Personally, I was in favor of Kelly/Trestman, followed by Lovie. My biggest fear was ending up with a failed retread like Whiz. But I have to say that the Marrone hiring is really growing on me. A lot of people (especially on other sites) are really trashing the decision, and the constant whining and negativity is really silly. These same people were blasting the Russ Brandon announcement as just "more of the same".

Now it looks like we stole Plan B from the Browns and Eagles, while Chip Kelly may not even leave Oregon. Say what you will about Marrone, you would have been a lot more disappointed with another failed retread. At least we have a chance to do something great and we're certainly headed in a new direction. Time will tell whether or not it is a better direction, but it certainly can't be much worse.

And signing Marrone at 2:00am this morning looks like a stroke of genius as the Chip Kelly sweepstakes is blowing up less than 12 hours later. I strongly suspect that we would have lost out on Marrone, by the way, had Ralph not given full control to Russ Brandon. So I'd like to give a little respect to Russ, Nix & Whaley for the way they handled the search and signing of our new head coach. The rapid pace and quantity of interviews, that Lovie Smith was interviewed twice, that we didn't settle for Whaley's "connections", and the late night signing of a guy that other teams were genuinely interested in demonstrates a professionalism that we haven't seen in a long time.