henne might be back in the lineup soon. Asked if the quarterback situation is now a week-to-week decision, Sparano said: “Chad Pennington is the quarterback right now.”
The coach made the change mindful of the need for a surge in the standings. The Dolphins trail New England and the New York Jets by two games in the AFC East and lost to both teams at home, but their schedule eases in the second half of the season.
“It is time to move,” Sparano said. “If you don’t move during this month, you’re going to be in the also-rans.”
He said he remains optimistic about the young quarterback’s future.
“This is not an indictment on Chad Henne at all,” Sparano said. “It’s not an indictment on his future. This player has gotten an awful lot better. But at this particular time, it’s something I believe I need to do for our team.”
Pennington, an 11th year pro, came to the Dolphins in 2008 and won the league’s comeback player of the year award for the second time. He earned the affectionate nickname “Coach Pennington” from teammates because of his take-charge personality, and threw for 3,653 yards to help transform the Dolphins into AFC East champions one year after a 1-15 season.
Arm strength has never been Pennington’s forte, and he has said his right shoulder probably won’t be 100 percent this season. He has dealt with soreness at times, but Wednesday’s practice left him encouraged.
“Things went really smooth,” he said. “I felt really good throwing the ball. I felt like today was my best day throwing since I’ve been here.”
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Monday, November 8, 2010
Spike TV exec says “The Ultimate Fighter” still fresh, seeking fighters over feuds
Part fight tournament, part male soap opera, Spike TV's long-running series "The Ultimate Fighter" has launched the career of dozens of UFC fighters.
But critics of the show point to the sometimes outlandish behavior of the fighters residing in the "TUF" house as a potential black-eye on the still-growing sport of mixed martial arts.
While the antics began in season one with Chris Leben and reached a fever pitch on the eighth edition with Junie Browning, Spike TV senior vice president Brian Diamond insists his network isn't actively seeking miscreants for the sake of ratings.
"There's a couple of things that are just taking place naturally in society and pop culture," Diamond told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com). "Anybody who's between the ages 21 and 34 most of the guys are probably in their 20s that come here they're living in a society where reality television is around them all the time. They're vlogging. They're blogging. They're on websites and Tweeting. The idea of having a sense of personality and being visual, it's something that's part of their normal lives.
"We're finding it, I wouldn't say easier, but less of a challenge for guys to come in with some level of personality."
Each season, hundreds of hopefuls show up to open tryouts around the globe hoping to get picked for the show based on their grappling and striking prowess. But the final stage of approval is an interview process where television executives try to determine who will provide a personality suitable for Spike TV airwaves.
But Diamond insists the company isn't actively seeking potential train wrecks.
"The reality is, with Junie, he came to us," Diamond said. "It wasn't like we said, 'Let's go find us a Junie Browning.' That guy was in casting two other times before he actually got cast on the show.
"The tough part with him is like anything else. You see a guy who's got raw talent and abilities, it's just his demons got in the way. You really wanted to give him an opportunity to see if he could weed those demons out. Unfortunately, it didn't necessarily happen, but it's like an MMA fight: you don't know how it's going to end until it ends because anything can happen in the last five seconds of the third round."
Diamond points to a particular member of the current 12th season of "The Ultimate Fighter," featuring UFC welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre and challenger Josh Koscheck in coaching roles, as the perfect example of how personalities can prove interesting without being destructive.
"[Fighters] know; they see the show," Diamond said. "They know that they have to be interesting. They don't have to be crazy, necessarily, but they just have to be interesting personalities.
"You watch Jonathan Brookins this season, and compared to 'Bruce Leeroy' (Alex Caceres), he's more low-key, but he's just as interesting. People want to get in his head and know who he is. There's almost an aura and a mystery around him. He's not boring. That's the difference."
Some critics suggest "The Ultimate Fighter" has run its course. Designed as a means to introduce the public to MMA, the show follows a similar format from season to season. Some suggest that format is stale, but Diamond disagrees.
"We challenge ourselves," Diamond said. "The fights to get into the house, adding the wild card, trying to find a unique combination of coaches whether it's Tito (Ortiz) and Chuck (Liddell), Rashad (Evans) and 'Rampage' (Jackson) or when Kimbo Slice came into the mix, those are things that we try to challenge ourselves on. But the reality is, people are still watching it.
"That would be like saying, I'm not going to watch the Daytona 500 because it's the same race ever year. Well, there are different drivers. We don't know what's going to happen. That's the reality, and in those things, they don't even tweak anything. They don't go like, 'Oh, the top three seeds have to be 50 yards back in the pack.' It's the same race.
"Super Bowl. World Series. The designated hitter was the last real big thing that entered baseball years ago. We always challenger ourselves to try and come up with something interesting and different, but we don't want to do anything contrived. We don't want to make it feel unorganic to the process."
Diamond points to UFC matchmaker Joe Silva's involvement in the selection process as proof of the value of the show. And while the Spike TV executive believes the show is still viable as entertaining programming, he believes there is also a real demand for "The Ultimate Fighter" by the mixed martial arts community.
"You see the change in the quality of the guys who come through here," Diamond said. "Used to be, you'd see guys who are really skilled in one set or another, or guys who were real novices who were just coming here for the fun of it. Now you see guys who are really dead serious and are more four- or five-tool players.
"We've also changed the qualifications a little bit. You have to have three pro fights. We were starting to get a lot of guys that would walk up to the table that had amateur records or no records at all. The skill-level is such that you've got to really know what you're doing to be on the show and get into the UFC. To that extent, it's really good because the quality of the guys is great, and I think there's even more of them out there that are even better."
Cowboys’ Jones forced to audition Garrett
Interim Dallas Cowboys coach Jason Garrett has the derisive nickname of “Redheaded Jesus” among many members of the Big D media. It’s a reference to how, after the 2007 season, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones gave Garrett a $3 million per year contract to keep the then-assistant from pursuing head-coaching opportunities with the Baltimore Ravens and Atlanta Falcons
Jones also made it clear that Garrett was the coach-in-waiting once the team was done with Wade Phillips, a coincidental twist considering the current situation. Finally, when the Cowboys spent the 2008 training camp with HBO’s “Hard Knocks,” Garrett got so much face time that he appeared to be more in charge than Phillips.
Garrett seemed to walk on water in the eyes of Jones and the rest of Cowboys management.
Now, Jones hopes Garrett can maneuver the Cowboys out of the mud and muck of a 1-7 disaster. The situation can’t get much worse after the Cowboys lost 45-7 to Green Bay on Sunday night – and the game wasn’t as close as that lopsided score. The situation was so bad that Jones, who has never fired a coach at midseason and at least five times said Phillips would finish, was left with nothing to do but make a change.
A big part of the motivation is that Jones still hopes to salvage Garrett. The only way to do that was to give Garrett a chance now.
“Could you imagine trying to sell [Garrett] to the fans [in the offseason] if they kept playing like this and he was the offensive coordinator?” a source close to Garrett said, rhetorically. “That wasn’t going to work. Jerry has to sell the fans for next year that something is going to turn this around. Jason has eight games to show something.”
With the team playing as if it hadn’t practiced at all (rather than the fact that the Cowboys had the longest training camp of any squad in the league), the perception is that no one involved with the coaching of this franchise is qualified to be part of the solution.
Thus, Garrett had to be put in a position of control now to get a start on cleansing the stench of this season from his skin. On Monday, Jones even started to lay some groundwork (some may call it wishful thinking) for Garrett to be the next permanent head coach.
“Jason certainly has been a part of long-term thinking for the Dallas Cowboys, for me,” Jones said during Monday’s media address. “I do believe Jason has the temperament, the disposition to affect a coach change. I think this is important. … His style is one that I think can be real effective. … He does have the opportunity to get the job long term. That opportunity would be obvious if we would do outstanding as a team.”
Fair enough, but really selling Garrett later on required that he get that chance now. Otherwise, Jones would be cornered into making another high-profile hire along the lines of Bill Parcells. Jon Gruden and Bill Cowher are the obvious names that carry weight to get fans excited.
Garrett, though, can influence Jones’ decision-making by showing him something in the season’s final two months. And realistically, the situation can’t get any worse. Before this season, the Cowboys were talking about becoming the first team to play a Super Bowl in its home stadium. That talk wasn’t unrealistic at the time
Now, some of the current Cowboys will be lucky to be parking cars at Cowboys Stadium come the first Sunday in February.
What has happened to the Cowboys is preposterous. While the team has lost quarterback Tony Romo(notes) to injury (fractured left clavicle), that only partially explains the past three losses. It doesn’t explain the collapse of the defense, which Phillips ran. That group, which includes Pro Bowlers DeMarcus Ware(notes), Jay Ratliff(notes) and Terence Newman(notes) has been a joke. Nothing demonstrates how little respect the team had for Phillips than the incompetence of the defense this season.
In that regard, just firing Phillips will be enough of a shot across the bow. The only way Jones could have been more direct with the message Monday is if it had been delivered by Ted Allen, the host of Food Network’s “Chopped.”
But even this eight-game tryout for Garrett may not be enough to make him marketable to the public. Really, Garrett has been as much of the problem as Phillips. Since a strong first season as offensive coordinator in 2007, Dallas’ offense has been inconsistent. Spectacular at times? Sure. Awful at times? Yep.
Jones talked about how Garrett has managed the offense to the three most productive statistical seasons in team history. That’s true, but don’t confuse statistics with winning.
The Cowboys have an offense that’s great when it’s playing with a lead because it has the personnel to milk the clock. However, one of Dallas’ issues this season is that it’s second to last in rushing (75.6 yards per game). While the running backs can be blamed for failing to produce, Garrett’s heavy reliance on passing has to be questioned. The play-calling deserves further scrutiny when you consider that the lumbering offensive line isn’t good at pass blocking. It is fair to say that Garrett hasn’t found a solution to that problem during his three-and-a-half seasons as the coordinator.
Garrett has been unable to do that despite having great talent at his disposal. Romo may have his faults, but he’s clearly an above-average player. The other skill positions have consistently been loaded with the likes of Jason Witten(notes), Miles Austin(notes), Felix Jones(notes), Marion Barber(notes), Terrell Owens(notes), Roy Williams and now rookie Dez Bryant(notes).
Winning with backup quarterback Jon Kitna(notes) shouldn’t have been so difficult. Instead, the Cowboys have turned into quitters. That’s harsh, but it’s true. This team quit on Phillips and on themselves. They have already reached the lowest point possible for a team.
Garrett can only make it better. The question is: How much better is enough for him to be the long-term solution?
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