Mike Piellucci is a nice enough fellow. And he’s competent-ish when it comes to sports. But, man, did he get it completely wrong yesterday when he suggested that the most intriguing substitute for COVID-ridden Mike McCarthy is OC Kellen Moore. No! Not even close.
Give me Jerral Wayne Jones.
Now, when I said as much in the D Magazine studios yesterday, Mike countered my suggestion by saying something about how the game Thursday is important and the Cowboys really do need a win and Lincoln Riley will have the Trojans competing for a title next season — at the latest. At the risk of disrespecting Mike on the blog he started, Mike doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
You might think my suggestion that Jerry should sub for McCarthy is just a joke. I want to be perfectly clear: it is not just a joke. The CIA once had a plan to assassinate Fidel Castro with an exploding cigar. That was definitely a joke. How could it not be? That’s like trying to kill someone by dropping an anvil on his head. It’s funny. It’s a joke. But it’s not just a joke, because an anvil would straight up kill you. I’m not sure how far you’d need to drop it. Depends on the size of the anvil, I guess. But even small anvils are heavy, and f = ma, where “a” is 9.8 m/s2.
Back to Coach Jerry. Yes, it would be funny if he coached a game, and, yes, I am making a joke by suggesting that he do it. But it could also work. He is the cartoonish exploding cigar that, by the way, could also decapitate you and topple a dictatorship.
OK, so you’re saying the game is important and we need to win? Great, I agree with you. Here is what would happen if Jerry coached an NFL game: every single person on the planet above the age of 4 would tune in to watch. The Cowboys-Saints game would draw more eyeballs than the Super Bowl and the World Cup played simultaneously on the same field.
How, then, do you think the players would perform, knowing they were playing in the most-watched game in the history of the league? For one, Micah Parsons is going to have three sacks, and then, in garbage time, after the Cowboys are up four touchdowns, he’ll attempt a 64-yard field goal just because that would be fun to watch.
I want you to imagine Jerry on the sideline wearing a headset on top of his normal headset. (If it wasn’t clear, that was a toupee joke. Unlike Castro’s cigar, which was probably 80 percent silly CIA joke, 20 percent lethal incendiary device, the headset thing was 100 percent joke.) Anyway, there’s Jerry on the sideline. He’s holding McCarthy’s enormous laminated Denny’s breakfast menu. And he can’t wear a suit, per league rules. He has to wear NFL gear. So he goes the Bill Belichick route and cuts the sleeves off a hoodie. Do you understand the power of the meme that would be forged by that situation? It would be like if the guys behind “Island Boy” punched Richard Spencer on a skateboard while lip-syncing Lizzo’s “Truth Hurts.”
Listen, Dan Quinn will still run the defense, and Moore will still run the offense. Jerry would need to make only three or four actual decisions during the entire game. He can handle that. Just ask him.
