Nature Boy
01-02-2009, 06:34 PM
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2009/jan/01/lincicome-bowlen-looked-one-who-got-fired/
Alert to clues as to what Mike Shanahan might do next, my wife fixed on Shanahan's pastel goodbye jacket. Very tropical. Very cheerful. Very game-show host.
"Miami," she said.
I told her Miami has a new coach, just had a good year.
"Tampa," she said.
Hmm. Possibly. As things are, I would trade Jon Gruden for Shanahan.
"Ah. Jacksonville. He's going south somewhere."
Well, aren't we all, eventually? And if I had to pick a spot in that direction, Texas would come to mind first, and Dallas in particular - the Cowboys more disappointing even than the Broncos with an owner every bit as single-minded and hardhearted as this one, if Jerry Jones has a quicker trigger finger than does Pat Bowlen.
That might take a whole season before it happens, but ex-Super- Bowl-winning coaches seem to only get smarter and more valuable with their feet up. Like Bill Cowher, everyone's present prince. Dick Vermeil. Jimmy Johnson. Bill Parcells, over and over.
Even Mike Ditka found a sucker in New Orleans.
Oh, Shanahan is going to be just fine. He did look like he was accepting some kind of an achievement award while Bowlen was wrapped in one long sigh.
What is not an issue is that Shanahan has choices, whereas the Broncos have only obligations. Pay off the old coach. Roil the whole internal structure of the place. Get a better team. Pick a coach from, to use Bowlen's phrase, "the panacea of coaches."
The get-a-better-team part is more important than landing a coach for a franchise that Bowlen believes is every coach's goal. There is a comfort level here, as loyal and uncomplaining a fan base as can be found, a mostly compliant media - thanked by Shanahan for being "fair" - a secure spot at the top of the local sports pile and an owner slow to panic.
These are all great considerations for the next guy, but not that much different than in most places that are not New York.
And, speaking of that, my advice to Shanahan is to stay clear of the New York Jets, certainly a challenge with greater rewards for success, but his skin is a bit too thin for the place and as long as the Giants exist, the Jets are renters in the attic.
Whatever dominoes are left to fall, the ones already toppled - Detroit and Cleveland - can be bettered, though Cleveland may have better talent than Shanahan is leaving. Better to wait for the right combination of opportunity and desperation, which is the Parcells model.
The natural course of these things is that famous unemployed coaches are subsumed by television, most of them ill-fitted to suddenly be expansive and entertaining when they have spent their lives guarding their thoughts as if they were the national treasury, and speaking of that . . . no, let's not.
Shanahan would seem more unlikely than most to become a natter bug, but then who would have thought Cowher could appear warmly human?
Shanahan's problem, if he has one, is that he is a brand name, and he cannot, oh, just for the love of the game, become somebody's quarterbacks coach or front-office prop. He has at least one more challenge in him, to take charge and prove that it was he and not John Elway who put those Lombardi Trophies in the case at Dove Valley.
And how nice of Shanahan to proclaim the Broncos are just, oh, one healthy linebacker away from the elite, or some such nonsense.
The next coach will have that echoing daily, that if he just keeps them all healthy, all the X's and O's are already there.
What must be done to restore the defense should have already been started, and all the coaching rooms are empty.
You can't believe that this was well thought out by Bowlen, other than, as we all do sometimes, feeling that things ought to be different than they are, that each day is a weight rather than an opportunity. You wonder if what Bowlen really needed to do was have a chat with Dr. Phil.
What came to mind as Bowlen rolled around in his own confusion about just why this had to happen is that he was the one being fired. Shanahan was clear-eyed and chipper, disembarking a leaky boat while Bowlen is left to plug the holes.
Even as Bowlen extolled the virtues of his good friend for life, it seemed as if he was introducing his new coach rather than getting rid of the old one.
Thanks for the pink slip, Pat. And would you make sure that all your owner buddies have my cell number?
************************************************** *****
This guy is right on his observation of how Pat Bowlen and Mike Shanahan looked and felt during their firing press conference and I think it was pretty funny.
Pat Bowlen made a horrible decision. Mike Shanahan is one of the best coach and football mind in the game. Good luck to Mickey where ever he should land, but I don't think he'll need it.
.
Alert to clues as to what Mike Shanahan might do next, my wife fixed on Shanahan's pastel goodbye jacket. Very tropical. Very cheerful. Very game-show host.
"Miami," she said.
I told her Miami has a new coach, just had a good year.
"Tampa," she said.
Hmm. Possibly. As things are, I would trade Jon Gruden for Shanahan.
"Ah. Jacksonville. He's going south somewhere."
Well, aren't we all, eventually? And if I had to pick a spot in that direction, Texas would come to mind first, and Dallas in particular - the Cowboys more disappointing even than the Broncos with an owner every bit as single-minded and hardhearted as this one, if Jerry Jones has a quicker trigger finger than does Pat Bowlen.
That might take a whole season before it happens, but ex-Super- Bowl-winning coaches seem to only get smarter and more valuable with their feet up. Like Bill Cowher, everyone's present prince. Dick Vermeil. Jimmy Johnson. Bill Parcells, over and over.
Even Mike Ditka found a sucker in New Orleans.
Oh, Shanahan is going to be just fine. He did look like he was accepting some kind of an achievement award while Bowlen was wrapped in one long sigh.
What is not an issue is that Shanahan has choices, whereas the Broncos have only obligations. Pay off the old coach. Roil the whole internal structure of the place. Get a better team. Pick a coach from, to use Bowlen's phrase, "the panacea of coaches."
The get-a-better-team part is more important than landing a coach for a franchise that Bowlen believes is every coach's goal. There is a comfort level here, as loyal and uncomplaining a fan base as can be found, a mostly compliant media - thanked by Shanahan for being "fair" - a secure spot at the top of the local sports pile and an owner slow to panic.
These are all great considerations for the next guy, but not that much different than in most places that are not New York.
And, speaking of that, my advice to Shanahan is to stay clear of the New York Jets, certainly a challenge with greater rewards for success, but his skin is a bit too thin for the place and as long as the Giants exist, the Jets are renters in the attic.
Whatever dominoes are left to fall, the ones already toppled - Detroit and Cleveland - can be bettered, though Cleveland may have better talent than Shanahan is leaving. Better to wait for the right combination of opportunity and desperation, which is the Parcells model.
The natural course of these things is that famous unemployed coaches are subsumed by television, most of them ill-fitted to suddenly be expansive and entertaining when they have spent their lives guarding their thoughts as if they were the national treasury, and speaking of that . . . no, let's not.
Shanahan would seem more unlikely than most to become a natter bug, but then who would have thought Cowher could appear warmly human?
Shanahan's problem, if he has one, is that he is a brand name, and he cannot, oh, just for the love of the game, become somebody's quarterbacks coach or front-office prop. He has at least one more challenge in him, to take charge and prove that it was he and not John Elway who put those Lombardi Trophies in the case at Dove Valley.
And how nice of Shanahan to proclaim the Broncos are just, oh, one healthy linebacker away from the elite, or some such nonsense.
The next coach will have that echoing daily, that if he just keeps them all healthy, all the X's and O's are already there.
What must be done to restore the defense should have already been started, and all the coaching rooms are empty.
You can't believe that this was well thought out by Bowlen, other than, as we all do sometimes, feeling that things ought to be different than they are, that each day is a weight rather than an opportunity. You wonder if what Bowlen really needed to do was have a chat with Dr. Phil.
What came to mind as Bowlen rolled around in his own confusion about just why this had to happen is that he was the one being fired. Shanahan was clear-eyed and chipper, disembarking a leaky boat while Bowlen is left to plug the holes.
Even as Bowlen extolled the virtues of his good friend for life, it seemed as if he was introducing his new coach rather than getting rid of the old one.
Thanks for the pink slip, Pat. And would you make sure that all your owner buddies have my cell number?
************************************************** *****
This guy is right on his observation of how Pat Bowlen and Mike Shanahan looked and felt during their firing press conference and I think it was pretty funny.
Pat Bowlen made a horrible decision. Mike Shanahan is one of the best coach and football mind in the game. Good luck to Mickey where ever he should land, but I don't think he'll need it.
.