Week 14 Line Update - 2 missing NFL games

Here are the lines for the final 2 games from the NFL this week:

NO
WAS 9.5

NE
MIA 5

Please include these if you would like on your picks for the week, and if you have already made picks let me know if you want to sub either of these games in as a replacement.

The Coaching Carousel is fired up and running already. What will happen?

ND
This was the obvious one - Weis is dundee, and any coach that has had any success the last 2 years is on the list of "potential" candidates...even though most of the top names have already said they are not interested. We'll see, College coaches lie for living so it's really hard to trust them and their words. For ND, I have to believe that as much as they say that they want a defensive mind, Brian Kelly and his spread offense will be the choice. I just can't see Stoops leaving the OK machine or Meyer leaving FLA regardless of what happens the rest of the year. Other names like Fitzgerald don't have a chance.

FSU
The run is finally over for Bowden. He's like 80, so I think it's the right move. Jimbo Fisher has been talked up for years as a great future head coach, so I guess we'll see what he can do next year. Getting athletes is never the problem there, but coaching them up hasn't really happened the last 5 years of Bobby's run.

SYR
They just fired their 1st year OC this week. My question is why? This Marrone fella is coming off very Brewster like with this move. The guy comes in and teaches a new scheme to an offense with 1 playmaker and a QB who is playing football for the first time in 5 years...and he put up more YPG and the same PPG as the Gophers but you fire him? Either this is what should happen to bad offense (Fisch should then be shown the door) or this is an overreaction.

Speaking of Mr. Fisch, how about this one...
A guy named Dandy Don, who appears to be the Sid of the LSU program, is touting Jedd Fisch as the next OC at LSU to revive that offense. This is a guy who's scheme didn't work at all against B10 defenses...I'm not sure if I like his odds in the SEC. I saw this on an LSU message board and the Tiger faithful were going crazy and spewing out all of our anemic offensive numbers from this year. Likely to happen, well, just like everything Sid says, I would say no...but funny that his name is even in these conversations considering the awful start he had to his tenure here at MIN.

I'm not quite ready to pull the plug on our coach, but I may be after the bowl game. In all honesty, this one game shouldn't change anything...but for Mr. Maturi I think it could. He needs to get us "on the right track" as fast as possible, and I'm not sure we are there right now. A likely matchup with MIZZOU in the Insight Bowl could be ugly considering how we looked over the last few games of the season. If it looks like last year's crushing we got from Kansas, I think he may pull the plug. But I'm only in favor if Maturi has a sneaky great hire (i.e. Tubby) in his back pocket that is willing to come on board and has confirmed that before Brew is gone. Hopefully Joel is calling a certain Mr. Tuberville righ now and checking his interest levels...if he is indeed willing to come to MIN, then it's a no brainer and I would fire Brew today. However, if we are unable to find a big-time sure thing upgrade, then let him play out next year and see what happens. I don't want to overreact and fire him on Jan 1st, then go on an extensive search to end up with another 1st timer hoping to make his way work at MIN...we need a proven COACH, not a recruiter.

I have really changed course on this stance since the Brew hiring. It made sense to me at the time that you need a guy to recruit better players and that the playes can win you more games. I think I was wrong on this point. Example 1 is Chuck Weis. He has unreal recruiting classes every year at ND, and they ended up with even worse records than the Gophers over the past few seasons! If you can't coach it doesn't matter who you have. And if you can coach it doesn't matter who you have. Obviously, we have upgraded talent, and that is great - Mason just apparently refused to battle for any recruits and hoped that the unknown guys worked out, which happened sometimes but isn't the right way to build a consistent winner. Just think if we could find a guy that is a great coach and is willing to work at recruiting the best talent! Winning will do enough to get you the players, but getting better players won't necessarily get you wins on its own. Over his 3 seasons, Brew really hasn't shown much in the way of coaching that I can recall. The team looks unprepared, has no identity, commits too many penalties, can't win big games, and is very inconsistent...not things that happen to a team with a good or great coach.

I'm hoping he totally redeems himself and we play great in the bowl game and get something rolling for next season...however, I'm becoming more and more bored with his constant inability to say anything bad about his team or even anything realisitic about his team. It's 3 years in, we're basically right at the same level we were in the average Mason years, so year #4 is make or break time. I personally think he will see next year and he'll fail. I know by next Summer if he's still around I'll get into the kool-aid and find a way to be more positive about it, but at first glance right now I would peg us to go 5-7 or 4-8 next year...yikes. I don't think he'd even be able to see the Iowa game at TCF if this is the case.

Alright, enough rambling...send over you picks by Noon Tomorrow.