I think it’s safe to say that Mike Zimmer, current Bengals DC and former Atlanta Falcons DC under Bobby Petrino, won’t be sending his former boss a card at Christmas.
… Pretty good stuff, but it gets even better in his appraisal of Petrino: “He is a coward. Put that in quotes. He ruined a bunch of people’s lives, a bunch of people’s families, kids, because he didn’t have enough nuts to stay there and finish the job. That’s the truth.”
When asked if he had seen a two days like that before, where the Falcons lost on Monday Night Football, a coach resigns and then is doing “Woo Pig Sooey” 24 hours later in front of Arkansas boosters, Zimmer said: “No, most people in football have enough courage about them and enough fight to stick through something and not quit halfway through the year. It is cowardly.
“He came in and said he resigned, he would talk to us all at a later date, walked out of the office and no one has ever talked to him since. Not that anybody wanted to.
“He’s a gutless b—–d. Quote that. I don’t give a s—.”
When told that we might might not be able to use the B word, Zimmer went one better: “How about this, gutless MF. You can use that.”
Yowser.
(h/t David Hale)
Get The Picture 
He looked as out of place on an NFL sideline as Larry David did at the Playboy mansion.
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Petrino does seem a little more slimy than the typical mercenary coach.
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I’m just glad he came along to take the focus off you-know-who for a while. 🙂
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Senator,
Are you gonna throw us under the bus like War Blog Eagle Jerry did his readers?
BD
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I’ll let you know if anyone ever offers to pay me for doing this. 😉
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Coach Zimmer may have had other things on his mind
http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20091009/SPT02/310090025/Bengals-coach-s-wife-dies
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In either case, his anger seems justified. Hope he’s doing ok.
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Nice to hear someone actually say what they think these days…now it’s all about sugar coating things.
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So… who committed a worse attrocity.. Bobby Petrino to the Falcons? or Lane Kiffin to Tennessee?
Bonus Question – If Arky ever makes it to the SEC Championship, will they allow him on the Georgia Dome grounds?
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Kiffin (acting through his minion Ed Orgeron) tried to steal players he had recruited to Tennessee–much worse.
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Look, as much as I agree that Petrino is a slimy bastige, why is it okay for a owner to fire a coach in the middle of the year but not a coach to get out of a sinking ship. Gotta look out for number #1. Guarantee they would have fired his butt if things had kept going the way they were going. The Falcons didn’t treat Reeves very well, and he had been winning. Works both ways.
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Great point, but I guess the comparable I’d like to see under that scenario is when has a coach been fired before the completion of his first season? (I’m sure there are examples, but my point is that it seldom happens). I think the issue is that Petrino left before the his first season was done, although I’m sure criticism would be aplenty, regardless. I also don’t think anyone is disputing Petrino’s right to leave the Falcons. But in doing so, he left without finishing a job people were counting on him for with little time for a transition. I think that’s fair.
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I don’t think any owner other than Al Davis would fire a guy before he’d even completed his first season as a head coach. And if he did, he’d be rightfully pilloried in the press as a moron.
You don’t have to spend too much time Googling to find numerous reports that Petrino had pissed off nearly the Falcons’ entire locker room long before he snuck off for Fayetteville. The guy was a terrible NFL coach at best, an out-and-out team cancer at worst.
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nice.
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Petrino is a complete weasel. Quitting is one thing; quitting in the middle of the season and not even bothering to tell your players in person is a whole new depth of scumbaggery.
I’ve found myself rooting for Arkansas against teams like Florida the last 2 years; I shouldn’t, because Petrino is a jerk-off.
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Arkansas is the last bastion of Weasel-dom, first Houston Nutt, then Petrino….I mean you’da thought Frank Broyles was smarter than that….but he went to a trade school, so maybe not.
To me the best evidence of Petrino’s weaselness was encouraging the dumb-asses at Auburn to interview him in the first place.
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I just got a very nicely worded email from the president of the Weasels of the World protesting my continued juxtaposition of Houston Nutt and the word weasel.
“We are not bad guys at all,” he wrote, “some humans just give us a bad name.”
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I don’t mean to split hairs, but the last bastion of Weasel-dom resides in Gainesville…Corch’s Fortress of Weasel-dom. Fayetteville, like Los Angeles currently and Knoxville throughout 2009, is merely A bastion of Weasel-dom.
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Weasel-dom is not a place–it is a state of mind that follows weasels wherever they go.
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I agree with not treating your players in such a way. And to your point about the middle of the season, it has happen and in fact it happen this year to Minnesotas coach, I believe its Tim Brewster.
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You mean the guy who is NOT Vince Lombardi?
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I think he meant the middle of his FIRST season.
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Petrino wasn’t canned, he split. Arthur Blank trusted the guy, Petrino told him to his face he wasn’t leaving, and then he bailed.
Now don’t get me wrong, as a Falcons fan I’m much happier with Mike Smith than Petrino, but that doesn’t mitigate what a slimy move it was.
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Exactly, he spilt, but he could have been fired just as easy. Let’s say Blank decided Petrino was the wrong guy and gave him the dreaded, “vote of confidence”, and fires him the next week. Happens all the time.
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It’s ok to fire a coach mid-season if the coach is an ass-wad.Petrino has proven he’s an ass-wad so if he ever gets fired mid-season, drinks are on me.
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I hate double standards.
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You are missing the larger point. Petrino was a coward. He lied to the owner about his intentions. He resigned without addressing his team, leaving a note in the lockers. As shown in the article, he did not have the stones to even address the coaches he brought to Atlanta, and left jobless by his selfish act. There is no indication to believe he would have been fired after the season. If he had, he would have been owed his full contract, mind you. He realized he couldn’t cut it in the NFL, and instead of dealing with it like a man, understanding that the people HE brought to the organization were his responsibility, he looked out only for himself and cut and run.
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“… but seriously, other than that he’s a good guy,” Zimmer continued.
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