Letter to Bob Harlan
This letter was faxed today, Monday, January 10, 2005, to Bob Harlan, President of the Green Bay Packer organization.Mr. Harlan,
I know that with every tough loss you must hear from irate fans offering criticism, and complaints. I won’t offer any of those things in this note, but I will quickly lay out my three strongest reasons for why Mike Sherman should not continue as head coach and general manager.
1.
We should reasonably expect that every coach and every team, no matter how talented, will experience a complete disaster of a game from time to time. It even happened to the Green Bay Packers in 1996 (in Kansas City) and 1997 (in Indianapolis). In games like these, you have a collapse of both the offense and defense where everything seemingly goes horribly wrong. As fans, we need to understand that. However, I do not think that a good team or a good coach experiences games like this routinely 2-3 times a year. This year we had collapses against Tennesse, Philadelphia, and yesterday against the Vikings. Last year, we had collapses at Detroit and at Arizona. In the previous year we had collapses at the NY Jets, at Tampa Bay, and at home against the Falcons. In 2001 we had collapses at Minnesota and at the St. Louis Rams. That’s 10 collapses in four years.
These complete collapses simply do not occur this regularly to good teams or good coaches. Mike Sherman has not been able to figure out how to prevent his team from suffering these collapses. And, worse yet, he has not figured out how to stop the bleeding once these games are underway. Watching the game this weekend was like watching a heart-breaking re-run of all the games I mentioned above.
2.
Mike Sherman has not put together a strong staff and has not corrected problems that are obvious. He fired Ed Donatell and hired Mike Slowik. The result? The Packers have the worst defense in the NFL. Now I know that they are not the worst defense statistically, but this is the worst defense I’ve seen in my 34 years of watching pro and college football. I’m sure you’re aware of the great number of defensive coordinators who were let go this past year. Sherman’s decision to hire Slowik stands out as possibly the worst personnel decision made in the entire NFL in 2004. It is in this decision that you can directly compare his performance to other teams that changed their defensive coordinators. The results speak for themselves.
Many fans and sports commentators have been calling for Tom Rossley to be replaced for several years now. Brett Favre himself had uncharacteristically voiced his disapproval of Rossley’s play calling. Sherman either did not see that there was a problem, or did not want to admit it. If not for Rossley’s unfortunate heart attack, Sherman would have never replaced Rossley and would still be defending him to this very day. We all saw the positive impact on the offense once Rossley’s play calling duties were relieved due to his health condition.
Do you remember when the Packers special teams performed poorly under Mike Holmgren? Holmgren realized it was a problem and personally took over the special teams coaching duties. He put everyone on notice that poor performance and mistakes would not be tolerated. Mike Sherman has had poor special teams play each year that he’s been here. He’s done NOTHING about it.
3.
Finally, Mike Sherman is a poor judge of talent. I’m sure you are aware that Chris Gamble was available in the draft when Sherman picked Ahmad Carroll. Imagine how different the defense would have been with a steady corner opposite Al Harris. He has drafted only 2 starters in the 3 years he’s been in sole control of the draft. In fact, he’s only drafted 2 starters out of the past 4 drafts. The only successful draft was in 2000, a draft he had very little to do with.
The Tim Couch and BJ Sander debacles came at a time when the defense desperately needed help on the line and in the defensive backfield. His meager attempts to address those areas through the draft and free agency have failed.
Finally, I would like to say that yesterday was the first time I ever turned off a Packer game before the end. We used to have access to season tickets at County Stadium. I went to countless games in the 70’s and 80’s, never leaving until the end. I’ve watched every game, never walking away from the TV in disgust, no matter how poorly we did. But yesterday I simply couldn’t bare to watch the same scenario play out again under Sherman’s watch. A bad, repeating nightmare. Please put an end to it.
Thank you for your time,
**Signature**
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