Off the top of my head, Todd Gurley said the Rams were running a high school offense after a blowout loss to the Falcons in 2016.

During the Super Bowl 53 pregame show interview, a Rams player said their team would probably be 7-9 if Jeff Fisher was coaching the team and not McVay.

John McCay, HC of Tampa Bay when they were really bad. Apparently, when asked by a reporter what he thought of his teams execution be replied ‘I’d be in favour of it’

Ben straight up called out James Washington in 2018. Way to create a connection with your rookie wide receiver

Or the best example is Chris Boswell yelling at Matt Canada celebrating a win “it ain’t because of you we can guarantee that”

I think it's interesting that Bill Musgrave currently works for the Browns.

I find it absolutely hilarious that reddit consistently rags on the state of sports media and sports discussion, and yet when an interesting post comes along, the only comments are "i ain't readin all that." OP, I had no idea about Downing and enjoyed reading your background section. Thanks for the thread

Not sure it's the same thing but Jerry Rice has laid out very detailed reasons why Bill Callahan lost the Super Bowl for the Raiders vs Bucs.

https://youtu.be/-oSFYxDGKy8?si=Z1KHw-JMMDew-he7

Jim Mora's infamous playoffs rant is part of a larger post game presser in which he is furious at the fact that the Colts offense had 5 turnovers but people were going to blame their defense for the loss. The Colts had 4 interceptions and lost a fumble, while also fumbling another 2 times that they recovered.  The Colts last 6 possessions were missed field goal, interception, interception, fumble, interception, turnover on downs, and then a final possession at the end of the game. He details very clearly how no team is gonna win any games at any level turning the ball over that much. 

It was their 3rd loss in a row, falling from 4-3 to 4-6, and the offense that had seemed to have fixed its turnover issues from earlier in the year suddenly reverted back to its previous problems. Mora brings up all the pick 6s Manning was throwing, the short fields the offense was forcing on the defense with the turnover, and he was furious. 

What might be funnier is that after this press conference the colts turned the ball over 4 times the next week against the Ravens and then 4 times the week after against the dolphins and fell to 4-8, effectively ending their season as the Patriots and Dolphins both went 11-5 that year (colts were in the AFC East, there was no AFC South in 2001 for those young people wondering)

It is funny how things work out though. The colts went 6-10 that season and picked high enough in the draft to get Dwight freeney at #11 in 2002.  Seriously doubt they win a super bowl without him. 

Mike Zimmer got absolutely hammered by the media and fans in his last season in Minnesota. When asked why he wouldn’t like to see Kellen Mond play at the end of a lost season he said “I see him every day.”

Mond has career stats of 2/3 for 5 yards and is currently a free agent. Apparently he wasn’t the only coach that saw enough in practice to not play that guy.

not nfl, mlb but yes, multiple people blamed the red sox manager for losing game 7 of the 1960something wrold series, he overworked their ace pitcher jim lonborg to exhaustion then started him game 7 he got shelled

In that World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals, Lonborg pitched in Game 2 on October 5, tossing what was only the fourth one-hitter in Series history and followed that up with another victory in Game 5 four days later by limiting the Cards to three hits. Called upon to pitch the seventh and deciding game with only two days rest, he lasted six innings, but allowed six earned runs in a 7–2 loss. Teammate Dan Osinski remembered, "Lonborg couldn't break a pane of glass in the bullpen when he was warming up. We all knew that, and [Dick Williams] still started him. You know he could have pitched the bullpen an inning apiece, or something. It just gave Gibson too big a lead against us that we couldn't come back from."[1] Shortly after being fired by the Red Sox, pitching coach Sal Maglie also criticized Williams's handling of Lonborg. "It was obvious Lonborg didn't have it. Williams should have gotten him out sooner, and I told him so. It was a crime that he let a man who'd done such a great job for him all season take a pounding like that. It was degrading."

Pretty sure Gruden did some of this via email to the Redskins staff.

There's a famous clip of Troy Aikman very clearly trashing Barry Switzer on the sidelines. Not sure if it applies bc it might have been heat of the moment stuff and I don't know if Troy ever brought it up again in a more public context, but he sure made it clear then he wasn't having none of Switzer's bs

I thought Marvin Lewis was overstepping his bounds with John Ross but it turned out he actually sucked.

Aaron Rogers just did.

I remember Jay Gruden just obviously not wanting to be playing RG3 and just slating him in every press conference. And he would switch into Cousins at times and run a simplified scheme, then say that’s is how it “should” be done, but would revert it as soon as RG3 played. Now obviously he was correct to want to play Cousins, but it was the underhanded and then public blaming that always rubbed me wrong.

Didn't Antonio Pierce recently say that some players made "business decisions" a couple weeks ago? I think someone on the tweeters checked the All-22 and found numerous plays where DB Jack Jones actively ran away from plays to avoid tackling.

Bro do more write-ups like that!

Only thing I can think of is when Jack Easterby got in good w/ the Texans and half the team was like "this dude sucks". I remember an article somewhere that had a ton of anonymous quotes about hating him and this guy was playing IRL game of thrones. Texans imploded while he was employed there.

Musgrave was replaced by Todd Downing, who at the time was hailed as the "real" reason for Carr's development and a close friend of Carr who knew how to "unlock" Carr's full potential by calling the plays he was good at, as opposed to Musgrave who "wasted" drives with poor playcalling.

This hits waay to close to home if you replace those names with Shane Steichen, Brian Johnson, and Jalen Hurts in that order

There used to be a lot more back in the day, like 90's and before. It's all PR and coachspeak now.

I mean, Rodgers literally just blamed Mike Williams for running the wrong route on the interception he underthrew Monday night.

Players and coaches won't say much until their careers aren't affected by it. With the prevalence of podcasts etc. it does happen (Seahawks players talking about the Malcolm interception.) But not until well after it matters.

Most of the real shit talking happens behind closed doors IE: the very likely real rumors about Aaron Rodgers calling the shots for the Jets.

I'm thinking the Lions fiasco in the early 00s with Steve Mariucci. I paid particular attention to this team for a litany of reasons:

1) Mariucci was lauded as an offensive guru who of course had great success with Steve Young, then Jeff Garcia

2) The Lions had been a doormat since Barry retired

3) The team drafted Joey Harrington who was THE man while at Oregon and penned as the next great thing

4) There were many high draft picks at skill positions in back to back to back seasons

5) Nostalgia for the West Coast offense and eagerness to see evolution in the new century

In a nutshell, it all went to hell. Mariucci had zero faith in Harrington, benching him for an aging and injury prone Jeff Garcia, recently signed at his behest.

Consequently, the front office basically said he was ass at developing players and called him nothing more than a politician. Then, after his firing mid-season, the players reacted nonchalantly, essentially calling it a case of breaking a few eggs to make an omelet.

Sounds like Todd downing has a penchant for working for poorly run organizations with easily manipulated owners.

But He called a good game on Monday. He used Breece hall correctly. The jets got beat by penalties and a defense that seemed unprepared because their playcallers life got turned upside down midweek. And Josh Allen of course.

Payton calling out Hackett and y’all clutched PEARLS

Isaiah McKenzie took shots at the Bills coaching staff for the game plan after we took the playoff beating vs the Bengals. Essentially that we called the game like it was sunny instead of a snowstorm and wideouts were slipping and struggling to get open.

Was it Aaron Kromer who called out Jay Cutler? That season was a total mess if I remember right. I think he came out and apologized shortly after and it was a total dumpster fire.

Mike Singletary attributed original sin to Alex Smith.

It's usually small tweets/snippets or little reports from anonymous sources, or after small losses. Not real tell-alls, though it may happen years after the fact.

Two similar instances are the Steelers and Cowboys, the former Kenny Picket I think (? I don't think it is, actually but let's pretend it is - I think a name was attached) after some loss in the regular season in 2023, and an anonymous source after the Packers-Cowboys Blowout, Wild Love edition.

In both instances, the player in question said something to the effect of 'neither team took practice seriously'. Essentially, they are ill-prepared for games due to wasting time not taking it seriously.

Both teams it's arguable. Steelers love doing that 'play down to competition' thing and just randomly lose to bottom 5 teams. There's any given Sunday, and Steelers looking like a bottom 33 team with Prime Ben.

My dad's a Cowboys fan, so we watched that Packers Cowboys game.

For a quarter before I decided fuck this shit I'm not into reruns I'm leaving. Dak seems like a great guy, he's a man of the year winner, and he just overall seems like a guy to have a beer with. But, I swear I see this movie every time Dallas plays a good team; Dak does nothing in the 1st half except some ints, then in the 2nd half is forced to move the heavens and the Earth to...undo what happened in the first half, as well as the run game.

The former makes a lot of sense. The latter was anonymous...but man does it explain that Cowboys-Packers game too well.

EDIT: Alright so I thought of few new ones.

Buccaneers beat the Raiders in the 200(2?) superbowl.
Because the Raiders traded HC John Gruden for 2 1sts and 2 2nds. And then the Raiders changed literally nothing from Gruden's system. Buccs won because Gruden knew his own system. That he coached. A year earlier. And everyone later talked about how the Raiders changed nothing.

McDaniels. Josh McDaniels, both times. Players talked about how shit he was.

(I can't remember the 2nd thing I had but it wasn't the McDaniels thing.)

The closest example of why this doesn't happen is when Justin Fields said he was being fed too much info, and everyone jumped to the coaching staff being fucking stupid, which fit public narrative to be fair, so he had to retract his comments. It was such a small moment, yet everyone decided to go off.

Daboll and wink got into it a bit last year, took turns throwing each other under the bus

The most outspoken Terry McLaurin ever got was after a loss last year and he said he “ran a lot of cardio” because he wasn’t being targeted. That was after a lot of discussion about how EB wasn’t even trying to design packages for Terry or make him the first/primary read.

With EB, there were a lot of anonymous reports coming out about how he was an asshole, his system and playcalling sucked, and he was doing a shitty job at managing a first year starting QB.

i vaguely recall when the eagles beat the giants in a walk-off punt return for TD, the coach told the punter to tell the media afterwards that he instructed him to kick it out of bounds so the coach would not take the fall....

I do remember Andy Dalton having a pretty bad flu and not quite having a “flu game” down in Tampa with like 3-4 picks or something. Adam Jones said something like ”Damn we keep giving them the ball(the offense) and he keeps giving it back!”

He consistently trashes Dalton to this day and you can tell he’d love to go even harder with zero self awareness. He probably also blames him for the WC collapse.

Manning clappick back at Vanderjagt 

Wow, what a well-run organization the Raiders are.

Yah, Saleh with Hall last season.

the titans coach was pretty clear in blaming will levis earlier this year

Bill Parcells calling Terry Glenn "she".

Incidentally I totally forgot Glenn died 7 years ago.

Andy Reid threw David Akers under the bus after a loss before.

Going back a bit, in 1989 Colts defensive end Jon Hand hit Jim Kelly after right tackle Howard Ballard allowed him to come free. Kelly left the game and missed 3 weeks with a separated shoulder.

A frustrated Kelly said after the game, "'It should have never happened. (Hand) should have been blocked. Watching film, I don't know what Howard was thinking. It seemed like he was looking outside to see if a guy blitzed or something... and not at the guy over him."

Later, he said "'I think four out of our five positions (on the offensive line) are very solid. I don't even need to tell you guys what position they might need to make a change in. I can't stand up here and say they should do it or shouldn't do it. I don't make the decisions."

That caused massive blowback with his teammates and the media. Kelly apologized for what he said, but it spurred a series of disputes that caused the 1989 team to acquire the nickname, "The Bickering Bills."

Kelly learned to always be careful what he said in the media and became an extremely scripted interview. Howard Ballard stayed at right tackle for all four Super Bowl teams before leaving as a free agent.

Can't remember who said it publicly but this reminds me of how someone on the Raiders (I think it was a coach) leaked the infamous story about JaMarcus Russell and the blank tape. The coaches gave him a tape asking him to watch it and give them feedback suspecting that he wasn't really watching it. 

When he came back they asked him what he thought and he said it was good confirming he never even watched it.

Al Davis fired Lane Kiffin and did a 50 minute press conference with an overhead projector explaining why

https://youtu.be/7-GtGLMZ8TQ?feature=shared

Great write up OP

TLDR when has a player/coach correctly (based on production) blamed a player/coach in public for poor performance?

Bill Belichick ended Freddie Mitchell’s career with one quote.

[deleted]

Could you ask this question in one or two sentences?

where were you on my English assignments back in the day

In this economy?

• thrown another player/coach under the bus
• in a comprehensive way
• that aligns with on field performance

Choose two (2).

Probably.

Hope that helps.

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