Jim Mora's "Playoffs?!" Rant (Re-Run)

00:00:01 Speaker 1: Hey, folks, this is Will Gatchel and you're listening to sports Dot MP three, the sports adjacent podcast that sports fans can listen to during long car rides without annoying their non sports fan passengers. Today's episode is actually a rerun of one of my favorite episodes from season one. On the precipice of Week eleven of the NFL season, the playoff picture is slowly but surely emerging from the depths of uncertainty, and in honor of this final regular season stretch, there's no better SoundBite to explore than Jim Mora's iconic. 00:00:36 Speaker 2: Uh, playoffs. Don't talk about playoffs? 00:00:39 Speaker 3: You kidding me? Playoffs? I just hope we can win a game. 00:00:44 Speaker 1: I'll be back next week with a truly new episode. But in the meantime, I hope you enjoy this rerun. And fine, I'll admit it, I accidentally deleted all of the files for what was supposed to be today's episode. If you're disappointed, join the club or don't. Memberships off. Either way, I hope you enjoy it today's episode. See ya. 00:01:14 Speaker 4: The first known use of the word playoff comes from a sixteen oh seven play called Lests to Make You Marry by Thomas Decker and George Wilkins. At the time, it meant to begin to finish, a combination of the word play meaning to commence, and the word off, meaning to finish completely. The first known use of the word playoff in relation to sports came some three hundred years later, in nineteen oh one, thanks to an article by Munzie's Magazine of New York, which wrote, We're going to playoff for the Woolcott Cup. The word and its meaning haven't changed much in recent years, but playoff formats themselves have. The college football playoffs have expanded the field to add or teams. In recent years, the NBA has added the play in Tournament to expand how many teams might be able to make the playoffs, and many other sports are doing the same. But that's besides the point. Playoffs, no matter the formatter style, have the power to hurt or heal fan bases, define careers, and create lasting legacies, for better or for worse. But the word playoff itself is forever connected to one man, or more specifically, the way one NFL coach said the word in a post game ran, I don't know what it is about sports. Press conferences and words that start with the letter P. But there's some clear relationship, and it's kind of weird. I mean, when you think about the most iconic press conferences in sports history, two of the top five in my mind at least the most famous are Alan Iverson's practice rant, which conveniently you can actually learn more about by listening to episode one, and then right up there along with it, we have the topic of today's episode, Jim Mora's epic playoffs press conference meltdown, and if my impersonation didn't do it for you, here's what I'm talking about. 00:03:19 Speaker 2: Uh, playoffs, don't talk about playoffs? 00:03:22 Speaker 3: You kidding me? Playoffs? I just hope we can win a game. 00:03:28 Speaker 4: You see, Mori's epic postgame rant has a lot more to the story than meets the eye or ear. But this is sports Dot MP three, the podcast that explores true stories and missing contexts behind sports most iconic sounds. So you already knew that, but you probably didn't know that Morris rant called out his own team's turnovers, specifically the four interceptions thrown by the Colts quarterback at the time, a dude named Peyton Manning. So without further Ado. Let's get into it. Jim Morrow Senior took over as head coach of the New Orleans Saints in nineteen eighty six. The Saints, who had recently been purchased by new owner Tom Benson just last year, were one of the worst franchises in the entirety of the National Football League, and that's not an exaggeration. The Saints had never talied a winning record or even made the playoffs in its first nineteen seasons. 00:04:36 Speaker 1: Yikes. 00:04:37 Speaker 4: But Mora successfully turned the entire franchise around, or I guess helped tear it down and rebuild it from scratch. He recruited a few players from the United States Football League, where he had been head coach prior to joining the Saints, to join the roster, and he helped lead the team to seven wins and nine losses in his first season. The following season would see the Saints enter Week six with three wins and two losses, and they would lose that week's game in heartbreaking fashion to the San Francisco forty nine ers by just two points and showing a sign of what would come years later, Mora would drop one of his most memorable postgame rants after this game forever known as the could a, would a should a speech. And if you're not sure, why just listen. 00:05:24 Speaker 5: We aren't good enough. They're better than us, black and white. Simple fact, could have, would have, should have is the difference to what I'm talking about. The good team don't come in and say could have? They get it done, all right, it's that simple. I'm tired of saying could have, should have, would have. That's why we ain't good enough yet, because we're saying could have and they ain't. 00:05:47 Speaker 4: And here's where things get interesting. 00:05:50 Speaker 3: This speech worked. 00:05:53 Speaker 4: The Saints would actually go on to win the next nine straight games and enter the playoffs twelve and three, the first winning season in the Saints' history and its first playoff berth. Whatever magic that speech had on the team, however, failed to work in the playoffs, as they would lose their wild card matchup against the Minnesota Vikings that year and failed to win any of the other three playoff games they would have under Mora as head coach in the next eight and a half seasons. And yes I did say eight and a half. That brings us to nineteen ninety six, Mora's last at New Orleans, and while he never took the Saints over the top. He did get the franchise into great shape, leaving them at the time as the all time record holder for wins, but his departure from the team midway through the season was a little bit less positive. This season had started off poorly, and it all peaked at the end of a loss to the Carolina Panthers, which put the Saints at two wins and six losses. Mora entered the postgame press conference against the Panthers pretty leading him to drop an all timer, and he literally resigned the very next day after this quote, So what was this line? Well, I'm glad you asked. 00:07:14 Speaker 5: We couldn't do dittley pooh offensively. We couldn't make a first down. We couldn't run the ball, we didn't try to run the ball. We couldn't complete a pass. We sucked the second half. We sucked ditty pooh. 00:07:29 Speaker 4: So after dropping that iconic Diddley Pooh line, Mora took a year off and worked as an NBC color analyst after the Saints' tenure, and after a year of that, he returned in nineteen ninety eight as head coach of the Indianapolis Colts, who had just drafted a rookie quarterback by the name of Peyton Manning. Morris started off with a three and thirteen season his first year at the Colts. However, similarly to his tenure at the Saints, his second year in charge brought better results. The Colts finished the nineteen ninety nine regular season with thirteen wins and three losses, constituting the largest turnaround between two seasons in NFL history, but they would lose in the playoffs that year and the following year as well, which definitely ratchet up the pressure on Mora, who at that point in his more than twelve year career had never won a playoff game in the NFL. Yeah, you know, Skip Bayless would be chopping at the bits with that. So in his fourth season with the Colts, it was now or never for Mora, and he clearly harbored some tense feelings towards Peyton Manning. Manning was clearly the franchise's golden boy, so to speak, and at the time, Payne was still developing into the Hall of Fame talent he eventually became, and he did have a habit of throwing a lot of interceptions the second most in the NFL that season, albeit a lot of touchdowns too. Adding the fact that Mora was close friends with the team's to eventsive coordinator, Vic Fangio, who had been blamed by the team's GM that's general manager for many of the Colts issues, and you get the idea that the general vibes around the team were not good to say the least, and that finally brings us to the press conference itself. The meltown would come due to a familiar foe for Mora, the San Francisco forty nine Ers. After a week eleven loss to the forty nine ers that basically crushed the Colts playoff hopes for that season, highlighted by a four interception game thrown by Peyton Manning, and Mora was pretty pissed. To make matters even worse, the game ball had gone to Jim Mora Junior. Yeah, that's right, his son, who was the defensive coordinator for the forty nine ers team, and so Mora was understandably upset, and when he entered the press conference, one of the first things he did was immediately go on to defend his defense while blaming a big part of the season and the loss on the offense, namely Peyton Minning. 00:10:10 Speaker 5: Well, I'll start off by saying this, do not blame that game on the defense. 00:10:14 Speaker 3: Okay. 00:10:16 Speaker 5: I don't care who you play, whether it's a high school team, a junior college team, a college team, much less an NFL team. When you turn the ball over five times, four interceptions, one for a touchdown, three others in field position to set up touchdowns, you ain't compete anybody. I just talked about anybody, all right, And that was a disgraceful performance. In my opinion, we threw that game. We gave it away by doing that, We gave him the friggin game. In my opinion, that sucked. 00:10:49 Speaker 3: Holy crap. 00:10:50 Speaker 5: I don't know who the hell we think when we are when we do something like that, unbelievable five turnovers one of them. We've thrown four inners for touchdowns this year. That might be an NFL record. That's pitiful. I mean, it's absolutely pitiful to perform like that. 00:11:07 Speaker 3: Pitifule. 00:11:11 Speaker 4: Tim Bragg, the infamous reporter who actually asked Maura the question that would lead to his playoffs quote. Notice right away that Mora was really upset and when he saw his opportunity, he asked the head coach, Hey, you're probably going to have to win out to make the playoffs, but reportedly Mourra didn't hear what Bracketts asked, and so Bragg repeated the question, and that time More responded. 00:11:40 Speaker 2: Uh, playoffs. Don't talk about playoffs. 00:11:44 Speaker 3: You kidding me? Playoffs? I just hope we can win a game. 00:11:51 Speaker 2: Playoffs. Don't talk about playoffs. 00:11:54 Speaker 3: You kidding me? Playoffs? I just hope we can win a game. 00:12:00 Speaker 4: After the press conference, Mora actually did immediately grow concerned with how his rant would be perceived, but only because he had called out Peyton Manning's performance, although not by name and not because of how he had said playoffs, and his concern wasn't without merit. Peyton Manning would mention to the press about a week later that he was bothered by Mora's comments, but that was a blimp on the radar and the true fallout of the quote. The Colts would only win two more games that season, and although Manning would throw twenty three interceptions, the Colts defense would finish that season with the most points conceded in the NFL, so it definitely was not all on Manning. By any means, and he went on to have a pretty goaded career. So yeah, now Mora would never coach in the NFL again, And while it sounds harsh, he did finish his NFL coaching career with an above five hundred rating. Was the Saints franchise leader and wins before Sean Payton. I don't know what it is with him, and Peyton's surpassed him in twenty sixteen, and he was definitely paid a lot more than I've ever made from a single COR's Light commercial he made where he made fun of his own rant in two thousand and six, So good on him for that. And while more might not be remembered with the likes of the NFL's all time greatest coaches or most inspiring figures, he also won't go down as a true failure. And while the way he said playoffs might be remembered long after his turnaround of the Saints franchise is forgotten, he will forever be remembered as the playoffs guy instead of the diddly poo guy. And I think that's a huge win. And that's a wrap. I'm will Goatchel and thanks for listening to this episode. Of Sports Dot MP three. As always, please leave a like or common if you enjoyed, and be sure to tune in for the episode coming out in two weeks time. 00:13:48 Speaker 3: Peace more a