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DavidAOlson -> RE: Mike Priefer must GO (9/2/2015 5:36:03 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: David F.
...
Herein lies the dirty little secret of Zimmer. He LOVES Priefer. I listened to an interview of Zimmer on Sirius NFL not long after he was hired. They specifically asked him about keeping Priefer in light of everything that was going on. Zimmer laughed it off and then started to make a comment about how insignificant of an offense Priefer had committed and then cut himself off. He chuckled and dismissed the whole thing.
Zimmer is an awesome coach and since he wasn't here during the 'nuke island' ordeal I give him a reluctant free pass. I have little doubt that he and Priefer are peas in the same pod when it comes to gay rights but... he hasn't done anything or said anything negative or stupid so - free pass.
Zim's doing what he's paid to do: coach football and scream obscenities at players when they don't perform well. He's got so many f-bombs at the ready that he doesn't have to resort to slurs. Whatever his personal opinions, I suspect he only cares about what happens on the field. And he cares a ****ing ****ing ****ing lot.
I thought Zim kept Priefer around because he knew that if he let him go he'd be out of football. Nobody was going to hire him coming off that media mess. He could probably get another job now.
But Priefer's positives... I thought I put up a fairly solid catalog of his strengths and weaknesses earlier.
His combination of punting and punt coverage isn't very good. Maybe it's just variance that punters have off years when he works with them, but Colquitt, Kluwe, and Locke have all had relatively bad years when he was their coach. There isn't a punter whose had a good year while he was their coach.
I used to give him a bump up for Walsh's rookie year, but after last year, I dropped the FG kicking to neutral. Kickoff coverage is fine, largely driven by Walsh's leg.
Many years ago, I timed Loeffler's snaps. They were extremely fast, much faster than other snappers I timed. Last year he wasn't very good, and I've read that his snaps were slow. That drop-off didn't happen overnight. It's on Priefer that he hadn't sought competition for Loeffler before this year. And there have been rumblings that Locke was struggling with bad snaps, well, then very likely Kluwe was struggling with them too. And it's likely on Priefer for not noticing that Kluwe both managed to handle those snaps for Walsh's rookie year, and to be a decent punter despite those snaps because Locke certainly wasn't.
Prefer has had really good return men --- Harvin, Sherels, Patterson. He deserves credit for developing Sherels, but likely not the other two.
Considering Locke's performance, and a number of other factors, I think Kluwe's claims about Priefer are more credible than Priefer's denials, such as the deliberate downgrades. For a professional coach, that's inexcusable.
(Yeah, I know an "independent" management person reviewed him, but everybody knew what answer he was supposed to give. And there's still the Raiders happy with Kluwe or King, after.)
Overall, he's not an unusually good special teams coach. No better than average NFL, likely somewhat below (and probably much better than the typical collegiate coach --- same as below average NFL players). If Loeffler's snaps were at the root of the punting & kicking issues, then maybe he'll look like a genius this year. But if that happens, it's at least a year too late.
I would priefer (hee) a different ST coach. Maybe someone will buy his shtick and hire him as a head coach. That was the buzz before the Kluwe incident. Or maybe he's still too radioactive.
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