The Legacy of Jeff Fisher is Encapsulated in This Very Column; Sportswriters with Good Intentions Making Excuses for His Mediocrity

I have come back to vanquish my foe, Jeff Fisher. Apparently he is my foe. It's not that I dislike Jeff "8-8" Fisher*, it's that I grow weary of his friends/future colleagues in the media who have made excuses and reason out why he has been overly mediocre for most of the latter stages of his coaching career.

*You know I've been ranting about Fisher for a long time since his nickname to me is "8-8" and not "7-9." His teams going 8-8 are his legacy with the Titans and now it's been updated to "7-9" after his stint with the Rams.

So Dan Pompei wrote a column, and it IS well-written prose, about Jeff Fisher and his complicated legacy while making excuses for Fisher. At this point, even Peter King has kind of given up doing Marvin Demoff's bidding for Fisher. Fisher had to overcome things while he was a head coach. It's not like ALL NFL COACHES HAVE TO OVERCOME ADVERSITY TO BE SUCCESSFUL. But the media-driven narratives to help Fisher's legacy out try to make Fisher an outlier in order to give the perception he got such a bad break. It's not true. Stop making his mediocrity and inability to succeed with the Rams more than it is. He's just not a great head coach anymore. I spoke about this Dan Pompei column on Twitter and then got motivated to do more writing, so here we are.

During the media-driven negotiations (where guys like Peter King drummed up a standoff between the Dolphins and Rams in order to jack Fisher's price up), Pompei was used as a negotiating tool as well.





You are Jeff Fisher,

If true, I accept that I failed in Los Angeles and will retire with my pile of cash not earned through my failure with the Rams.

and if you listen to a few minutes of sports talk radio, you will hear opinions—even from people you have been friendly with for 40 years—about how great it is that you are out of work.

When I say Jeff Fisher's friends protect and make excuses for him, here is an example. So Fisher's friends should not be honest about the outcome from his head coaching job in St. Louis? Everyone is supposed to blow smoke up Fisher's ass, because he's such a nice guy?

You walk out to the driveway of the team facility on the campus of Cal Lutheran where the buses leave. You have your 10-week-old golden retriever in your arms. Hunter is her name, and everyone who sees her can't help but love her.

The aim of this column, though well-written, becomes clear. We need to humanize Fisher more by talking about how some of his players love him, plus he has a puppy. You can't hate puppies, so you can't hate Jeff Fisher for failing with the Rams, which means Jeff Fisher didn't fail with the Rams.

You are Jeff Fisher, and your ride has been a wild one.

Most NFL coaches have had a wild ride in the process of paying their dues. Though in defense of Fisher, he did not know when he took the Rams job they could relocate. See, in this article Fisher was clearly taken off guard by the suggestion he took the job with the Rams knowing they would relocate. 

Wait, that's not at all true and it seems Fisher took the job knowing the Rams could move. I hate to interrupt this pity party for Fisher, but he took a job with the Rams knowing they could relocate and then used that relocation as a reason for his failure. But anyway, the "wild ride" and excuses for failure based on relocation, they are VERY convincing to me.

You were named interim head coach of the Houston Oilers in November 1994. In your first game, you scrapped the run-and-shoot offense the Oilers had been using and went conventional, even though you had only one tight end on the roster. Then in the last game of the season, you switched back to the run-and-shoot for your only victory of the year.

This is supposed to compliment Fisher's ability to adapt, but really only speaks to his inability to put a coherent, effective offense on the field during his first season with the Oilers to the point he had to scrap his offense and go back to what worked better previously. But again, I'm supposed to feel bad for Jeff Fisher, so I need to get in that frame of mind.

In your first full year as head coach of the Oilers, the talk about moving the team from Houston began. Houston turned on the Oilers. You would, in reality, be coaching without a home-field advantage for the first four years of your head coaching career.

You took your team to the Super Bowl in your first season in your new city. Your future team beat your present team 23-16 in one of the most exhilarating Super Bowls ever. 

I'm not sure the best argument for Jeff Fisher's future employment in the NFL is, "Well, he USED to be a good head coach."

The next year, your star quarterback Steve McNair became disheartened and wanted to quit. The two of you spent 10 days in the middle of the season talking it through. A little more than two years after McNair was voted co-MVP of the league, your owner, Bud Adams, abruptly declared McNair could not work out at the team facility because he had yet to agree to restructure his contract.

This is an odd circumstance, but again, other coaches do not make excuses (or have excuses made for them over a decade later) when there are injuries or issues with his team. And notice how Pompei doesn't give a date to when McNair was locked out of the facility, because if he did say it was 2006 when the lockout of McNair occurred then the reader would say, "So Fisher went from having McNair as his quarterback to having Young as his quarterback, that didn't sound like a bad deal at the time." Pompei wants the reader to think McNair being locked out of the team facility was an incident from which it was hard for Fisher to help his team recover. In reality, McNair got locked out in the Spring, before the draft, before mini-camp, and before training camp. There was plenty of time to recover and get the Titans ready for the 2006 season.

Your owner, however, would get you another quarterback in 2006: a first-round pick neither you nor your general manager wanted. You were to make do with the tempestuous Vince Young.

Vince Young had a troubled career with the Titans, but calling Young tempestuous and not including any information from Vince Young's point of view regarding how Saint Jeff "8-8" Fisher treated him is revisionist history at best. The point of this column isn't to investigate Jeff Fisher's flaws, of course. The point is to rehab Fisher's image and help make excuses for his performance as head coach in St. Louis, while painting a picture of Fisher as a good person whose kind nature can't be separated from his poor performance with the Rams. Any information contrary to this goal has no place in the space contained within the column.

You and the Titans eventually had enough of each other.

Jeff Fisher got fired after not having won a playoff game since 2003. Fisher also had disagreements with Bud Adams over whether Fisher's son could join the staff. It was time to move on. Again, he is not the first NFL coach in this situation. 

After a year away from the game, you turned down the Dolphins and became head coach of the Rams in 2012, taking over a team that had averaged three wins per year over the previous five years.

And on the subject of drama, before you coached your first game, your defensive coordinator, Gregg Williams, was suspended for a year for something he did when he worked for another team.

Actually, Williams was suspended indefinitely and Fisher released him from his contract in January 2013, then Fisher hired Gregg Williams back as his defensive coordinator in February 2014. Williams coached the Rams defense for 2.75 seasons and then was fired when Fisher was fired. So Jeff Fisher had Gregg Williams as his defensive coordinator for the majority of his time with the Rams. Again, a person who has this information may say, "But if Gregg Williams was so crucial then why didn't the Rams turn it around when he eventually came back to the team?" and possibly see Williams' suspension as an unfortunate incident, but easy to overcome considering it happened 6 months before the season began and he had not even had a chance to install his defense yet, plus Williams' defense didn't help Fisher win games after the suspension ended. Information relevant to why these excuses given for Fisher's lack of success in St. Louis are faulty is not the point of this column though.

Five of your players made a statement about the Ferguson unrest by coming out of the tunnel with their hands up—and you didn't find out about it until you got home after the game. 

With all due respect, what the hell does this have to do with winning football games? A distraction? Again, Fisher is the coach and he has a job to make sure his team doesn't get distracted. Other NFL coaches have had socially active players on the team and managed to somehow not allow it to distract and upend the entire season.

Your starting quarterback, Sam Bradford, tore his ACL in consecutive seasons.

And Fisher never brought in a competent replacement for Bradford. This isn't just bad luck, this is poor roster management and poor coaching. If you don't have a backup plan for a quarterback who just tore his ACL then you as a head coach deserve how ever many losses may come. And again, the Eagles just won the Super Bowl after their quarterback tore his ACL. The Broncos won Super Bowl 50 after Peyton Manning missed a part of the season due to injury. It is the head coach's job to make sure the team doesn't fall apart.

So your teams lost 165 games, which ties you for most losses in NFL history.

But like 93 of those losses were totally not Jeff Fisher's fault. See what happened was...

You are not the same coach you were back in Houston. You evolved with experiences and the times.

Middle-school offense, huh? That was Todd Gurley's opinion?

You stopped having players report to early-morning meetings, for instance, because you knew most of this generation stays up late with their mobile devices or video game controllers in their hands. And there was a basket for those mobile devices to be dropped in outside the meeting rooms—but you promised the players would be able to get back to them in 25 minutes or less because you knew they couldn't take being separated from them for longer.

Treating players differently because they consume media differently doesn't mean Fisher evolved his coaching style on the field. Let's stop getting the professional evolution and personal evolution confused with each other.

You are Jeff Fisher, and when you were told you were coming home, you said you were honored. You meant it.

(Pompei efforting to make an excuse for why Fisher failed in St. Louis) "Fisher got caught up in another franchise relocation effort. It's hard to coach well and adapt to changes like this."

(Pompei efforting to confuse Jeff Fisher being a good guy with being a good head coach) "Fisher loves Los Angeles and it's like home to him. He felt comfortable in Los Angeles, but not comfortable enough to where the excuse for why the relocation to Los Angeles was SO HARD TO DEAL WITH can't be used. See, Fisher was comfortable enough for me to use his comfort as an anecdote for what a good guy he is, but I also have to not make him seem so comfortable that any negative outcomes as the Rams head coach could be pinned on him."

You loved Los Angeles so much you stayed there for college. At USC, you played on a team that won the national championship, and you met your future bride, a princess in the 1979 Rose Bowl royal court.

When you came back to town as the head coach of your boyhood team, people came out of the woodwork. Relatives, friends from school, old neighbors. Your people accounted for more than 100 season tickets.

Boy, it sounds like the relocation to Los Angeles where Fisher was totally comfortable was a real bitch. 

Mom and Dad would stop by the facility to check on you every other day. You had your first Christmas at home in 25 years. You even spent 15 minutes at a high school reunion, right after a team meeting on the eve of the season opener.

It seems nearly impossible for Fisher to keep control of the team with all this upheaval around him. 

Random thought: Is it possible that the Rams as a team weren't distracted but Jeff Fisher was distracted by all the season tickets he had to buy, the fact his parents came by the office 3-4 times per week and the high school reunion he attended? Perhaps, and I know this is hearsay, Jeff Fisher didn't give enough time and energy to the Rams because he was distracted by his homecoming. Of course not, like anything else that pertains to Jeff Fisher, this relocation to the Rams was a distraction for his team, not him. The Rams record was someone else's fault, not his. Jeff Fisher is incapable of being distracted. The Rams record in 2016 was all his team's fault. Just give him one more year.

But the 2016 season did not play out like a fairy tale.

The 2017 season did though. What changed?

There was a lot going on. Moves from St. Louis to Oxnard for offseason training, to Irvine for training camp, and then to Thousand Oaks one week before the start of the regular season. Trying to replace two starters in the secondary who left in free agency. Playing all but one of your road games east of the Mississippi, and one east of the Atlantic.

Now I never knew the Rams had to replace two starters in the secondary. Has any NFL team ever had to replace TWO starters on defense? I'm guessing not. In fact, it's a borderline miracle the Rams ran the ball as well as they did in 2017 when they had to replace two starters on the offensive line. I'm surprised the Rams even won a game, because as an NFL head coach, experiencing roster turnover is extremely rare.

If losing two starters in the secondary is what Jeff Fisher believes set the 2016 Rams back, then it sounds like he evolved perfectly fine to fit in well with today's highly volatile NFL.

You and Dickerson agree on one thing: You didn't win enough games as Rams coach. The team was 31-45-1 in your tenure.

Can I stop being Jeff Fisher now? I'm feeling very mediocre. 

The trolls on the internet declared 7/9 Jeff Fisher Day, and it was one of a few flash points that preceded your dismissal.

Pompei refers to "trolls" as the ones who made up 7/9 as Jeff Fisher Day and makes excuses for 4.5 years of failure & remarks the 2016 team wasn't set up to win, as if winning was inevitable in 2017. What a crock of crap. 

Your team was facing long odds from the start in 2016. Your team or, rather, that team, was set up to win after 2016.

Riiiiiight. 2017 was the year the Rams were set up to win. That's always the thing with Jeff Fisher and those who defend him/try to find him employment. You see, something happened and it got in the way...but next year, definitely next year it will all work out. Give Fisher another year.

You admired the job your successor did but were not surprised to see Sean McVay take the Rams where you failed to.

"I thought it was a matter of time," you say. "I spent over four-and-a-half years working on that roster and had a lot to do with the way the drafts went. I knew they, or we, were close—a few players away. I'm just really happy for the success the players and coaches and support staff had. It's an outstanding group of people that I worked really close with."

You do not need to spend 4.5 years building a roster just to make the playoffs. Recent history shows this is absolutely not true. Let's talk about Fisher and the draft. He had 12 first/second round picks during his tenure. Don't give us this crap that it needed to be a slow build. Roster mismanagement and bad coaching caused this.

And Fisher is taking credit for the way the drafts went? Does that include Greg Robinson, Brian Quick, Tre Mason, Isaiah Pead, and Tavon Austin or those picks weren't Fisher's fault? But again, and I can't emphasize this enough, it does not take 4.5 years to turn a team around. My favorite team went 1-15 in 2001 and then were in the Super Bowl two years later. Perhaps that's an extreme example, but Doug Pederson took a 7-9 Eagles team with a bad defense and mostly Chip Kelly's guys to the Super Bowl this year and won it. So if anyone tries to pretend 4.5 years isn't enough time to turn a team around, then that person is an idiot.

You are Jeff Fisher, and they're calling you "the quarterback whisperer," usually with a rolling on the floor laughing face emoji.

You didn't win Super Bowl with Nick Foles, like Doug Pederson did. You didn't get to the NFC Championship Game with Keenum, like Mike Zimmer did. You didn't win the NFC West with Jared Goff, like McVay did.

But seriously, this is an incredibly valid point. I know Dan Pompei includes "with a rolling on the floor laughing face emoji" to emphasize it's those Twitter trolls who say this, but this is a very, very, very, very valid criticism of Jeff Fisher. This also speaks to how much "Fisher evolved with the times" is a fictional tale being told by those who just want to see him get another chance in the NFL. 

You were never an offensive coach. 

I know this is difficult for Fisher defenders and for Jeff Fisher to understand, but as the head coach of a team he is responsible for every part of the team. He can't say, "Oh shit, I don't know offense" and pass the blame off, which is a specialty of his by the way. It doesn't work that way. Jeff Fisher was hired to win games. That's the bottom line. Sean McVay didn't do defense, so he hired someone who did, and was accountable for that hire. 

You hired others to do that. And that's where things unraveled. After the 2014 season, your offensive coordinator, Brian Schottenheimer, wanted to be closer to his family, so he told you he was leaving for a job at the University of Georgia.

What happened during the three years from 2012-2014? I know this column's purpose is to spit out excuses like a teenager who got caught doing something he shouldn't, but Schottenheimer was with the Rams for three years. Schottenheimer had three years with the Rams and Fisher stuck with him for three years. What happened in those three years that was such a barrier to success?

Besides, NFL head coaches lose coordinators all the time and part of the job is to find good coordinators to replace those you have lost and still have success. Again, IT'S PART OF THE DAMN JOB.

Your intent was to replace him with an experienced NFL play-caller. You reached out to four coaches who had been successful NFL coordinators. Three of them also had head coaching experience. None of them wanted to be your coordinator. "My sense," you say, "is they didn't want to have to endure the relocation."

Or they didn't want to work for Jeff Fisher in a situation that he was clearly blowing. I'll allow you as the reader decide whether Jeff Fisher's reasoning that these coordinators didn't want to endure the relocation is true or not. While thinking about this, keep in mind Fisher has a history of excuse-making and an allergy to the reality of his coaching ability. 

"Had I stayed," you say, "there were a lot of changes I needed to make that we had been unable to make because of the move."

I don't even know what this means. Changes that couldn't be made because of the move? What the hell is this? I'll tell you what it is. This is another example of Fisher constantly promising progress while with the Rams only to make horseshit excuses for why he can't succeed. Of course, Fisher needed 4.5 more years to get close to the playoffs and then he would make those changes. Sean McVay's success only shows how close Jeff Fisher was to success and is not at all an indication that Jeff Fisher had a talented roster and couldn't ever succeed with that roster. McVay's success is a testament to how great Jeff Fisher is. Of course.

No one was calling you "quarterback whisperer" when Mike Heimerdinger was your offensive coordinator and McNair was leading the league in passer rating. Your record with Heimerdinger was 75-53. Heimerdinger died of cancer in 2011.

This is sad. This is also like Heimerdinger got a job as the offensive coordinator in Heaven and so Jeff Fisher had to find a replacement. Again, as the head coach of an NFL team volatility should be expected and part of the job is replacing coordinators who die/get fired/find other jobs. Heimerdinger's death is not an excuse that Jeff Fisher can use. Bad things happen and coaches leave. As a head coach, you can't be so reliant on one coordinator that you can't succeed without him. But that's not the point of this column is it? The point isn't to sort through these excuses and show why they should not be used as reasoning for why Fisher failed in St. Louis. Excuses are why Fisher wants another year. Just as soon as everything is perfect, like it never is in the NFL, then the Rams could have succeeded.

When you arrived, some of your former players were so surprised and touched that they cried, Keenum says. "It was so good to have him," he continues. "I love Coach Fisher. He's a great coach, better person. I loved the time we spent together. He's a guy you want to run through walls for and you want to fight for. I really appreciate what he did for me in my career, giving me a shot. He's somebody I have a lot of respect for."

The party turned out to be one of the greatest Christmas presents you ever received.

Jeff Fisher is a great guy. Fantastic. This doesn't mean he is a good NFL coach or he should be hired as the head coach of another NFL team.

You are Jeff Fisher, and you are considered a retread.

As someone who has held two other NFL head coaching jobs and been fired twice, Jeff Fisher is the definition of a "retread." He may be nice, he may have an influential agent or influential friends, but this doesn't change what he would be if hired by an NFL team as their head coach. He would be a retread.

Being a retread is bad if you are you but good if you are Jon Gruden.

Your career record is eight games above .500. Gruden's career record is 14 games above .500. You are 5-6 in the postseason. He is 5-4. Your team lost in your only Super Bowl. His team won in his only Super Bowl.

He was given a 10-year contact to coach the Raiders, reportedly worth $100 million. You were not interviewed for any of the seven head coach openings.

Pompei refers to the $100 million contract for Gruden that was widely mocked? This excessively long contract that a desperate Raiders team gave Gruden, that's the comparison to use for Fisher? Okay, I'll bite. Fisher has coached in two more playoff games despite being a head coach for 11 more years than Gruden. 11 more years than Gruden and he has two more playoff games on his record.

Here is a great comparison between these two head coaches. Jeff Fisher last had a winning season as a head coach in 2008. Jon Gruden took a decade off from coaching and that's also the last time he had a winning season as a head coach. Fisher coached for 7.5 of the years that Gruden was in the booth and hasn't had a winning season since Gruden was fired by the Buccaneers. Even though Fisher is a really nice guy, doesn't this say something about Fisher that Gruden sat out for almost a decade and still almost matches the number of playoff games Fisher has coached in? I'm not the one that opened this can of worms either, but I'll keep opening it.

This is the comparison that's supposed to tell us how Fisher got a raw deal: 

Jon Gruden: $10 mil/year starting in 2018. 9 playoff games. 5-4 record in the playoffs. 11 years of coaching. 

Jeff Fisher: $7 mil/year starting in 2012. 11 playoff games. 5-6 record in the playoffs. 22 years of coaching.

"He's a guy who's been in some pretty tough situations," former rival Mike Shanahan says. "I know how good a coach Jeff is and what kind of person he is. Players play hard for him. Everybody is on him because the Rams had success last year. But they added some good players, they put in a good new offense and they had a quarterback step up in his second year. I think if you wait a year or two, you'll look back at Jeff and say, 'I forgot about some things.'"

"They added some good players, they put in a good new offense..." How much time did Fisher need to do this? Why didn't he do this sooner? Why is Dan Pompei not asking these questions, though I know that answer so why I am asking this question?

You and Juli, the Rose Bowl princess, went through a divorce near the end of your days with the Titans. Afterward, you and a close friend went turkey hunting one morning in Tennessee. On your way back, in the mid-morning, the two of you stopped to talk on a bridge on your farm. There was some understandable strain in your life. You opened up. You had been a spiritual man, but you realized then something was missing.

On that bridge, with turkeys in the back of your truck, you accepted Jesus Christ as your savior. You felt a tremendous sense of peace. "I put a lot behind me," you say. "My life took a turn for the better at that point."

That's great and it also doesn't have anything at all to do with Fisher's complex legacy as an NFL head coach. I love my family and this doesn't mean I'm very good/very bad at my job. If this article wasn't framed as, "Let's get Jeff Fisher a job in the NFL" then this anecdote may have a place. The article is framed as, "Jeff Fisher got a raw deal. He just needed more time than 22 years. Oh, and here are some excuses," so whatever Fisher does is in his personal life is irrelevant. Heck, if this "inner peace" came AFTER he was fired by the Rams maybe it has a place in a discussion about Fisher as a head coach. The "inner peace" came before he failed with the Rams so it is doubly irrelevant to Fisher's ability as an NFL head coach.

You have thought about trying broadcasting, or maybe working for the league office. But you aren't ready to do that yet.

Jeff Fisher shows zero charisma. I can't imagine a network would hire him to broadcast games. Given Fisher's ability to get his friends to use excuses for him and help him find jobs, he probably would end up with the #1 analyst job with FOX or something.

You had quite a run, including a quarter of a century as a head coach. Only seven men in history coached more games than you—you had to be doing some things very well. But things haven't gone well in recent years. Your last winning season was 2008.

Jeff Fisher is about to rant about people disregarding facts. This last sentence is a fact that Fisher can't disregard. Everyone can make excuses for why they fail in the face of adversity, but Fisher should focus more on reasons why he succeeded despite adversity.

You don't need to be confronted with your failures. You know them better than anyone.

Does he? Because this entire column has seemed like a litany of excuses for his failures.

You also know every story has two sides—at least. And memes don't concern themselves with all of that. "I make the choice to see my career not as the one that tied Dan Reeves for having the most losses in NFL history," you say. Instead, you choose "to see it as 13 wins away from being in the top 10 in wins in history."

That's a great attitude. I see Fisher's career as a good coaching career that ended with 4.5 years with the Rams where he showed he is not built for modern football and is too concerned with what went wrong and collecting paychecks to understand the final judgment of his career falls on him, not outside forces.

You know that now, more than ever, knowledge, context and perspective are not prerequisites for judgment. "I don't let those things eat away at me," you say of the body blows. "The people who are making the comments don't really know what took place or why. You can sit there and state facts, but people's opinions are always going to disregard facts. That's the world we live in."

PEOPLE DISREGARD FACTS? How on Earth can these words come out of Jeff Fisher's mouth? The facts are that he did not have a winning season since 2008. Fact. It does not take 4.5 years to build a team in today's NFL. Fact. The Rams had success after he left. Fact. Individual players who have talent had success for the Rams this year they didn't have with Fisher as the head coach. Fact. Individual players with talent had success with other NFL teams this year they didn't have with Fisher as the head coach. Fisher has plenty of resources to turn the Rams around. Fact. Other NFL coaches have to overcome adversity to succeed. Fact. Fisher adapted to the new NFL and modern players off the field, but on the field he never did. Fact. 

Fisher adapted to the new NFL? Todd Gurley says the Rams ran a "middle school offense."

Here are all the excuses that Fisher used during the 2016 season. I'm sure he sees them as just "facts" which inhibited the Rams from every succeeding, when they really are excuses for his failure to coach a winning team. I love talking facts. What took place and why is irrelevant to the bottom line. 

If I'm Jeff Fisher, then I know I got paid $7 million per year to disregard what took place and why in order to succeed. That was my job and why I was paid. Regarding the relocation, the injuries and everything else? In the words of Don Draper, "That's what the money is for." Fisher got paid $7 million per year to succeed in situations where other coaches who do not make $7 million per year would fail to succeed. 

Plenty of NFL coaches have succeeded through adversity. The Patriots won the Super Bowl last year after having their quarterback suspended for four games. The Eagles lost their starting left tackle, their change of pace back, their starting middle linebacker, and THEIR STARTING QUARTERBACK this year. They won the Super Bowl with a quarterback that Jeff "Just the facts ma'am" Fisher released in training camp last year. That is a fact. Rather than run out a litany of excuses, Doug Pederson and Bill Belichick did their job, which is to win games.

If I'm Jeff Fisher, I stop allowing my friends in the media to make excuses and write articles about my head coaching career that conveniently ignore certain aspects of my career (Fisher's relationship with Vince Young) in order to re-frame my coaching career in a better light and help me get another job. The media shouldn't be my advocate. I should be. My coaching record should be. And in that aspect, NFL teams are not disregarding the facts, because the facts show why Fisher is currently unemployed. Pouting about "facts" while creating false narratives about how much I have gone through is excuse-making. 

You are Jeff Fisher, and you want to be an NFL head coach.

Please stop trying to get this man another head coaching job in the NFL.