Lovie Smith and Rex Grossman: I Can't Quit You

NFL coaches and their first-round quarterbacks sometimes seem like they are married,  vowing to stay together 'til firing do us part.

Coaches can't quit the coach killers.

Or maybe its the general managers.

Or perhaps it's a bizarre NFL menage a trois.

All three of the lovestruck, or moonstruck, ones dreaming of what might have been. What the films, the workouts, the scouts, and the stopwatches said should have been. Should have been but never was, nor will be.

It's hard to cut those ties of gold and championship dreams.

Unless a player is Ryan Leaf-like or an incredibly incompetent idiot, a first-round quarterback lingers at least five years. Five years of failure generally gets a coach fired.

Like a bad marriage, that had so much sweet heat and sordid promise at the start, sometimes after the wedding bells stop ringing, it ain't what it seems.

In fact, it's been sick from the start.

The courtship was crazy, though. Happy crazy, with cameras and much coin.

Sometimes the newlyweds realize this shortly after the bells stop ringing and the reception hangover wears off. Sometimes they live together for years, unhappy, frustrated, and angry. Just wrong for each other and disruptive for the team, but still thinking, 'we can work it out.'

High draft picks, particularly quarterbacks, make or break general manager's reputations. Even a legend like Bobby Beathard can be taken down in the white hot meltdown of a high-priced moron such as Mister Leaf.

Coaches with high-priced QB flops generally die the slow agonizing death of a thousand cuts.  Development fails, the system doesn't work, the line is bad, there are injuries, or the quarterback just can't grasp the speed and complexities of NFL defenses.

The QB becomes frustrated, the fans furious, teammates fickle, coaches flustered, and the team fizzles. And when he finally fabulously flops, the whole regime crumbles.

Remember Al Davis clinging for most of a decade to the dreams of Marc Wilson being an efficient (albeit a Mormon scared) version of Snake Stabler?

How that work out for ya, Raiders? A doomed, dismal decade of interceptions and fumbles as the Silver and Black stumbled. Then the scary sequel..."Nightmare on Marinovich Street."

Sometimes it's stubbornness. Pride. An inability to admit a mistake.

Hubris, the Greeks called it.

Lovie Smith, Rex Grossman, and Jerry Angelo are the most unhealthy threesome in the league. The relationship is unhealthy and the fans hate it, so why be so stubborn?

Why can't you quit each other?

Its Chicago, not France. Those trio's things are considered weirder then Favre in Bear orange and blue.

Lovie seems to think he is going to lead his underrated Bears forward and catch everyone in the league by surprise.

"We caught them napping!" were General Custer's last recorded words as he waved his white hat wildly and spurred his horse towards the Sioux villages along the steaming Greasy Grass.

Behind him, like behind Lovie, a lot of troopers and assistants surely rolled their eyes.

Mike Nolan and Alex Smith is another unhealthy marriage which is poisoning the whole team's system.  Nolan insists Smith will work. Nolan sees something in Smith or perhaps Nolan just sees unemployment if his QB continues to be a big bay side disappointment.

If the prized horse (Smith) goes down, the expert jockey (Nolan) gets put down with him.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, the old saw says, and it's getting rather desperate for John Fox in Carolina.

The Super Bowl appearance was a while back.

This year is his final roll in Carolina blue: roll into the playoffs or crap out.

Fading away from the Favre sweepstakes, it seems Fox is content to play Butch Cassidy to Jake Delhomme's Sundance Kid. The rest of the NFL is the Bolivian Army which has them wounded, tired, surrounded, old, and out of ammo. And the QB, has a bad shooting arm.

Guess who won?

What's worse is watching the same old horror show unfold knowing the doomed local sheriff is walking right towards the murderous monster once again. Like in every slasher movie ever made.

Doesn't the sheriff know when the lights are off in the house, the dogs don't answer, something is sticky and wet on the floor, and that spine tingling music from Halloween is playing you don't walk around saying, "Hello?"

"Hello? Is anyone home?" Then clumsily fumbling, desperately trying to unhook his ponderous pistol strap as the looming slasher's sharp blade slices down.

Don't you want to shout, "Look Out! he's going to kill you!" Didn't the dumb, doomed sheriff ever watch any cheap horror movies?

Didn't he ever see Joey Harrington in Detroit City?

Watching Viking coach Brad Childress desperately try to develop Tarvaris Jackson makes me feel like the sad horror fan shouting:

"No, don't do it..don't go in there. He will kill you, like his kind did so many coaches before you and his ilk will do to so many pitiful souls long after you are in stuffed a cheap booth, fat and sweating on ESPN 6, trying to explain simple passing schemes while some sports-addled half-wit in a cheap suit yodels, screams, high fives and talks over the action."

Walk Coach Childress—no, run away from "No Action" Tarvaris Jackson now while your team is young and strong and Adrian Peterson has his knees and Jared Allen is sipping iced teas.

Find someone. Favre. Jeff Garcia. Kurt Warner. Tommy Kramer. Even Joe Kapp.

Just someone who won't destroy your playoff hopes, Super Bowl dreams, and future earnings potential.

Quit each other before the bad love grows too deep.

Neil Sedaka should not ever be involved in a Head Coach-QB relationship.

But it seems coaches can't get high priced QB's out of their heads.

I beg of you, don't say goodbye
Can't we give our love another try
Come on baby, let's start anew
'Cause breaking up is hard to do

Its like coaching cicada songs. The desperate serenades the doomed insects keep singing even as they expire.

Coaching cicada song cliches:

"This year will be his break through year. Everything will click. The game's slowed down for him. He see's the field better. I'm happy with his progress."

I can't quit you.

Until the team quits both of us.