The Knuckles: NFL Non-Playoff Edition

By Jeremy Gottlieb

January 9, 2015

5 minutes to read

Even though it’s postseason time in the NFL, we shouldn’t lose sight of those who failed to get there. Plenty of teams and players who won’t be participating in the playoffs are still around and ready to make news for being a bunch of knuckleheads, starting with the league itself, it’s duplicitous commissioner (Roger Goodell: Knucklehead-in-chief) and both his and his cronies’ consequence-free actions. Beyond that, there was no shortage of contestants in the first full week of 2015, so let’s not waste any more time and get right into this edition of The Knuckles!

BRONZE: Tim Jennings – Ever hear of Tim Jennings? He’s a middling cornerback for the Chicago Bears. And after this week, he is far better known than for anything he has done on the field for the putrid Bears’ defense.

Jennings was pulled over around noon on Interstate 85 outside of Atlanta on Wednesday for going 99 in a 65 mph zone. He said he hadn’t been drinking since 2 a.m. and refused a field sobriety test, which the cops deemed necessary seeing as how they noticed the smell of booze on his breath and, according to the police report, “had slightly bloodshot, watery eyes.’’ Thus, he was cuffed and brought in for a DUI, speeding and reckless driving. He spent roughly three hours locked up at the Gwinnett County Detention Center before being released on bond.

Fine. A football player gets popped for DUI in the middle of the day. Not exactly a surprise, sadly. But here’s what makes this particular instance different from your garden-variety DUI.

The reason Jennings was flying down the highway was because he was late for a parent-teacher conference at his kid’s school.

I mean, that’s some dedicated parenting, isn’t it? So what if you’re still feeling a little wasted from the night before? When you have a parent-teacher conference to get to, you’re gonna be there even if you have to go 99 and smell like a distillery to do it. Tim Jennings shouldn’t have been arrested, he should have immediately been nominated for Gwinnett County Father of the Year.

Going to guess that those three hours Jennings spent in the clink precluded him from actually making it to the parent-teacher conference. At least his heart was in the right place even though his head most certainly was not.

SILVER: The Cleveland Browns – For a few minutes during the season, it actually kind of felt like the Cleveland Browns had taken a step toward respectability and away from the total clusterbleep they usually are.

Then they panicked and started first round pick/eternal knucklehead Johnny Manziel in their most important game of the year. And it was back to reality for the Browns and their poor, long suffering fans.

The latest development in the Browns’ saga of misery comes in the form of yet another big shakeup with the coaching staff. Offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan, who had a pretty decent year in Cleveland after finally emerging from his father’s big, overrated, tanning bed manufactured shadow, quit on Thursday due to the butting of heads with the team’s front office over Manziel, among other things. It seems that the higher-ups wanted Manziel in the starting lineup, and frequently reminded Shanahan of this throughout the season despite the Browns winning seven of their first 11 games with Brian Hoyer under center and scoring no fewer than 21 points in nine of those 11 games.

Not to be outdone, Cleveland.com reported that one reason Shanahan felt like he had to go was because some of the coaches believed that “a high-ranking member of the Browns front office texted down to the sideline with opinions on playcalling’’ during games.

Not that anyone ranks any higher than Bill Belichick in the Pats’ front office but can you imagine for a second what would happen if, say, Jonathan Kraft decided to fire off a few texts to the sideline in the middle of a game wondering why Jonas Gray isn’t getting more run?

The bottom line is that this is so typical for the Browns, it hurts. From their postseason drought to the alleged criminal activity of their owner to their list of coaches being paid not to work for them. Let’s not forget Josh Gordon, Manziel, and every single other embarrassment that has befallen them over the years — this mess with Shanahan, whose departure means the Browns will have their sixth offensive coordinator in six years next season, fits the profile perfectly.

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GOLD: The Miami Dolphins – They grow knuckleheads in all shapes and sizes (and ages) in South Florida, where the Dolphins seem to have decided that they want to fight their division rival Jets for the honor of being the most ridiculous organization in the AFC.

Owner Stephen Ross, who clearly never watched web sensation “Too Many Cooks,’’ hired former Jets grand poohbah Mike Tannenbaum as his new executive vice president of football operations on Tuesday after Tannenbaum spent the 2014 season working as a Dolphins consultant. Tannenbaum joins general manager Dennis Hickey (hired last year), salary cap expert Dawn Aponte (whose title is vice president of football administration), team CEO Tom Garfinkel and head coach Joe Philbin, who has parlayed three non-playoff years, two of which have featured late-season collapses, into a contract extension.

It gets better. Tannenbaum, Aponte, Garfinkel and even Philbin will all report directly to Ross while Hickey will have his input filtered through Tannenbaum. He’ll maintain final say over the team’s 53-man roster and the draft but Tannenbaum was quick to remind the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel that “when you look at any draft board it’s a representative effort of a lot of people.’’

And on an even more entertaining note, Tannenbaum has also been working as an agent for NFL coaches for a few years. And amazingly, he still will despite his new job!

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This is so funny. The Dolphins haven’t won a playoff game since Dave Wannstedt and his killer stache was the coach back in 2000. They’ve made the playoffs just once since then, while cycling through seven coaches. You could make the argument that they’ve even fallen behind Buffalo in the race to catch the Patriots in the AFC East seeing as how the Bills (who have issues of their own) finished ahead of them in the standings this year.

Ross, who has screwed up his fair share of decisions since buying the team in 2008, doesn’t seem to realize that every time he throws another log on the raging fire that is his football team, it becomes more difficult for the organization to operate properly. Go down the list of NFL teams that achieve the most consistent levels of success. Do any of them have five major players – coach included – who have a say in the operation?

The answer is no. And that’s why the Dolphins will continue to wallow in knuckleheaded mediocrity.

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