This whole week’s episode of The Coach Clarahanson Show!!! could be one long WTF rant, but we’ll begrudgingly follow suit and be sure to file our dismay in the correct folder. Special thanks to the short week. Now I gotta turn this thing around quickly and pay even less attention to my wife and kids. Glad that Aaron Rodgers shared his secret for how to deal with the tough loss and the quick turnaround "Rodgers footage drinking scotch". (Click on Link). Thank GOD we’re playing the Bears this week. Could not have come at a better time. The Pack is down 7 players and can really use this automatic win, even though beating the Bears will be pretty much like kissing your sister. The whole crapper seems like it’s backing up. A-Rod throws and runs like a girl, McCarthy manages games like he’s Kramer, our players trot around lazily like they’re entitled to win without giving it their best effort and then get burned by opponents that do, our “deepest position” left their jock straps all over the field. What the hell’s going on out here? Oh, and just in case you were wondering… But I digress... Life’s not all bad. For example, congratulations to last week’s Coach Clarahanson “Name A Hottie” contest winner, Trevor Bitterswheat, of Combined Locks for laudably submitting Eva Mendes as a young, Hispanic Cindy Crawford. Good on you, Mate! When notified of his winning entry, Trevor said “It just kinda hit me like, Who’d be hotter than a modern-day Cindy Crawford but younger, of course … and maybe Mexican?” Trevor politely declined the 1st place prize of a Ryan Pickett autographed football, which rolls over in with next week’s prize -- a Samkon Gado wristband with an inked "#35" on it! Good luck. Create a seam here - X' & O's about the game or a scheme Cowboy game summary: Hey, fantastic TD by Starks! Ooops, well that’s the way it was supposed to look...and it did…last year. There were exactly two highlights worth remembering from the Cowboys game: Highlight #1: Brent got his ring from the President of the Pro Football HOF: C. David Baker. You know, as in “C David Baker? He can’t paint the f’ng field for the game in Canton”. And, thanks for coming back Brent, you ole’ good-luck-charm you, at least it wasn’t 33-degrees F and driving rain like it was when we lost the last time you were here. Highlight #2: Some Italian friends of "The Show!!!” were at the game! Ciao (from right to left) Fernando, Luca, and the other guy who we didn't tailgate with, but who happens to be an Ariens Snowblower Dealer from Italy. Receiving serious WTF consideration... Why is there a snow blower dealer in Italy??? BTW, doesn't Luca look at lot like another famous Italian? Ok, youse gize have already called in to a half-dozen radio shows, watched ESPN, kicked the dog and maybe gave yourself a high-ankle-sprain by jumping off of your garage roof in a failed attempt to end the misery. Coach, too, so I'll cease and desist from overanalyzing A-Rod's recent penchant for bad passes, poor reads, late deliveries, hand slaps to the turf, etc., and simply observe that while he played an extremely mediocre game, the reality is that the game was won and lost in the trenches. Yes, the good ole trenches! A place about which our D-Coordinator, the Legume, has yet to exhibit any cognition (OK, just tell the bartender he’s a f’ng dumbass). Dallas needed only five plays and 33 seconds to cover 97 yards and make the score 17-6 at the half. The Packers never got closer than 11 the rest of the way. The picture below is all you need to know about the game. Coach has to admit that he admires the team they put together down there in Ft. Worth. In a true LOL moment, Coach wonders if Mr. Mike Daniels even knows the Denny Green (Click on Link) story behind the quote he appropriated. In a fun sort of “nothing to see here” moment, Brent Favor had glowing post game comments about Cowboys QB, Zit Pressclosed. After spending several minutes praising him, the ever-media-savvy #4 sensed the home crowd and added “Oh yeah, and Aaron is really good too. Throwing 2 INT’s and fumbling twice isn’t so bad. He only lost one fumble.” So where does this leave us going into the Week 7 Bears game? Well more-or-less like 1978 where we finished 2nd in the NFC Central Division with an 8-7-1 record. Good enough for 2nd place, behind..oh, f’it, I can’t stand this. Moving on…so you may recall that Coach has always recommended scoring more points than the other team as a key to victory. So to summarize the 2016 Season so far, we got our asses kicked by the two good teams we’ve played and we’ve squeezed past the three lousy teams we’ve played. If we look only at Team rankings on Point Differential per game, we have a lot of trouble in River City ahead of us. We could easily be 10-6 this year looking at that ranking, with four more losses coming from Philadelphia, Minnesota, the Falcons and the Seahawks. Even more troubling, you may remember way back in Week 5 that Coach explained the “Pythagorean” theorem of football point differential. On that measure, at a “plus 0.2” PPG, we project as an 8-8 team. Of course at this point in the season Coach is just worrying unnecessarily, right? Nah, but even so, this stinks!!! En so? Don’t despair! Coach knows the real recipe for success in this case… ...Lombardi said it ...Holmgren said it …you know it …NFL Coaches have a shelf-life of around 7 years and the Murphy-Thompson-McCarthy-Legume Regime is overdue. It’s time for a coup d’état at 1265 Lombardi Ave. The MTM-Legume Show has to go. I guess the positive way to look at things is that your January should be free to go curling and make some Canadian friends, eh? WTF - The Coach's take on a bad ref call or a bad play call or the like Here's a bad play: PLAYING AARON RODGERS. He's got the worst passer rating in the league, and you can't do worse than that, now can you. Many of you dorks blame his wicked hot girlfriend, Olivia Munn, for sending the bloodflow out of his cerebral cortex and into his frontal lobe. Coach has professed how stupid that is, citing the beauty of Tom Brady's wife, Gisele, and every girlfriend of every starting quarterback -- professional, college, and dare I say high school, that I have ever seen (except for maybe Kirk Cousins' fatass wife). So Coach was shocked when Aaron confessed the possibility that Ms. Munn may have inadvertently been negatively affecting his gridiron production. Rodgers revealed Monday that he was putting dairy back into his diet, saying "Olivia suggested maybe we should eat less red meat and stop eating dairy so that I can extend my career, and I agreed because she rocks in the sack and I am NOT gonna upset THAT apple cart. Then I watched Favre get his Hall of Fame ring at halftime and thought to myself -- that guy ate like 10 Slim-Jims a day, drank like a fish, trolled his cock around town like nobody's business, and look where it got him! I'm putting away the Glenlivet and opening a case of Keystone. Who knows, maybe I'll puke pork rinds on Leonard Floyd Thursday night." Since the Packers have put the scoring of touchdowns on temporary hiatus, Coach had to find alternative examples of football excellence. Kansas State vs. Texas Tech … Coach recommends players with sufficient intestinal fortitude to strive for this end zone celebration (Click on Link) – and expects there will be no 15-yard penalty. Not to be out-done, Texas Tech has revealed this innovative way to fire up the crowd! (Click on Link) I suspect Bears fans will be quick to adapt this into their cheering routine. In case you missed it, home field robbery occurred again in Seattle. This time Richard Sherman mugged Julio Jones blatantly right in front of a ref, and there inexplicably was no call. First of all, if Sherman wouldn’t have mauled Jones, than Jones certainly would have caught the ball – he almost did it with one arm literally tied behind his back. B of all, that catch or pass interference would have set up the game winning chip shot field goal. But as a result of the bad ref call, it now appears Atlanta will likely have to go through Seattle in the playoffs instead of the reverse. Sound familiar Packers fans? Grab your torch and pitchforks, because it’s time to demand that Pass Interference – the most impactful, game changing call in the game of football, be subject to replay review. Why are the refs so in love with the Seattle Seahawks anyways? Why is Sherman being so protected by them? Are there bigger plans in store for Richard Sherman this year? (Click on Link) Not really sure why UW’s basketball star Nigel Hayes keeps making this football blog, but here we go again… This time Nigel was holding up a sign in Madison when ESPN College Gameday was in town Saturday for Bucky vs. tOSU Chestnuts. Do we have another Kaepernick on our hands? No. …for a couple of years now Hayes has been touting that Beer Money Matters, pining for pay to athletes. He is no stranger to using his platform of fame(?) for what he sees as the greater good. FWIW, all the money donated to the site depicted on his sign went to Boys & Girls Club, not to him. He’s a good guy. Kinda funny, too. Who knows, maybe his jump shot will pick up, also. Or maybe Coach will recruit him for Badger Underground insight when he graduates and doesn’t get drafted by an NBA team again this year. Bears Still Suck - the Coach has proof The Bears lost again. 1-5. Shocker. Let’s put this in perspective… What would be most insulting? A. Aaron Gabbert B. Aaron Griffin III C. Aaron Hoyer D. Aaron Cutler Trick question! The correct answer is both C and D. Granted, they’re all pretty insulting, but mocking an NFL quarterback by using the name of a Bears quarterback is by far the worst of the worst (Hmmm…I could go for some wurst). Now if only Aaron Houston would be replaced by Brett Hornibrook… Good thing Thursday’s game is being played in Green Bay, where things are done a little more honestly. The big story in Chicago lately is all about the scam artists hard at work on their home-office printers making fraudulent tickets. The Bears are experiencing great difficulty in selling actual tickets, and they have reached out to the 3 notorious crime families of Chicagoland (the Bignoso’s, the Fibono’s, and the Rahmboni’s) to flood the streets with fake tickets so that poor and drug-addicted people come to Soldiers Fields, albeit bewildered, to fill some seats (see also, Democrat voting practices). This effort is not unusual and was actually implemented successfully in Champaigns, Illinoise last year before the hiring of prodigal son, Lovie Smith, was instituted to generate interest in college football teams west of Indiana. Uncomfortable silence (more than usual at Soldiers Fields) arose in one peculiar situation when legitimate ticket holders actually showed up for the game and homeless men were fornicating in their seats (Click on Link). Bears officials courageously addressed that incident by giving those season ticket holders their money back for that game and offered to buy back the rest of their tickets, less a customary 30% “re-stocking” fee. Udder stuff - commentary from the Badger Underground The Underground’s take on the Ohio State game? We lost. That sucks, There are plenty of woulda should coulda's. That OT 3rd down run shoulda been right and not left to the short side. The refs had at least 4 unfavorable holding calls that coulda went the other way. The refs got the big calls right on the Clement fumble and the INT, but were out to lunch on holding calls. A couple non-holding calls gave the Buckeyes a free FG that was the game. There were also a couple phantom holding calls on us. Going back to the predictions, everything was pretty much as planned except Horny played like a true freshman. The running game was better but still not what we are used to seeing. The dropped passes diminished but that one by Steffes in the second half was a killer. Overall, Chryst called a great game. The D was BADASS, but were gassed in the second half when the O sputtered. Missing our 3rd CB Jamerson and Beigel cost us in this game…Watt spent too much time chasing down receivers. In the end, tOSU’s depth chart full of 5 star athletes prevailed, making great plays and flexing their athleticism. The Badgers are definitely a force to be reckoned with, though. Now it is on to Iowa for the fourth game of the brutal 5 game Big Ten gauntlet for the Badgers. This is a revenge game, as WI handed Iowa the West Division title stumbling & bumbling at Camp Randall last year. Our scouting shows that their QB is by far best punting QB in the country. Iowa quarterback CJ Beat Hard nailed a perfect pooch punt (Click on Link, but don’t expect chicks from Iowa to be hot) for 34 yards on a 4th down play against the Goofs. We’ll be in good shape with them regularly punting on 4th down. But we also need to watch out for the drop kick like they did against Ohio state, though. Pretty exciting stuff! The Iowa game has “let down” written all over it, but we don’t see this year’s Badgers team letting down for a game like this. Stay clear of the dropsies if the game is tight and everything is still in front of us. All games are must win and the Hawkeyes always play us tough regardless. They have accomplished nothing impressive this year. The O-line is rounding into shape. Look for break out running. The D may have Biegel and/or Jameson back. We have won there the last 4 times we were at Kinickinickanickernick. Look for a CORN ROAST! At a minimum, we should be looking at another Holiday Bowl unless Nebraska implodes. They play tOSU in Columbus the week after they play us. We pretty much have to win out, which is totally possible (pom poms waving!). We will sneak up and beat tOSU or the Weasels in the championship and land a Rose Bowl (or, dare we say Playoff?) berth at 10-2. This will all be decided on the field and we have that to be thankful for. We still refuse to look at rankings. Our power ranking beauty contest would have us just below Michigan and Ohio State based on the last 2 weeks head to head. We cannot comment on any other teams in the top 10 because we have not played them. Amen. We're gonna kick your a$$ - predictions for the next game Aside from chanting the Bears still suck and pointing toward long-term sustained success (i.e. Championships), this one is gonna be a bit more of a challenge than usual! … no Lacy, no Starks, no Cook, no Adams, no Bulaga (well Starks & Adams out may be a plus) … no Shields, Rollins or Randall …an MVP Quarterback playing worse than a journeyman …Vic Fangio, the kryptonite of D-Coordinators for A-Rod …no, the reason we will be able to prevail over one of the Bottom 5 teams in the League is this guy: Nobody actually knows what his name is, but he kicked our ass in Preseason so Ted made his first trade since WWII and now he’s a Packer. He was something like 17th on the K-C Preseason Depth Chart, which makes him a big upgrade over Ripkowski and Montgomery. In unrelated news, John Kuhn has three rushing TD’s as a N.O. Saint. NO Shit! Rodgers and McCarthy undoubtedly will look to get into an offensive rhythm by running the new guy early and often. As McCarthy stated Monday, the West Coast offense, at its core, is designed to help make the quarterback successful. McCarthy went on to explain his goals for the Bears game: Goal No. 1: Learn the new guy’s name -and- Goal No. B: Try to figure out the field goal chart that Ron Zook gave him. The key-take-away is that it’s tough to kick field goals, and that Stenerud guy must have been pretty good to kick all those touchdowns. Try this out with that new driver. JB - Packer players you forgot about, but stories you'll remember about them Whilst at the Packer game Sunday afternoon, I couldn’t help but notice the buzz about the VIP’s sitting in the luxury box roughly 20 rows behind me. Sure shit -- it was Brett and the boys from SB31. LeRoy, Free, Gabe, etc., and their wives / kids, too. I noticed Deanna first, but when the whole crowd turned to face them after Bill Jartz announced their presence in the VIP box, she slipped back out of sight. I get it. But it got me thinking about the game this Thursday night. Packers v. Bears. Black and Blue Division. Tough guys. Physical play. And that made me think of another guy from Brett’s town of Hattiesburg, Mississippi who used to play for the Packers when more guys were tough than talented and beating the Bears wasn’t so easy. Paul Ott is the son and namesake of a patriotic Mississippi hunting and fishing legend who hosted a regular TV and radio show called Listen to the Eagle (Click on Link). You can see young Paul running with his hound dog in episodes that his daddy recorded back in the 1970’s. Paul added-on his mother’s maiden name to his surname “Carruth” as a tribute to her when she died of cancer during his Junior year at Alabama, where he played for Bear Bryant in his last season as head coach. In his final collegiate season, Carruth received an invitation to the 1985 Senior Bowl in Mobile. “I got down there and Forrest Gregg was our coach,” Carruth said. “They have pro teams’ coaches, so the Green Bay staff was our coach that week. I got down there and coach Gregg came up to me that first day and he said, ‘I want you returning punts and kickoffs.’ He said, ‘You break tackles and generally that’s what you need on punts and kickoffs.’ I said, ‘Yes sir!’ I was just glad he knew who I was.” Carruth earned MVP of the Senior Bowl that year for his performance, which included a reception for a touchdown and a long punt return.
Following the Senior Bowl, Carruth signed with the Birmingham Stallions of the USFL for the 1985 season. The USFL folded the season after that, but Ott Carruth had made enough of an impression on the Green Bay Packers coaching staff to receive a call to come play for them. The 6-1, 220 lb. fullback played three seasons with the Packers (and one season with the Chiefs) for a total of 45 games with 22 starts before injuries pushed him out of football. In his rookie season, he had 442 all-purpose yards while receiving 12 starts and scoring four touchdowns for Green Bay. POC also ran into a tense situation early that 1st year, as the NFL only allowed teams to carry two quarterbacks on the active roster. “I had played quarterback in high school, got demoted to halfback in college, and got demoted to fullback in the pros,” Carruth joked. “They called me the emergency quarterback and I called myself the disaster quarterback because it was going to be a disaster if I had to play quarterback. The fourth game of the season, we were playing the Vikings. I had played on special teams, but I hadn’t played from scrimmage yet at fullback. Our quarterback gets a virus — I mean before the game he’s throwing up, he passes out in the locker room, he can’t even come out for warm-ups.” That forced Carruth to go through warm-ups at the quarterback position as the backup quarterback. Vince Ferragamo (the only Packer to don #5 since Paul Hornung had last worn it, and one time standout quarterback with the Rams), was the Packers regular backup and got the start. “He gets sacked and he goes one way, his helmet goes the other way and I’m sitting there, ‘Get up Vince! Get up!’ I was sitting there thinking my first play in the NFL from scrimmage is going to be at quarterback,” Carruth said. “He got up, went over there, put his helmet on, and went back in the huddle. The next series or so I got to go in at fullback and kind of moved on in to the starting role pretty quick and enjoyed it. It was quite an experience playing against guys you had watched growing up. One guy on our team — he was in the NFL when I was in the eighth grade. It’s quite different when you get to the pros.” Later in the season, Carruth actually hoped he would get a crack at playing quarterback. “We were playing Tampa and we were ahead a pretty good bit,” Carruth said. “I actually begged coach Gregg to let me go in and play quarterback. He said, “Nah, nah, nah. We’ve got to play these guys again later in the season. I don’t want to rub anything in.’ In ’87, I was the only player in the league to catch a touchdown, throw a touchdown and rush for a touchdown. So I did throw a touchdown pass.” These days Paul Ott Carruth, 55, enjoys being a wealthy oil magnate for McCullough Oil Company in Trussville, Alabama. And I thought he was just a tough, scrappy running back.
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Author"Coach" is the insightful collective brain and funny bone of a few legendary Packer fans who provide everything you need to know (and what Packers beat writers often plagiarize) about the Green & Gold, plus a weekly guest appearance by The Badger Underground. Archives
November 2022
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