Other than a new Riley Cooper joke, I didn’t really have too much new and interesting to say regarding this week’s games that you haven’t already heard 100 times at this point (Cleveland must be really ticked that Braylon Edwards remembered how to catch the ball, the Cowboys are officially done even with a win, FSU’s defense was the most embarrassing thing to come out of Tallahassee since the Katherine Harris, Ole Miss really was overrated when we all thought they were, etc., etc., etc.) so I decided to dig out a post written months ago that seemed very timely all of a sudden.
This week among all of the effusive praise being heaped on the Broncos and their Einstein-ian head coach I have noticed a strange pattern. Never can Josh McDaniels be just described as ‘coach of the Broncos’. Instead, no matter in what context McDaniels is referenced, his name or title is always prefaced by the word ‘young’ in a manner eerily reminiscent of a Fox News reporter using the word ‘Democrat’. This made me think back to McDaniels hiring in January, when the praise was significantly more sparse and the references to his age less subtle. It seems only right to re-publish my original comments now, that he (and I) have been proven so right. Oh, and please note the innocence in which I envision McDaniels mentoring Jay Cutler. It was such a simpler, if not more naïve time.
Oh and about Riley Cooper? Did you see his touchdown catch where he discreetly tugged on the jersey of the defensive back to get by him? Well as I have always said, if there is one thing Riley Cooper knows how to do, it is grab guys from behind.
It Shouldn’t Be a Surprise
I shouldn’t have been surprised and yet when I read the paper this morning, I was. Sure, it was a little surprising that the Broncos hired Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels to replace Mike Shanahan, but that’s not what I am talking about.
I am talking about the response from the local sportswriters.
I guess when you don’t really have anything insightful to say, you go with a brainless cliché joke (which actually does a pretty good job of summarizing Mark Kiszla’s career). The three biggest articles in the Denver Post this morning concerning McDaniels’ hiring all focused on the same really in-depth piece of analytical reporting.
McDaniels is young.
Yes, if you read 3 separate articles, that is pretty much all you learned. Of course, being very clever they don’t just say he is young. Rather they go with the exact same joke – all three of them – that being that McDaniels looks so young (how young does he look?) that he would get carded when he goes to a bar.
BA-DUM-CHA.
Having made several ‘person looks young’ jokes in the course of just a couple hours last year, I feel uniquely qualified to mock all of these writers (et tu Woody?). Especially since I think almost every one of the jokes I made was more creative than anything written in the Post today.
I know as people get older they tend to believe that people younger themselves just don’t know anything – which leads us to have a Senate full of 75 year old white men – but couldn’t it be just possible that when successful men like Bill Belichick and Pat Bowlen are impressed by someone, they might have something going for them?
For the record, McDaniels is also younger than me, yet despite the minor feeling that I have accomplished nothing with my life his hiring provoked; his age was never a second thought for me. Yet, that is all these guys can talk about.
These poor sportswriters have spent so many hours trapped in the press box with other like minded old timers, who can’t understand a new idea when it hits them in the head, it shouldn’t be a surprise that something outside of these expectations is immediately met with scorn and lame cliché jokes.
I will admit, however, that there are two major questions that arise from this hiring:
1 – Don’t the Broncos need to focus on their defense?
2 – Jay Cutler pleaded for the job of 32-year old offensive coordinator Jeremy Bates – does a 32- year old former offensive coordinator need to keep Bates on and if not, how much say does the ‘future of the franchise’ really have?
You didn’t really hear about these questions though because McDaniels is young. Sure he has worked with the best organization in sport for the last few years, helped Matt Cassell (who hadn’t started since high school) pick up right where Tom Brady left off and he clearly reminded Bowlen of a young Shanahan, but ignore all of that because he is young and in an even more egregious slap to the face – looks even younger than his age. The horrors!
Wasn’t the biggest problem with the Broncos organization (beside the dreadful defensive personnel decisions of course), that it had begun to stagnate in Shanahan’s my-way-or-the-highway approach? One of the writers pointed out that when Shanahan was winning Super Bowls McDaniels was still in college. He meant this as derogatory (of course) but I ask – isn’t this a good thing? Don’t we need some new ideas?
Did none of these guys watch the Steelers/Chargers game yesterday in which Mike Tomlin (age 36), who had taken over for long tenured Bill Cowher after a successful coordinating career, led his Steelers to a dominating win over the ultimate re-tread head coach Norv Turner? Or had they already decided what the key point of their Monday stories was going to be?
As everyone recognized a couple weeks ago, the biggest deficit of this team was the personnel decisions. I argued here that the background of the coach is less important than the GM that is brought in. Pairing McDaniels’ tutoring of Jay Cutler and the offense with a strong GM and a solid defensive coordinator and there is no reason to think that the Broncos will not improve drastically over this year’s squad.
So let me be the first to welcome coach McDaniels to Denver.
Josh, if you want to grab a beer sometime, I can give you an overview of life here in the Mile High City.
Don’t worry I get carded occasionally too.
