There is total lunacy going on in the NFL. Among the golden rules of the league was that coordinators simply did not get fired in the weeks before the season. Coordinators have so much responsibility for what a team does on the field that it makes little sense to disrupt a team by making a change like that. Or at least it used to make sense. In a bizarre new trend, three different offensive coordinators were fired within a week, and all in the last week of the preseason. The first time it happened - in Kansas City - the news was shocking. By the time the third firing took place all you could really do is laugh about it.

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In hindsight, Gailey and Haley were a pairing that just wasn't going to work. Haley just finished being an offensive coordinator himself, and a good one at that. He was also considerably more aggressive with his offense than Gailey has ever been. Typically a new coach would have brought in someone who knows the kind of system the coach wants to run and is committed to running it. Gailey wasn't that guy, and because he had previously worked with many of the players it would have been difficult for him to change his approach and become that guy. That meant that Haley felt that he had no choice but to take over.

So will it work? I'm not sure. On one hand, I believe in what Haley does offensively, and I think that players thrive when given the freedom that he gives them. I'm not convinced, though, that he has the talent there to do what he wants to do, or the time to properly install the offense and create the mindset. I also have a real problem with Haley's decision to call plays himself. Being a head coach, especially for the first time, is an incredibly difficult, time consuming challenge. There is no way that Haley can do both jobs effectively - especially since the OC job will demand so much of his time now to get things ready. You can call me pessimistic in the short term, but I think Haley will get things sorted out in Kansas City over the long run - especially if he focuses on picking the right coordinator in the offseason.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers - This one is pathetic. I will have to see a lot on the field to believe that the hiring of Raheem Morris as head coach, a guy who has never ever been a coordinator and is barely old enough to shave, was anything other than a terrible idea. The hiring of Jeff Jagodzinski and his subsequent firing does nothing to build Morris' case. Jagodzinski was fired as head coach at Boston College for flagrantly ignoring the wishes of his employer. Morris didn't know him but had to know his reputation. He hired him anyway.

The reports of what Jagodzinski was doing are hilarious - apparently he didn't know how to run practices, he couldn't install an offense, and he wasn't comfortable calling plays. In other words, he was the worst offensive coordinator ever. That's strange because he had been an OC before - most recently in Green Bay in 2006.

In hindsight, though, the Packers were bland and inept offensively en route to an 8-8 record, and then went 13-3 the year after he left, so maybe it was clear all along that Jagodzinski is no offensive genius. The Bucs were already a team that looked to be in trouble, and this firing only makes them look and seem even worse. It's hard to take this team seriously after this firing, but it was hard to take them seriously before, too, so nothing has changed.

Buffalo Bills - This one is turning into a he said, he said debacle. Coach Dick Jauron fired coordinator Turk Schonert largely because the offense had been beyond incompetent in the preseason and showed no signs of improvement. Schonert had apparently been contradicting Jauron in meetings with his players, and after he was fired took swipes at the head coach every chance he got, saying that Jauron wanted an overly simplistic offense. Jauron kept asking for changes, and Schonert, clearly figuring he was too smart to listen, wouldn't make them. The issues were particularly intense because the team had to figure out how to utilize the massive wide receiver firepower it has, and it was trying to implement a no-huddle offense.

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