The NFL now enters its annual game of Blame the Coach as teams that failed to make the postseason search for scapegoats to take the fall for underperforming players.
Bruce Arians escaped the fate by announcing his retirement, something that rarely happens in the ranks of NFL head coaches.
He goes out a winner following a narrow, season-ending 26 – 24 win over the Seattle Seahawks that eliminated the Seahawks from the playoffs.
Arians was declared Coach of the Year twice during his career, once with the Cardinals and once with the Indianapolis Colts.
“The tears you see are really tears of joy, peace,” Arians said in quotes reported by nfl.com.“I’ll miss the players. I’ll miss coming out of the locker room, hearing the national anthem because it still gets me.”
Other coaches fell to the axe.
The Detroit Lions parted ways with Jim Caldwell. The Chicago Bears sent John Fox to the exits. Chuck Pagano was dismissed by the Colts after a four win – 12-loss season and Jack Del Rio was ushered out by the Oakland Raiders after the team failed to follow up on a promising campaign the season prior.
Del Rio was given the unenviable task of announcing his own firing.
Caldwell’s firing by Detroit was something of a surprise. Detroit has been bad for years and managed to finish the season with a winning record of 9 – 7. That record has gotten teams to the playoffs in the past, but in this year’s NFC, it was not sufficient, as the NFC South Division had three teams with above 10 wins.
Nine wins and seven losses was enough to get the Buffalo Bills and the Tennessee Titans into the postseason, which only goes to point out, that in gridiron, a bad bounce here and a missed officiating call there is detrimental to head coach job security.
