Football, football, football!
:: The Buffalo Bills have apparently selected their new head coach: current Steelers offensive coordinator Mike Mularkey, who is also a former NFL tight end who played with the Vikings. I found his appointment kind-of surprising, since his name didn’t really come up in the coach-search news reports until the last couple of days, but it’s really not that surprising considering that the Bills’ general manager, Tom Donahoe, is familiar with Mularkey by virtue of being the Pittsburgh GM before coming here.
From what I’m reading, Mularkey has been a high-regarded assistant coach in the last few years — apparently he even turned down being head coach of the Bengals a year ago — and he’s a bright offensive mind, which is what the Bills really wanted after their offense proved last year to be, shall we say, “crappy”. I’m not sure how Mularkey’s stock continued to rise given that the Steelers had a dismal season of their own this year, but there’s got to be some explanation for that.
:: Also, in a neat bit of symmetry, I see that not only did the Bills hire a former Viking, but the Vikings hired a former Bill: onetime Buffalo defensive coordinator Ted Cottrell, who had the same position with the Jets the last couple of years, will now be the coordinator for the Vikings. Cottrell’s a fine, experienced coach who was in charge of the fine Bills defenses during Wade Philips’s tenure as head coach from 1998 to 2000, and he did good work for the Jets (although this year was a bit of a disappointment in that regard, which is why he was looking for a job in the first place). Vikes fans should be happy at this hiring.
:: James Capozzola’s got a nasty case of Eagles fever, in the form of links to every Eagles story in the Philly papers today. (A question: do they really pronounce it “Iggles”? If so, it must be a Pennsylvania thing, because in Pittsburgh, “Our Steelers” comes out “Ahr Stillers”.)
:: And finally, I saw yesterday that a design has been proposed in New York for an Olympic Stadium that would become the home of the Jets after the 2012 Summer Games (assuming NYC’s Olympic bid is successful). It’s a gorgeous design, certainly, but we’re talking about the Jets here!
(I saw the link to the NYC stadium proposal on some blog yesterday, but I can’t for the life of me remember which one. Otherwise I’d credit it.)