I believe a couple of embarrassing losses on national TV to Baltimore and Philly might change his opinion or at least bring out his true line of thinking.
Are you serious? Kubiak can not tell the press what he really thinks about his players. Or he will lose the club house (which would be a rookie coach mistake) and his job shortly thereafter. All of the hand wringing going on here wrt Kubiak's presser is just ridiculous.
I hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate giving Kubiak the "he's not the one missing tackles, dropping passes" etc. excuse. This is year five. This isn't year two in a rebuilding effort. This is year five. FIVE. The team is full of the players he wants. He got rid of guys he didn't want. He drafted the players he wanted. So now he has a team full of players that he picked and he coaches. And it isn't like they pursued a bunch of free agents that he just couldn't convince to come here. It is on Kubiak. If the players aren't good at their jobs; if they can't tackle, can't catch passes, can't keep up with their man, etc. well guess what? Their your guys. You picked them. You coach them. You don't get to be shielded by the old "the players have to play" excuse.
I'm not a Kubiak fan at all, but I agree with this. People are trying to read too much into this - no decent owner is going to throw his coach under the bus in an interview. You can't read anything into this - just like you couldn't read anything into Jerry Jones' statements over the last few weeks. Kubiak will be here through the end of the year and then will be evaluated. There's simply no need to say anything else right now.
There is no need to make an excuse for him though. Just stick to the "Look, I support my head coach and like any responsible owner I'll evaluate everything at the end of the season."
Ummm..that's part of the problem. They threw a completely inexperienced secondary out there...letting go of a veteran corner and not bringing in a free agent anywhere. This was the biggest area of concern before they even took the field..."how are we going to defend the pass with these guys?" Kubiak and Smith did that. It didn't just happen. It wasn't a former regime.
Who picked those young guys and decided they were good enough to go to war with? Dom Capers? Charlie Casserly? There just isn't an excuse man. Whatever is wrong with the roster is on Kubiak. If they are too young it's because he decided to go with all those young guys and not pursue any veteran help. If they just aren't talented enough it's because he picked the wrong players and decided not to replace them, or augment them with Free Agents. If they are poorly coached, well, he's the head coach and he picks his assistants. Five years in there is no one to blame but the head coach, especially when he has personnel control.
Good article by RJ. Spoiler RICHARD JUSTICE (11/9/10) If Bob McNair is going to defend Kubiak, he might try an excuse that doesn't insult fans I know I promised not to advocate firing Gary Kubiak this season. I thought we were past that. I really didn't think his competence would come up again. I did pretty good, though. Took me half a season to flip-flop. I'm not advocating he should be fired, but I am saying that there are things happening on the field that reflect poorly on the head coach and that if Gary Kubiak doesn't make the playoffs in his fifth season, there's no reason to think he's ever going to make it. Kubiak is tied for eighth in tenure among NFL head coaches. He's 35-37. Considering the mess he inherited, that's not a terrible record. It's not very good either. It's just enough to say, ''Well, if this had happened and that had happened we might be pretty good.'' Every coach with more tenure has been to the playoffs at least twice. Every coach he's tied with—Mike McCarthy, Sean Payton and Brad Childress—has been to the playoffs twice. The Cardinals, Falcons, Ravens and Dolphins changed coaches since Kubiak was hired, and they've all been to the playoffs. Are we supposed to wait forever? Is it our lot in life to watch other teams in the playoffs every January? Are fans being unfair by being ticked off while the owner says the coach is doing a fine job? Besides, Bob McNair's defense of Gary Kubiak is ridiculous and insulting to his fans. ''Gary's doing a good job. Replacing him doesn't help you catch more balls,'' McNair told John McClain. Oh, Bob. Bob, Bob, Bob. If I'm a season-ticket holder and I read that statement, I throw up my hands and cancel my season tickets. First, how does he know that? Dropped balls and missed assignments and general stupidity are a product of players who aren't concentrating, aren't mentally prepared, whatever. Those are the No. 1 things an NFL head coach must do every week. He must somehow get his players to play with a sense of urgency, a feeling that we've got to be at our best this week, that we can't just show up and expect to win. Good coaches spend a large chunk of their time trying to get their players in the right frame of mind. When I covered the Redskins, they were headed off to play some really bad team. Joe Gibbs did a number on his players. He quoted statistics that made the opponent look better than it should have. He told his guys, ''They're going to be like cornered animals. They're going to react the way we would. They're going to be fighting for their lives.'' It was absolutely amazing watching the mental transformation of his players that week. By Sunday, they were convinced that they were underdogs and would have to fight and claw just to stay in the game. That's the thing an NFL head coach is supposed to do. More than any X's and O's, his job is about mentally preparing the team, clock management, big decisions, etc. When a team is failing in those areas, it's on the head coach. Here's another story: Norv Turner told me of a week in which the Cowboys were 1-3, and headed to Oakland. Jimmy Johnson was a complete jerk that week. He was all over the players and coaches, and by Sunday, the Cowboys were so mad at their head coach that they took their anger out on the Raiders. The Cowboys won that day on a tipped ball. Now Bob McNair would not see the correlation between one tipped ball and an angry coach, a coach who ticked his players off. Maybe that tipped ball had everything to do with Jimmy's rant. Maybe Jimmy's rant gave the Cowboys an edge from beginning to end. Maybe blocks were crisper. Maybe the guy who tipped the ball jumped a little higher because he was mad at Jimmy. Here's one more. Jeff Hostetler once told me ''you'd cut off your arm to win for Parcells on Sunday because you didn't want to be around him if you lost.'' Let's be honest. Parcells was a hard man to love, but he was a brilliant psychologist. He knew what buttons to push, and he pushed them. He didn't do offense or defense. He did the mindset. One time when one of his teams won a big game in Washington, I walked off the field beside him. Big win, right? Happy coach, right? No. He chewed out poor Sean Payton all the way into the locker room, and then he chewed out a PR guy. He'd won one game and had already begun preparing his team for the next one. Life around Bill Parcells was no fun in those days. But if you liked to win, you liked Bill Parcells. One day he invited Jeff Van Gundy to practice. At some point, he called over Keyshawn Johnson and introduced him to Van Gundy. ''Jeff, do you like nice clothes?'' Parcells asked. ''Not really,'' Van Gundy said. ''Well, if you ever need any advice on great clothes, check with Keyshawn,'' Parcells said. ''He knows everything there is to know about great clothes. Say, Jeff, do you like great restaurants?'' ''Sure,'' Van Gundy said. ''Well if you need any restaurant suggestions, Keyshawn is your man,'' Parcells said. ''Now, Jeff, do you like to win?'' ''I love to win,'' Van Gundy said. ''Don't ask Keyshawn anything about winning,'' Parcells said, ''because he doesn't know a bleepin' thing.'' Van Gundy has told that story dozens of times because it was fascinating seeing one of the great NFL coaches in history deliver a message to one of his best players, a player he came to love. Gibbs did that, too. He didn't do it by cussing or screaming, either. He knew every player had a button. Winning? Money? Fame? He had to convince the guy that if he did what he was told he'd get all three things. There were times he'd call a player in and ask, ''Is everything OK at home? Are you happy with your contract? Because I know you can play better.'' The player would leave his office terrified because he'd just been threatened. It may not have sounded like a threat, but it was. My point is that the head coach is supposed to deal with the little things, and in the end, a lot of little things add up to to impact the final score. If Bob McNair really thinks the head coach doesn't have anything to do with dropped balls, he doesn't understand the NFL. Otherwise, why have a head coach? If he's subscribing to the ''Act of God'' theory, that is whatever will be will be, then he should just have an inflatable doll standing on the sideline and save himself some money. Head coaches in the NFL impact winning more than coaches/ managers in any other sport. Because the NFL is different. The NFL is a brutal business, a business of pain and sacrifice. Players have to get into a particular mindset to be willing to do the things necessary to win a game. Good head coaches make all the difference in the world. LINK to CHRON.COM Sorry if this was already posted, didn't see it anywhere.
If we had half a decent d, we would be on kubiaks **** right now. Blame the dc for not doing his job with some talented players.
Can we go after Kubiak for hiring yet another former Bronco coach instead of getting a legit DC candidate?
It's gonna be interesting if the Texans do hire a Cowher-like name, how fans are going to react to the endlessly parade of coaches with Steeler ties. "Oh, great - another Steeler alum: Dick LaBeau - LAME!" I've never understood why this was such a big, lightening rod of a deal? What coach goes out and randomly hires people he's not familiar with? Who don't know his system? It's not like they hired Matt Millen. I mean, the Broncos under Shanahan were a good team for a loooooong time - there are *a lot* of much worse organizations you could model your franchise after.
