Today the Denver Broncos fired Josh McDaniels as their head coach. The team (and, by extension, the league) feels worth following once again.
McDaniels got his first shot at a pro head coaching job in Denver at the age of 15. He was, it turned out, the Brian Griese of coaches. Like Griese, he followed an absolute legend, one of the best ever in the game, in Denver, where expectations run a mile higher than they should. Griese had a weak arm at a position that almost demands a strong one; McDaniels came to town without the instant respectability a tenured NFL coach carries. Both were young, promising, and disappointing. And, as with Griese’s 2000 Pro Bowl season, McDaniels showed one flash of brilliance that gave him just a little too much leash.
His 6-0 start last season was the stuff of legend, a brilliant-if-misleading spark that gave him just enough job security to make it until today. (I say misleading because three of the wins came in one-score games, and the record since suggests winning those games was as much of a result of luck as it was clutch execution.) It became clear down the stretch last season that McDaniels lacked the chops to right a sinking ship.
When the team lost some of its best guys on both sides of the ball (Brandon Marshall and Elvis Dumervil), 2010 quickly became a lost cause. It’s bad, but I stopped caring almost as soon as I started. I moved a church meeting off of Sundays so I could watch the games, but I missed most of them anyway. Life’s too short to pour your heart into a team that impresses neither in execution nor in heart.
See, if McDaniels had coached a young-but-talented team that always played with pride, that might have been acceptable. If injuries had derailed the season but gave some unknowns a chance to get experience, that might have made it worthwhile, too. But besides quarterback Kyle Orton’s statistics (and he’s cooling off), there are hardly any bright spots at all. Plus, you know. 59-14.
And perhaps McDaniels’ lot wasn’t that thankless. He inherited a Pro Bowl quarterback in Jay Cutler and one of the league’s rising stars in Marshall, both of whom he chased out of town after each showed a healthy amount of immaturity. (At the times they left, I would have kept both, though Cutler’s truly obnoxious and impossible to root for.) He got a shot to coach one of the finest organizations in the NFL, too.
Perhaps he’ll be a good head coach someday. Regardless of the future, firing him right now was the right call. McDaniels didn’t get it done or even get it underway, and I’m glad Broncos owner Pat Bowlen had the presence of mind to recognize that.
So. Who’s got next?
If our contract with Mike Shanahan doesn't allow us to order him back to the Denver sideline, I'd be happy with former Broncos assistants Gary Kubiak, Bobby Turner, or Joe Collier. But I'm looking forward to hearing who the candidates are. Any preferences? And isn't it time we start Tebow?
3 comments:
Welcome back, HPS!
My thoughts exactly - McD has been a big disappointment, and it was high time to send him packing.
I would love to see Elway take some kind of role with the team - front office, GM, coach, or starting QB.
I think we may be looking at the return of Kubiak, if we are lucky. He may want to stay where he is. I hear Wade Phillips is available.
Way to get the led out Mike.
When will the Broncos hire a true GM to make personnel decisions? Seems that they went after the wrong Patriot. Scott Pioli already has KC contending for a division title with Matt Cassel as the starting QB. I don't think the Broncos' current model of GM/Coach is working very well for them.
And here here, lets see what Tebow can do...it will at least be a reason to watch the game!
I'd love to have Elway back, too.
I don't know if the Broncos need a "true" GM (of course they already have a GM, but give the coach a lot of authority). It didn't work under McD but he seems to have been kind of, you know, bad at both jobs anyway.
It worked insanely well under Shanahan in the 90s, though, and reasonably well in the 2000s. I don't think the duties of being coach were the reason he made poor personnel decisions, necessarily, and of course coach is an in-season gig and GM is primarily an offseason job. We didn't need someone different from Shanahan to select the players; we needed someone better, which is a taller order than it sounds like (dude picked up Elvis Dumervil and Brandon Marshall in the same 2006 fourth round, for example; give him some credit).
I guess my point is it's worth separating the duties if you can get a great GM, but I don't think the model itself is necessarily a failure.
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