Josh McDaniels was ousted last week as Head Coach of the Denver Broncos
the end of the season. Did you think that change would come this soon? To be honest I personally thought that Pat Bowlen would keep Josh McDaniel’s till the end of the year, but things have changed.
Surprised? I was to, my first initial reaction was woah did that just happen? Now I have not been the biggest supporter of the hiring of Josh McDaniel’s but this one caught me off guard.
Well maybe the terrible 3-9 record speaks for itself.
Denver has typically been a strong team for the last few years with the Shanahan era leading the way. The last few years, not so much since McDaniel’s started as head coach the Broncos went 11-17. Not to mention he started off 6-0. That means that he has gone 5-17 in his last 22 games.
Well maybe he wasn’t ready for the head coaching reigns at such a young age. I mean he was only 32 years old when he got the job. I mean some of the guys in the locker room on the team were older than him at that point.
I think that he is a good play caller. He has some talent, look what he did with young QB Matt Cassel in New England. While in Denver his game plans were never awful they just never seemed to work the way he intended. This is a problem in the NFL as teams pick up on holes in the game plan and mistakes.
Now lets look at the other end of the spectrum. He should have never been given the job in the first place and the Broncos should have never let Mike Shanahan go. He basically destroyed a good team which was already set in place.
First of all the first rule of being a head coach is to not shop your pro-bowl QB around for trades without telling him. Second of all you don’t make the mistake of not talking to your QB and turning it into a soap opera for the whole NFL to see. Another thing that McDaniel’s never got right was dealing with players. Brandon Marshall is a prime example of that. He disgruntled the pro-bowl receiver and he demanded a one way ticket out of town. Starting to catch a trend here with good players?
Then there were the draft choices. In 2009 he traded away a first overall pick in 2010 for a second round pick in 2009. What!! Why would you do that? A first round pick holds so much value to teams who are looking to rebuild. Okay so this player must have been really good then? No, he drafted Alphonso Smith. An okay player hardly worth a first overall pick in the NFL, he was way too slow and not tall enough to be a number one corner in the league. Then there was this year’s drafting. We had a solid position sitting rather high, we moved back accumulated some more picks, that fine you can’t find a player you like move back and pick up some more picks. Then we take Tim Tebow the all-star QB who cant really throw at the NFL level with the first overall pick. Wait don’t we already have Kyle Orton on the roster, as well as Brady Quinn who we traded Peyton Hillis for. (On a side not Peyton Hillis is tearing it up this year with 10 + TD’s already) Nope we draft a QB who is not going to be ready for at least 3 years.
In the time that McDaniel’s has been here some things have improved. The defence which was terrible got better due to Mike Nolan who was only here for one year before jumping ship. Yea that was about it, not a whole lot to take from this.
Then there was some bad things, the trading of all-star players, bad drafting, poor game plans, not getting any younger talent on the defensive side of the ball, and an offence which was ranked 2nd in the league prior to him being named offensive coach now has trouble getting it going on offence.
The Broncos now hand over the job to interim head coach Eric Studesville. They are looking around for a replacement for McDaniels as Studesville is not in their future plans. Rumours of a possible head coach are Gary Kubiak who played for the Broncos and coached there for many years. Don’t be surprised if the Texans release him at year’s end that Bowlen will be giving him a call. He has a lot of close ties with Bowlen. Other possible but long shots for coaching could be Tony Dungy, Jon Gruden, or Bill Cowher.
Well it seems that almost all of Bill Belichicks protégées never really succeed outside of the New England confines, and Im sure Bill is keeping track of that. It always seemed like McDaniel’s was trying to be like Bill, which is fine but you need to have a track record to back yourself up and to have a certain amount of players to do it with. With that I wish you the very best Josh McDaniels, thanks for dropping by for a few years and turning this
franchise upside down.
