Perhaps ignoring the mild distraction of Reggie Bush’s alleged infractions at USC, nor the fact that Houston faced a competent Philadelphia defense last week, the Arizona Republic’s Kent Somers calls the Texas’ selection of Mario Williams (above) as the no. 1 overall pick “a colossal mistake.”
“I don’t think moving him around has hurt him,” coach Gary Kubiak told Houston reporters. “He shows no signs of the mental part bothering him. If we think that keeping him at one spot makes him more effective, then we’ll do that, too.”
Indianapolis defensive end Dwight Freeney said the Texans should put Williams in one spot and leave him there.
“If you want a guy to get better, you have to have him do the same thing over and over and over,” he said in a conference call with Houston media. “Think of it as a concrete layer. To become a good concrete layer, you have to lay a lot of concrete. If he does 20 different things, he’s going to be average.”
Former Bills coach Mike Mularkey will face his ex-employer later today as the Dolphins’ offensive coodinator. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel’s Harvey Fialkov suggests that Mularkey’s departure from Buffalo was due to his family being harrassed.
To this day, the reasons for Mularkey’s exit remain murky. He has never fully addressed the matter and this week was no different as he prepared a game plan to beat the same organization he bolted from nine months ago.
The theories for Mularkey’s resignation range from not wanting to be a lame-duck coach under the shadow of Levy — who coached the Bills to an unprecedented four consecutive losing Super Bowl appearances — to having to fire five of his assistants, to protecting his wife, Betty, and their two sons, Shane, 15, and Patrick, 20, from further harassment from disgruntled Bills fans.
“Buffalo’s a good city but it’s a small city,” said Dolphins guard Bennie Anderson, who started 15 games for Buffalo last season. “When your dad is coach of the Bills, it’s like he’s the president of the United States, and you know how much President Bush’s kids get criticized.
“It was a lose-lose situation for Coach Mularkey. If they started to win it was going to be Coach Levy who did it. If they started to lose, they would’ve wanted him out of there and Coach Levy in.”
Anderson makes a good point. If Mularkey’s sons had cultivated a reputation for being drunken sluts, it was probably a good idea to get the fuck outta Dodge.