Larry Brown Sports

The Baltimore Ravens surprised most people when they announced the firing of offensive coordinator Cam Cameron with three games left in the regular season. Jay Glazer reported on FOX NFL Sunday that Cameron’s dismissal did not surprise the team’s players; many of them had been looking for a change for a while.

Glazer says Ravens players have been clamoring for a change for over a year. Players reportedly have gone to the front office and head coach John Harbaugh to complain about Cameron. Glazer also says players were frustrated that Cameron wouldn’t adjust gameplans when it was clear to them that they weren’t working during games.

According to Glazer, the edict came down from ownership a few weeks ago to remove Cameron. Harbaugh reportedly helped Cameron hang on for as long he could until he was finally let go.

Glazer’s report isn’t at all shocking. Not only has the media questioned Cameron, but linebacker Terrell Suggs publicly questioned the coordinator’s usage of offensive playmakers Ray Rice and Anquan Boldin last season.

Cameron had been the team’s offensive coordinator since 2008 after being fired following a 1-15 season as head coach of the Miami Dolphins.

For what it’s worth, the Ravens were held to three points through the first three quarters at home in a 34-17 loss to the Denver Broncos on Sunday. They had a fumble, interception, and five punts in their first seven possessions with Jim Caldwell as offensive coordinator.

We think the Ravens should have fired Cameron before the season began, and that they should have turned to someone other than Caldwell.

From 1989 to 2003, the Miami Dolphins did not have a losing season. Sure they had Hall of Famer Dan Marino playing quarterback and that helps tremendously, but Jay Fiedler (Jay Fiedler!) played QB the last four of those seasons. Their defense also was pretty outstanding many of those years, but the point is the people and fans in Miami were used to seeing a winning team.

Things changed pretty rapidly in Miami after that run of success. Once the Dolphins got rid of Dave Wannstedt, they hired Nick Saban who went 9-7 his first year but slipped to 6-10 before moving back to college. Miami had a major decision at that point: whom to hire as the replacement for Saban. They opted for Cam Cameron who was the offensive coordinator in San Diego. I didn’t like the hire for one simple reason: Cameron’s success was due more to his luck of coaching talented offensive players LaDainian Tomlinson, Antonio Gates, and Philip Rivers than his own abilities.

Read The Rest of the Story…

I thought it was a bad hire by Miami from the start. Cameron had no record as a head coach and was the offensive coordinator of a team that had LaDainian Tomlinson and Antonio Gates. If you can’t succeed with those two, you’re doing something wrong. On the other side of the coin, Cameron should have been pickier about choosing to go to Miami. I understand head coaching jobs in the NFL are difficult to come by, but sometimes you only get one shot, and if you go to a team that’s a disaster, you could be done forever. That’s why I don’t understand Cam Cameron.

Had he remained in San Diego, not only would he have been in a better situation with much better personnel, but he might have even been promoted to head coach with the firing of Schottenheimer. Had he stayed in his offensive coordinator role in San Diego, he would’ve no doubt been just as hot of a coaching commodity this year as he was last year. Instead, he took a crap job with a team that was rebuilding and wound up going 1-15. Hello coordinator positions, bye bye head coaching spots. Do you think anyone is going to recycle Cam Cameron when looking for a head coach? Probably not. A guy like Jim Mora who would be a re-tread at least took the Falcons to the playoffs. Cameron went 1-15. I think his days are numbered.

Lesson be learned: no matter how much you want to become a head coach, being picky about what job you take is just as critical as how good of a coach you are. If you walk into a bad situation, your chance of succeeding goes down and that can ruin your reputation forever. Cam Cameron just found out the hard way.

So much so, that he bought 1,000 copies of Tony Dungy’s memoir, Quiet Strength, helping vault the book into the No. 1 spot on the New York Times non-fiction best-seller list for a week. Cameron purchased the copies (priced at $26.99) to giveaway at his preseason coaching clinic. Here’s the story as told to Peter King:

“My wife and I got a pre-released copy of the book, and we just loved it,” Cameron said Saturday. “It dispelled so many myths about the coaching business — that you had to be a yeller and a screamer to win. You can be your own person, treat people with respect, be very demanding but demanding in a way that doesn’t trample on people. And you don’t have to give up your faith to win in the NFL. It confirmed and re-affirmed an awful lot of the beliefs I held about coaching.

“I wanted to give something to the coaches who came to this clinic. I knew how important they are to the lives of so many young kids, and I wanted to be sure they left the clinic with something that could help them as they went forward with their season. So I said, ‘Why not order one of Tony’s books for all of them? What a great message it would send to them.’ So I ordered 1,000.

Problem was 1,700 coaches showed up, so he was shorted. Nothing like showing a little love for a fellow coach. I’ll say this much, when Cameron is fired in the next three years, at least he should have a job somewhere on Tony Dungy’s staff. Nobody ever accused Cameron of being stupid. Or cheap.

Chest Bump: MDS at FanHouse