Was Winning Worth it?

I like most of you am extremely happy we gutted out this win. No doubt one of the best football moments in my life. And I do think having playoff experience and winning a game in the playoffs is big for this team.

That being said, the officiating was pretty bad (albeit on both sides) but you could argue we did get a bit lucky on those forward progress calls. Not to mention Kansas City went back to its notorious choking ways and had a key 3rd down drop in the 4th quarter and Mariota and Henry basically went beast mode and willed us to a win. Now we get to go to New England and get thoroughly destroyed by the Patriots. Not just because the Patriots have better talent in key positions, but mostly because Belicheck/McDaniels will absolutely coach circles around ours.

This brings me to this point. I’ve heard people mention that there are reports that say we would be McDaniels’ first choice if Malarkey got canned. Now unlike a lot of you I actually think Mularkey isn’t terrible. He’s a good man, has a team that is disciplined and doesn’t commit a lot of penalties, and the players rally around him. I also believe that there’s no way you can fire him after he took a 3 win team to winning a playoff game.

But you also have to consider that we had a relatively easy schedule this year with the Colts and Texans being depleted with injuries and we still barely made it in in a terrible conference. While Mularkey has shown he’s a decent, solid coach, we still had a negative point differential because we had a lot of ugly wins against teams that we had no business almost losing against. It’s proven that with Mularkey we’ll be the team that *barely ever* handily wins games and it’ll be a slug fest throughout. I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t think I can take another season watching that conservative, uncreative, ugly offense, especially going against Luck and Watson next year. I wanted to throw up half the time watching these games this year.

In an ideal world, we would be able to retain Mularkey and bring in a new OC and offensive staff. But any good offensive minded coach will only come here for the HC position and control of the coaching staff. So that pretty much means with that kinda lucky win against the Chiefs (which I was and still am ecstatic for) we’re now stuck with Mularkey and Robiskie.

I believe with Mariota, Henry, Delanie, and Corey Davis, we have the potential to be an explosive offense, and I do think McDaniels would be able to unleash it. Now we’re stuck with this same coaching staff another year and another year wasting MM8 and CD84’s development. I’m happy we are finally relevant again but for the long-term I just don’t see much positives.

TL;DR: Winning meant keeping Mularkey/Robiskie instead of getting McDaniels. I don't know if that playoff win was worth it.

 

But would you rather win one game now or win many in the future?