Mike Macdonald Explains Decision to Fire OC Ryan Grubb

[CalgaryFan05]

Shoot, he called shotgun from the END ZONE in the 2-safety game. Ridiculous. Then he doubled down and did it a 3rd time and got lucky we didn't have 3 safeties in the 1st half.

He was a complete ******* idiot. Glad he's gone.

 

[SoulfishHawk]

He's certainly not an idiot. Just wasn't a good fit here. He's a lot better suited for the college game.

 

[Sperrydogg]

First of all I get that McDonald and Grubb had different viewpoints on offensive scheme but that kind of stuff needs to be known before you hire the guy. Secondly, I would not necessarily assume that Huff is safe. All McDonald basically said was Huff is not tied to Grubb.

I agree that the direction should have been known ahead of time. But it’s an easy thing to say to justify the breakup. Imagine if he came out and said Grubb just wouldn’t run the damn ball and he called plays like a college game. All his throws were timing routes with no options underneath and we just sucked…

 

[Spin Doctor]

He's certainly not an idiot. Just wasn't a good fit here. He's a lot better suited for the college game.

That is the kind of thing you can get away with the the NCAA, especially with a wider field and slower athletes. A lot of times I found myself thinking that Grubb looked like he had a hard time adjusting to the size of an NFL field. His play calls made a lot more sense if you looked at it from the prospective of a college game. Unfortunately, the two games are completely different.

Even the successful offensive gurus in the NCAA that transitioned to the NFL struggled because of the switch.

Chip Kelly's offenses were potent but completely gassed his defense and lead to a lopsided TOP in the oppositions favor.
Kliff Kingsberry's offenses would run out of juice halfway through the season.

 

[SoulfishHawk]

Good points

 

[bmorepunk]

Talk about a guy unwilling to throw someone just fired under the bus. Couldn't really get any understanding, other than the reasons we already feel, of why he moved on from Grubb. He wouldn't even say what he wanted in an offense because it would point to what Grubb was not. Pretty classy dude.

He definitely did the right thing here.

A percentage of sports team fan bases would like to see coaches/players who don't work out suffer personally. There's too much desire for drama to be projected on these people for entertainment. This is absurd; these are real people, not characters on a show.

Grubb was a bad fit for this team and seemingly for the NFL game. Regardless of how that plays out behind the scenes you do the right thing and focus on the bad fit and move on. There's no need to hurt Grubb's career unnecessarily. The team doesn't need the negative attention.

 

[Mase]

-- Stop. Just stop. Some of your thought processes on who should or should not be let go are so painfully shallow. If coaching ability were based solely on onfield results, then offenses that finished in the bottom half of the league each year would just fire their OC's, and the same for defense.

-- When a good head coach evaluates his staff, he is looking for so many things, personality, symmetry, you name it. But when it comes to evaluating there ability to do their job, that comes from deep video research that 99.9% of you are not doing. Neither am I, by the way. He watches the film, often cut to look at what he is focusing on, and evaluates from that. If he looks at Grubb and sees that the alignment by the defense is causing Smith to audible to the pass too often, then Grubb is not really giving him the most effective run/pass choices at the line. As for Huff, he might have zero say on where a lineman is supposed to be, and is only responsible for coaching them on what to do when they get there. If the coach sees marked improvement and understanding, especially from younger players, that is a plus for that coach, even if the results aren't showing on the field yet. He may feel he has good offensive position coaches, but the "coordinator" for that side of the ball just isn't tying it all together well enough. THAT is how an OC gets cut loose, while the position coaches below him stay.

Mase

 

[SoulfishHawk]

Still doesn't mean he's an "idiot" though. Just wasn't a good fit, he didn't do a good job overall, he was sent packing.