Danny Smith

I would move to Thailand and call it a career.

 

He needs bubble gum money to keep his jaw muscle definition.

 

Ok I will be the minority here, yes bubble gum had good special teams the last couple of years but during his tenure we went ages trying to find a kick returner like we were trying to find a blue chip QB. I also remember the amount of penalties we had almost like clockwork on kickoff returns and punts like holding being moved back was a given to the point on punt returns I jsut wanted us to fair catch it. Lastly didn't it always seem like we gave up a long return like clockwork after we scored so I'm not so sure, anecdotal for sure, that he was such a great special teams coach for the duration. Just my opinion and I haven't looked at the stats on opponents starting field position, penalties etc but so I'm going off of memory which admittedly may be flawed.

 

You are right. I think there is some recency bias with Smith maybe because of the key blocks they a season or two ago. But I agree there were long streaks of poor coverage, penalties, and poor returns. I don't think Smith is some irreplaceable ST coach.

 

I think a lot of the things you are referencing may have been decided on above him. They had some guys like Holmes and AB who were great at punt returns and some kick return duties but their value as starters made it so it was playing with fire to have them on ST's. Then you had guys like Davis that was a jack of all trades that Tomlin liked and gave a roster spot to. This season they rolled with their top two rb's as kick off guys and the smallish often injured Austin on punts. These were not good choices.

 

Move and retire to Florida? No a bad way to go out.