SportsFilter: Sports Community Weblog

Wednesday, January 29, 2003

Colts player speaks out against teammates, coach. "Peyton Manning must show more emotion, coach Tony Dungy is too nice and many players on the NFL team lack passion." The player? Kicker Mike Vanderjagt!

Comments

How bad must your leadership be for the kicker to go public with his complaints?

It is bad. The kicker, though, is right on the money.

Yeah, doesn't matter where it's coming from. The truth hurts.

I wonder if this kind of public sentiment will cause Vanderjagt to get the ax?? My Jags could really use him...

We'll take him too! (Niners)

as much as everyone's going to hate him now, he's 100% right. And TMQ has been harping on Dungy's lack of emotion all season. He's a great coach but lacks the fire to get his team prepared for playoff games, where emotion means a lot more. I'm beginning to think, after seeing his interview re: barrett robbins today, that Callahan might have the same affliction - he seems incapable of rage or fury. I think that his veteran team got themselves up for the other playoff games over teams that they matched up favorably with... but come Super Bowl, he was totally outmatched as a coach and leader. My theory, anyway. But I think Vanderjagt is right...

I watched this interview he had on the Canadian station "The Score". He was asked to do some commentary about the playoffs and upcoming Super Bowl, and one of the co-hosts of the discussion show asked a simple "how's it going?" question about the Colts. That's when Vanderjagt started ripping them apart. You could see the stunned look on the co-hosts face as he glanced at the director/producer off-stage with a "are we going to commerical?" look. I think the director/producer did the right thing and let Vanderjagt keep talking and obviously cued the co-host to ask MORE questions. For live TV, it was pretty interesting. A couple of days later, the co-host was talking about this with another football expert and they agreed that things have to be REAL bad for the laid-back Canadian kicker to come out and say those things.

God bless Canadian tv. Who else is going to interview a kicker?

Wait, Vanderjagt is Canadian. Never mind.

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