@MarkKnudson41
Strike One: Urban Meyer has some roots in Fort Collins. Before starting his uber-successful head coaching career, from 1990–’95 Meyer was the wide receivers’ coach at CSU for Earle Bruce and then Sonny Lubick. He and Sonny remain good friends.
But Meyer wasn’t in town last week to visit old buddies. He was in the Fort to meet with Colorado State’s Joe Parker and urge the Athletic Director/Search Committee-of-One to hire current Ohio State’s Assistant Head Coach Tony Alford – a former Ram – as the new head football coach at CSU.
Meyer told Parker that Alford was the “obvious choice” and they’d be doing the right thing by bringing home the former Rams’ running back. The sentiment has been echoed by many, including former CSU players.
Alford was a 1,000-yard rusher and Doak Walker Award nominee during his playing days at CSU in the late 1980’s – before Meyer arrived. So, they weren’t in FoCo together…but they’d coach together later on the biggest stage.
After graduating from CSU, Alford began a coaching career that took him to Iowa State, Washington, Louisville and Notre Dame, where he was a finalist for National Recruiter of the Year. In 2015, Meyer lured Alford to Ohio State, where he became the Assistant Head Coach and running backs coach – mentoring guys like current NFL star Ezekiel Elliott. Needless to say, Alford understands what it takes to create a winning culture.
A 27-year veteran of the coaching ranks, Alford has a wide and varied resume. It’s much like the one Jim McElwain possessed before he got his first head coaching gig at CSU in 2012.
In addition, Alford has one key attribute that McElwain lacked: He’s got roots in Fort Collins, a desire to not only have THIS job, but to keep it for the long haul. Alford isn’t looking at CSU as a stepping-stone. The ace recruiter – who currently canvas’s this region seeking top tier talent for the Buckeyes – wants to re-establish roots in Fort Collins (where his wife is from and would like to settle down) and just as importantly, re-establish a local recruiting base.
In recent years CSU’s in-state recruiting has been pretty poor. Of the starting 22 against Boise State, just five were from Colorado – and two of those were former walk-ons. By contrast, 10 were from the deep south. It really can’t be argued that players from Colorado are going to be more passionate and play harder while representing their home state than guys from region a thousand miles away. “State Pride,” remember?
Of course, Alford won’t recruit only Colorado kids, but he’d get many of the best ones to stay home and form a nucleus that has a passion for the name on the front of the jersey. That’s been missing at CSU.
Alford isn’t the only qualified candidate for the job. He’s just very clearly the BEST candidate for the job. Let’s hope Joe Parker listens to Urban Meyer and hires “the obvious choice.”
Strike Two: Major League Baseball’s annual Winter Meetings take place this week in San Diego, with the Colorado Rockies expected to be interested bystanders in terms of player movement. Most expect the Rockies to stay out of the bidding for free agents, and they’re more not than likely to be involved in any big trades.
Coming off a lousy 71-91 2019 season, the Rockies clearly need improvements. Can those – as the front office seems to believe – all be internal?
Perhaps. But that depends on how willing the front office is to keep players like Daniel Murphy, Ian Desmond and Wade Davis in full-time back up (or mop up) roles. It sure would be easier and more efficient to trade one or more of them and make room for guys like Sam Hilliard, even if you have to eat some salary.
There’s one key free agent move Colorado should make: The Rockies could and should sign mid-level free agent Kevin Pillar, most recently seen patrolling center field for National League West rival San Francisco.
Pillar is an outstanding defensive centerfielder – exactly the kind of guy you need at spacious Coors Field. The soon-to-be 31-year-old’s offense is mediocre, but his defense more than makes up for it. If the 2020 Rockies are going to get back to contending, then they have to return to being an exceptional defensive team – which every Colorado play-off team has been. Pillar in centerfield would be a lynchpin to build an excellent defensive outfield around.
Wanna help improve the pitching staff? Put some players that aren’t defensive liabilities on the field behind them (which was not the case last season.)
Would Rockies brass be willing to make such a move? It would need to be in conjunction with a salary dump or two – like jettisoning Murphy and Davis for example. If that could happen, then maybe they’d look at Pillar.
But there’s one other pretty obvious move that would need to happen to make room in the outfield for Pillar – trading Charlie Blackmon to the American League.
Hanging on to the popular Blackmon for 2020 and playing him in right field – when he’s clearly well below average and at this stage in his career much more suited to be a designated hitter – would be a mistake.
While Blackmon remains an elite major league hitter, he’s a major liability on defense. And history shows us that Rockies play-off teams have ALL been outstanding on defense – which has been immeasurably helpful to the pitching staff.
Clearly the Rockies don’t need to go out and throw money around this off season. But a couple salary dump trades plus one mid-level free agent acquisition could have far reaching benefits.
Strike Three: To quote Ricky Bobby (Will Ferrell) in Talladega Nights, “That. Just. Happened.”
Yes, you really watched the struggling Denver Broncos suddenly and astonishingly flash back to 1998 and put a hurting on the first-place Houston Texans.
The Broncos first-half performance was reminiscent of the (QB) John Elway days: Four possessions produced three touchdown drives and a field goal. There was also a defensive touchdown, no punts and just one penalty. Pretty close to perfect.
No, the finish wasn’t perfect. After building a 38-3 lead, they did what every other NFL team would do in the same circumstances – buttoned things up, played not to lose and allowed Houston to score three second half TD’s to make the score more respectable. But make no mistake, this was a beat down.
Pretty amazing.
Rookie quarterback Drew Lock won his second straight start, passing for more than 300 yards and three touchdowns. Can he finally be the long sought after “franchise QB” Denver has tried in vain to draft for oh these many years? Early returns look promising. Lock looks confident, strong and mobile. He looks like a leader – something Denver hasn’t had in the 60 starts that have come between Peyton Manning’s last game and Lock’s first.
Right now, at least, it doesn’t look like Denver will need to spend a high draft pick on another “coin flip” quarterback. This coin might have finally landed on “heads.”
It’s truly astonishing how many coin flips the Broncos have lost when drafting a QB over the years. Remember – they traded for John Elway and signed Jake Plummer and Peyton Manning as free agents. Those are the best three quarterbacks in team history to this point. They got Craig Morton in a trade for the final years of his career as well.
With apologies to Steve Tensi and Frank Tripucka, let’s look at the guys drafted by Denver who have taken regular season snaps since the AFL-NFL merger in 1970:
The list includes John Hufnagel, Craig Penrose, Mark Herrmann (part of the Elway trade), Gary Kubiak, Tommy Maddox, Brian Griese, Tim Tebow, Brock Osweiler, Paxton Lynch and Trevor Siemian…prior to Lock.
How many of these coin flips would you say ended up on “heads?”
One of those guys (Kubiak) helped Denver win a Super Bowl as a head coach; one (Cutler) went on to a semi-decent career after he left here. Still, the fact is more of these guys have had successful broadcasting careers than successful NFL playing careers.
For every team, drafting a quarterback – especially nowadays – is a coin flip. With the variance in college offenses, you never really know what you’re going to get. So, you take a shot and flip the coin.
They say that if you flip a coin 10 times and it comes up tails 10 times, the odds of it coming up heads the 11th time…are still 50-50. Which brings us back to Lock. Could the Broncos maybe, just maybe, have had the 11th coin flip really land on heads? For real? Stay tuned.