That's pretty much where I am, Goal. First-year Coaches taking over 3-13 teams should get at least a year before one starts to make any real valuations.
But the Haslett decision at the end of this year will say a lot to me about who Allen and Gruden are and whether we're looking at turning a corner or just running off the road again.
Honestly, and I hate to say this, but retaining Haslett already told us what we needed to know about Allen and Gruden on that front, Om.
There was absolutely zero justification for retaining him considering just how bad our defense had been under him for most of his tenure, I don't care what ridiculous narrative about Mike being too involved is claimed or that Haslett didn't have anything to work with. Enough was already enough. I could understand if the defense was just average throughout his tenure, then MAYBE one could claim those things as being reason enough to retain him, but the defense was consistently one of the worst in the league. There were times we were historically bad, literally.
When you've got options like Wade Phillips out there, who has done nothing but coordinate top 10 defense's his entire career, and his scheme fits your personnel to a friggin tee, there simply was no excuse for retaining Haslett. Even if the narrative is true, that Has wasn't allowed to run the D like he wanted (whatever, what was he doing the entire time, farting in his office?) and he had awful personnel (true, but a better coordinator gets more out of them and we saw how that works at the end of 2012), if your desire really is to get better than I just can't see the justification of not hiring someone else who has a consistently better pedigree.
Instead, we went the "boy's club" route and re-united old buddies. You know, I could totally understand a coach wanting to be comfortable with the guys he's going to be around a whole lot, so I get that Gruden preferred Haslett based on their history... but it was wrong and still wrong. At some point, Gruden had to say to himself that retaining Haslett when there were clearly better options out there wouldn't be the best thing for the team, even if it was more comfortable for him. It's nice to have a comfort level with each other and feel like you get each other, but if you're losing in the process it means nothing.
What has this comfort brought us other than another year of what looks to be porous defense? I'm sorry, but Gruden and Allen were dead wrong on this. Now, I'm sure they'll get it right and fire him at the end of the year, but I just can't help but be angry that they were willing to do this in the first place. Especially after Allen talked about "coaches who understand the value of time in the NFL and develop players quick enough", right after he fired Mike. He said this and then gave Haslett another friggin year to poop on the fans. It's ridiculous.
My biggest problem with Haslett is that he takes way too long to adjust. To his credit, he actually does adjust and it's probably why he's able to keep his job, but he simply doesn't do it in time. So, I'm sure when the playoffs are off the table our defense will look pretty good and people will say "Haslett is getting it". During games, he simply refuses to adjust drive to drive, but will always come out at half-time making the obvious adjustments all of us can see needed to be made. The Seahawks game was the perfect example. Why the heck did it take until the second half for us to realize that Russel Wilson was taking advantage of our over-pursuing? Why didn't that change occur immediately after the first drive? Nope, let's let them do it over and over and over and then we'll fix it at half time.
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