AFC West News

One day after I spoke out about football withdrawal, I got a kick out of two news items from the AFC West this morning.

1. Al Davis quickly moves to hire old Head Coach Art Shell. Shell finally gets another shot at Head Coaching again. Amazingly, it's back with the Raiders. After being turned down by what seemed to be 30 some coaching candidates, most recently Squealers' offensive brainiac Ken Whisenhut, Davis quickly shifted his focus and hired his old coach Shell, who led the Raiders to an AFC Championship game appearance in the early 90s. In my opinion this opportunity for Shell has been long overdue and I hope he succeeds. The bad part about this though is that he's going to have to try doing this under nutso Al Davis.

The thing that made me laugh about this was that Al Davis was quoted as saying it gave him a chance of correcting a mistake he made over a decade ago. Oh really Al? What took so long? You waited until you got turned down by every other coaching candidate imaginable and then you decide to hire Art to correct the mistake of firing him way back when? That sounds pretty honorable to me. If I was Shell, I would have spit in his face and left the team. I thought Shell would have been a better coach to take over for the Raiders a few years ago before Norv Turner even took over.

2. John Elway speaks his mind about Terrell Owens joining the Broncos. As much as I have hated this guy as a player when he drove over half of the Cleveland population to alcoholism, I was thrilled to see this guy speak up for his old football team on the possibility of T.O. joining the team. "I think there are a lot of things about T.O. that none of us really knows, but obviously he can ruin a football team," Elway said. Let's all thank John for providing a little bit of common sense in a situation that has so far proven to be lacking it. I find it perplexing as to why the players and the coaches think that their situation in Denver wouldn't allow the same thing to happen that had happened in Philadelphia and San Francisco.

I'm holding out hope that Terrell Owens never plays another down in the NFL because the guy is a piece of crap, but someone will be dumb enough to take him. It's nice though to see one of the greatest players of All-Time in Elway stand up for the franchise he cares for though, because I truly think T.O. will be a perfect 3-0 when it comes to wearing out his welcome.