DOMINIK GOT NEW JOB A DAY AFTER LOSING HIS APPENDIX

As widely believed in league circles, a new report seems to confirm that Buccaneers G.M. Mark Dominik was aware that G.M. Bruce Allen was getting the heave-ho before Allen. Per the St. Petersburg Times, Dominik underwent an emergency appendectomy (Col. Nathan Jessup wants to know if there’s any other kind) on Thursday, and Dominik checked himself out on Friday after learning that he was receiving a promotion. The timeline is still a bit sketchy, but chances are that Dominik got the call at some point before 5:30 p.m. EST on Friday, which is roughly the time that the hammer fell on Allen and Gruden. We therefore think it’s reasonable to infer that Dominik knew about Allen and coach Jon Gruden were getting fired before it happened, and that it’s also reasonable to infer that new coach Raheem Morris was in on the news, too. As one league source explained it to us, though it wasn’t exactly a coup de’toe, Dominik and Morris surely knew that they were getting the jobs before Allen and Gruden knew that they were losing them. It’s an odd dynamic in today’s NFL, where some coaching searches seem to be dragging on for weeks.