coach bowles was as committed to petty & his success as maccagnan was to building an OL..
Sad, but possibly true. At the end of one season when Petty was given the reins, he had success throwing long (to Richie Anderson?). He lit it up.
After that, Bowles seemed to take those plays out of the playbook and only had him throwing short passes. It was frustrating to watch, and a cynic would have said that it seemed like the coach didn't want Petty to succeed.
At least, that's the way it looked to me. He was not capitalizing on what the player did well, and was trying to shoe horn Petty into Bowles' concept of offense. It was trying to change Daryl Lamonica into Earl Morall.
Later