This is bad news for us. That's one more team to compete against for a new head coach this coming offseason.
If it's true they want Kubiak I'm imagining a couple of circumstances that could really get this going. -Texans play Denver soon, and with their RBs coach taking over, they would probably run more. The Texans have recently held both McCoy and CJ down albeit with lesser carries for both. It still leaves Orton to pick apart this D, but shutting down Moreno is a possibility. And If Kubiak actually comes out with a balanced attack, Denverinian swoon will be in full effect, and maybe they make a push for him sooner, especially if they come out last in their division. -Maybe Kubiak is even a little bit tempted, and Uncle Bob won't see it as giving up on his guy, but doing him a solid while also making the public happy, and even getting a draft pick out of it.
Cutler for Orton was actually a win for McDaniels. The Marshall trade wasn't bad either. The Hillis trade has turned out awful.
Compensation picks for Kubiak: I'd be surprised if it happened, it's rare. Gruden was a high profile exception - I don't see anyone forking over consecutive #1s and a pair of #2s for anyone today outside of Belichick. Gruden had just turned around the Raiders and got them to a 12-win season and the AFC championship. Kubiak's going to have a 5 year track record of no playoffs and a high water mark of a 9-win season courtesy of a weak sister schedule. I think the best we could dream of is a third rounder and an agreement by Denver to take on the remaining money on his extension. All that said, I'm still not cheering for Kubiak to be thrown out the door without a solid plan in place for a replacement. You'd be amazed how much easier it is to go from mediocre to terrible than it is mediocre to playoffs.
i think it's being way too nice to call a team with the worst defense in decades mediocre. no other coach has received as much benefit of the doubt as kubiak has. can someone name another coach in any of the three major sports who was given six years to make the playoffs?? if he's still the coach next season after we miss the playoffs this year, it's going to be hard for me to root for that team.
Well, the Patriots have the worst statistical defense in the NFL right now, and they're far from mediocre... so that makes Kubiak look like even more of a fool.
On the flipside, it's unfair to ignore the fact that he shaped one of the top offenses in football. We're a 0.500 ballclub, or slightly under, with differential of -33 (-2.8 averaged). And this is a very valid point. McNair had an opportunity to put pressure on Kubiak this last season to make things happen, but instead he gave him security. Everyone was too busy high fiving over 9 wins to consider that they underachieved and blew at least two games along the way...games that would have had them playoff bound.
As one of the very few Broncos fans on this board, I guess I need to weigh in on this with my thoughts: I honestly thought that McDaniels would make it to the end of the season and then Pat Bowlen would evaluate things. MadMax is probably right that the Spygate thing will be used as an excuse by Bowlen to not pay McDaniels the rest of his contract. And although it really wasn't McDaniels' fault about the spygate incident (the videographer decided to do it on his own), it still obviously did not look good for him. His deals were definitely eyebrow raisers but like someone else said, it was only the Hillis for Quinn deal that he got taken to the cleaners. Where he messed up was on the defensive side as he constantly brought in washed up FAs and made that ridiculous deal for Alphonso Smith who is no longer with the team. Injuries have hurt him as well (most notably to Elvis Dumervil) but that is football - everybody has to deal with it. Bowlen would do well to bring in an experienced GM (sorry but Brian Xanders has got to go too) and that would take a lot of pressure off the coach. Troy Calhoun and Leslie Frazier are the names I keep hearing as well. Several ESPN articles mention that it is a distinct possibility that Bowlen could be paying 3 different coaches in 2011 (the final year of Shanahan's deal, McDaniels, and whoever the new coach is) so as a result, I don't think a high profile name like Bill Cowher or Jon Gruden is an option at this point. I can see Kubiak as he was well thought-of by Bowlen and many felt he would have been Shanahan's eventual successor. Honestly, I don't know who it is going to be but whoever it is, they are faced with quite a rebuilding job.
Disregarding the validity of this point - I don't know statistically if it's true or not, and am not going to argue about it, I'd say you also have to factor in the relative "awesomeness" of the three levels of play. Personally, if 1 = total sucks as a fan and 10 = totally awesome as a fan, I personally find: Terrible = 1 Mediocre / Average = 3-4 Playoffs = 8 Advancing in Playoffs = 9 Superbowl = 9.5 Winning Superbowl = 100 (on a scale of 1 to 10!) Meaning your point might be true, but who cares?? So instead of being mediocre for another 5 years, ownership screws up even more and they are terrible throughout the next regime. In either case, it really kind of sucks.
Exactly. Settling for mediocrity because you're scared of failure is a terrible organizational philosophy.
