Mudd, Moore To Return As Consultants

So now that former Colts offensive line coach Howard Mudd and former Colts offensive coordinator Tom Moore have done the “Who’s coming with me?” thing and taken a stand against the March 2009 decision to permit individual teams to opt out of the league-run pension plan, both of them are carrying their goldfish bags back to the team headquarters. According to Clark Judge of CBSSports.com, Mudd and Moore will return as consultants. “I’ve talked to them,” owner Jim Irsay said at the ownership meeting in Florida, “and know they would like to come back and do it and be part of it. They’re going year to year, but they want to be part of it, and I’m for that.” That’s great for the Colts, but we still can’t figure out how the league’s current decision to allow individual teams to opt out of the league-run plan prompted the retire-and-return decision. As best we can tell, based on things we’ve privately been told and things that NFL general counsel Jeff Pash publicly said on Tuesday, it didn’t. The problem that forced Mudd and Moore to take their lump-sum pension payments now has no bearing on the move to permit teams to set up their own pension plans. But, hey, kudos to Larry Kennan of the NFL Coaches Association for using the Mudd and Moore situation as a way to shine a light on the league’s decision to bring the pension plan more in line with other American businesses. Even though the opt-out rule is as responsible for the predicament Mudd and Moore faced as the aftermath of a bean binge is for global warming, Kennan and Mudd sufficiently clouded the issue to bring plenty of publicity to a problem that no one in the media noticed until it was being blamed for Mudd’s potential retirement.