How about Broncos' McDaniels for NFL coach of the year?
http://www.denverpost.com/premium/broncos/ci_13956739
For everybody who cursed this young football coach for trading Jay Cutler, condemned his draft picks as madness or demanded he be fired before his first game on the Broncos' sideline, it's time to consider calling Josh McDaniels a new name:
NFL coach of the year.
Hey, you got a better candidate?
No coach anywhere in the league, from Sean Payton in New Orleans to Marvin Lewis in Cincinnati, has done a better job at maximizing his team's potential than McDaniels.
Kid McD wears his heart on his hoodie, and Denver players love him for it.
From the Pearl Jam booming out of loudspeakers at practice to his fist pumps in celebration of victory, the rookie coach has stamped his fiery personality on the NFL's surprise team of the season.
Anybody still think firing Mike Shanahan was a bad idea?
Whether a petulant quarterback throws a fit or a star receiver goes postal at practice, when his Broncos lose four straight or injury forces shuffling in the Denver offensive line, all McDaniels keeps trying to do is win the freakin' game.
The goal doesn't change, even if the next challenge is Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts, who are shooting for undefeated immortality.
"My big focus this week is beating them because it'd mean we're 9-4. I think that's the most important thing for me and our team," McDaniels said. "If in some way it can derail history, then it is what it is."
Want to know how it really is?
Denver can no more forget the success of Shanahan than Broncomaniacs will ever stop loving John Elway.
But pull off an upset at Indianapolis, the place where Shanahan's mystique as a mastermind was ripped to shreds more than once by Manning, and McDaniels forever and always buries the ghost of his predecessor as coach.
Impossible? In 12 games on the job, McDaniels already has achieved what couldn't be done.
Wasn't this the team destined to gift-wrap a top-five draft pick for Chicago because the Broncos were doomed to have one of the worst records in the league and McDaniels didn't know what he was doing with his personnel moves?
Isn't this the same young coach that the NFL Network's Jamie Dukes insisted players could not trust?
Anybody who dares to be different is going to be regarded as nuts before hearing applause for vision and courage. I was dingy enough to campaign for the trade of Cutler and sufficiently dippy to believe drafting Knowshon Moreno was smart, but when the Broncos began to take frustrations out on teammates in public displays of disaffection during a four- game losing streak, it seemed to me the young coach had lost control.
McDaniels, however, refused to surrender to doubt, proved me wrong and kept this crazy dream alive.
We're talking playoffs? With unwanted Kyle Orton at quarterback and 5-foot-11 Elvis Dumervil the big man on defense? That alone should qualify McDaniels as a legit candidate to be coach of the year.
To miss the playoffs now, the Broncos would have to blow it. Of course, at this time a year ago, Shanahan was looking as smug as a coach for life, and we all know how that ended.
There certainly is danger of more whoa, whoa, whoa than ho, ho, ho on the December schedule again this year, with tough trips to Indy and Philadelphia, and what sets up to be the classic trap game against Oakland in the middle of the franchise's push to its first postseason berth in four years.
So it's far from a lock McDaniels will be named the most outstanding coach of the year. There's work to be done.
But name me an NFL coach who has turned more heads this year. If nothing else, McDaniels is good theater.
Denver had lost its football identity and its status as an elite league team. To be brutally honest, the Broncos were boring.
You know what brash, fiery Kid McD has given back to this franchise, with every pump of his fist and bleepin' demand for excellence?
Mojo.
#7 - JOHN - #44 - FLOYD - #80 - ROD
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Originally Posted by Jrwiz
