Did you not read what I said? Sentence #2:
No reason for the indignant response, homie.
No reasonable person thinks Flacco and the offense regressed this year because of Caldwell. Everyone points to their plague of injuries and non-existent rushing offense. Look for the variable that changed, and there's your cause/effect. Makes sense he had his worst year ever with:
-No Bolden
-Worst OL he has ever had
-Injuries to Jones/Smith/Pitta
-Injuries to Ray Rice
That opinion is fine, but his OL didn't throw picks, his receivers didn't throw the picks and his RB's didn't throw his picks. Tom Brady had all of the same issues and still found a way to be effective. You may think that i'm not reasonable for putting some of that blame on Caldwell, but there is a LOT of people both in media and Ravens fans that wholeheartingly agree with the premise.
It's not that he's responsible for Manning, or anything like that. Just that he had lots of experience as the QB coach for a great QB, and Manning really liked him by all reports. Then he goes to Baltimore and they fire Cameron at the tail end of a mediocre season, and then Flacco thrives under Caldwell's offense and dominates on a super bowl run.
Caldwell was fired two weeks before the end of the season. They didn't install a brand new offense during that time. Many Ravens fans considered Caldwell to be the "defacto OC" during that time. The reality is that every coaching job Caldwell has gotten, he either inherited because of someone getting fired from and/or got fired himself.
Clearly, they want a coach whose focus will be on evaluating and developing the QB. Their choice was Whisenhunt, who was a better candidate. Tell me who else is more qualified than Caldwell to come in and evaluate Stafford after Whisenhunt is off the board?
They didn't pick Caldwell because of his talents, they picked him because he was the only coaching candidate left in the market with any head coaching experience. If they really wanted a QB centered coach, they could have went with someone like McDaniels (yikes) or McAdoo. Both have proven abilities to improve QB play. Caldwell has Manning (who he did little or no coaching) and one year of Flacco (his worst ever) as his QB mentoring resume.
If they were looking for just better candidates... I think Zimmer (Cin), Quin (Sea) and Munchak are all better candidates. But again... it shouldn't have came down to this tier of candidate. They should have hired one of the better options before they got hired elsewhere. The most talented team looking for a coach ended up with Caldwell.
