The Eric Bieniemy unemployment saga is over, as EB has agreed to become the assistant head coach and offensive coordinator at UCLA under new Bruins head coach and fellow former NFL RB DeShaun Foster.
Good for him, but, uh, was he forthcoming about how he got there?
“Bieniemy wants to call plays and wants to build that image back up to possibly getting a chance as a head coach, and initially, he'll have to do that in college,” Grant Paulsen said Monday. “But I found it interesting that EB said he had no regrets with the Commanders, and was not fired, but chose not to stay. He claimed to ESPN that laving was his choice…I guess it’s possible this is semantics, in that he had contract left? Someone else had his job, and maybe he did a ‘you can’t fire me, I quit’ kind of thing?”
GP invoked “Anchorman” with the ‘I don’t believe you’ quote, and had a fun allegory.
“My brother got into a fight in high school, a fistfight with this kid in gym class while they were playing basketball or something. Who knows why but they got rough and they started punching, and he hit this kid and he fell over,” GP said. “My dad had to go to court with him or whatever for this whole thing, and this kid was like a troublemaker that started the fight and my brother was fine, but in the hearing or whatever, the kid was on the stand and he said ‘he hit me, and my shoe slipped, and I fell over,’ and it was like, very important to him to get out there that the punch had not been the reason why he fell to the ground. That’s what it feels like to me – this email was like that. The fact they had hired this Kliff Kingsbury guy, whatever, I'd already told them I didn't want their position.”
“I don't know how many options there were up at the top, so I was wrong. Before this whole kind of carousel started, I thought that because there were so few offensive minds, he was gonna get a bump up and either be an OC somewhere or a head coach,” Danny said. “I said that was kind of my outside dark horse, not totally shtick, but basically saying like, I think that because there's so few offensive hirings. Which as it turned out, no offensive guys got hired.”
EB seemed to interview with the Steelers, but that was it outside of meeting with the new Commanders brass…and there may be a big reason why.
“His style does not resonate with current NFL players, and either he's gonna have to make an adjustment, or someone's gonna have to want that style in their building,” Grant said. “Here's what I'm gonna say for him at UCLA though: I'm very, very happy for him to get a crack at the college game, because I think it'll work there. You never have to call a run play, do what you did here, but also, you can be kind of a little more of whatever you wanna call him from a style standpoint – an old school yeller, in people's faces, kind of demanding of college kids who you're trying to shape and mold. Like, that is allowed at that level. I think it's gonna be a success, and I think it's gonna work well there.”
“I hope it does, honestly, just because he could use a couple of stacks of good, you know what I mean?” Danny replied. “Like, a move of his to work out to his advantage, or have his rep changed a little bit. So, I'm pulling for the guy.”