I was watching Jim Mora Jr. calling out his kicker in his press conference yesterday in a little bit of disbelief.  It was mind boggling to hear a coach with that much experience whining about how his kicker could not make every single kick.  Mare had a bad game, there’s no question about it, but correct me if I’m wrong, I don’t know any kicker who’s running at a 100% success rate.  A good kicker will make 85-90% of his kicks.  Every team in the league at one time or another gets burnt by a missed field goal.  Winning teams overcome the misses, losing teams do not.

If Mare is a bad kicker then Mora only has himself to blame for putting him on the team.  After a good run Mare was let go by Miami and could not catch on with New Orleans.  The Seahawks drafted Brandon Coutou out of Georgia a couple of seasons ago but he lost the competition with Mare in the preseason.  Had Coutou been on the field on Sunday would the result have been different no one will ever know.  The point is, if Mora wants to point fingers maybe he should look at himself.

I thought teams “win as a team and lose as a team.”  I guess that does not apply to kickers according to Mora.  I bet in retrospect, after the emotions of the game have dissipated, Mora himself would recognize that his comments were not only unjust but served no purpose and he would rather not have made them. 

But this isn’t the first time he’s got into trouble with public comments.  Personally, if I ran a football team, I’d prefer a coach who has a little more control over his emotions.