If the Broncos hire another first-time head coach, I’ll shave my head. Or whatever’s left after it’s done exploding.
Yeah, sure, Jim Harbaugh is a little …daffy. OK, a lot daffy. Dude’s daffy with sprinkles on top.
But you know what’s daffier? Doing the same thing, over (Vance Joseph) and over (Vic Fangio) and over (Nathaniel Hackett) again, then expecting a different result.
Every time the Broncos go digging for the second coming of Dan Reeves, they turn up another Josh McDaniels.
What’s the point of being Rob Walton if you can’t buy your troubles away? Stop trying to be cute. Stop trying to be clever. Stop sitting on that fat wallet and start waving it in people’s faces.
Do you want fans in other markets to fear you, or to keep pointing and laughing at the dumpster fire? For Broncos Country, holding the heavy bag for the rest of the NFL is getting awfully old, awfully quick.
Plant a flag, Greg Penner. Put down a marker, Carrie Walton Penner. Give somebody good, somebody proven — the best somebodies out there being Harbaugh or Sean Payton — completely stupid money. As in, so much money, they’d be completely stupid not to take it.
Because nothing really changes around here, nothing gets serious — not the culture, not the locker room, not the expectation of winning, not the belief — until the coaching side of the equation gets serious first.
The franchise quarterback, the one you’re stuck with, needs a voice he doesn’t just respect, but maybe even fears a little.
Forget whispering. I want a quarterback shouter. If the Broncos’ next coach is afraid to bench Russell Wilson, if he’s too scared to give Big Russ a taste of what Mike Purcell did on the sidelines in Charlotte, you’ve got the wrong guy.
Give me the grown-up in the room. Someone who won’t freeze in the middle of the road once they see the headlights closing in.
This is not a “starter” market. This is not a “starter” franchise. When you treat coaching the Broncos like an entry-level job, is it any wonder why this franchise keeps getting entry-level results?
It’s a league of profit margins off the field and fine margins on it. Denver is 3-9 in one-score games this fall. The Orange & Blue are 9-20 (.310) over their last 29 one-score regular-season matchups. Kansas City coach Andy Reid, meanwhile, is 22-7 (.759) over his last 29 one-score regular season matchups, and 7-3 this season.
Payton would be tetchy and fine. Harbaugh would be weird and fine. Dan Quinn would be uninspired and fine.
But no more newbies. No more heaving and hoping with the next, hot thing. Or the next cheap, hot thing.
If overpaying for Big Russ means you have to overpay for the coach tasked with “fixing” him, so be it. Penner and company have to make a choice: Do we want to be the headlights closing in from the distance? Or the deer freezing before the inevitable?
Hey, cast as wide of a net as you like. Embrace a diverse field of candidates and ideas.
Just be careful not to fall too madly in love with shiny objects during the search. Or to be wooed by the siren call of new-age pro football ontology. If a candidate sounds too darn good to be true, he probably is.
A year ago at this time, by all accounts, Hackett absolutely aced his interview. The man seemingly had a plan for everything. Except, as it turns out, what to do once his team got punched in the mouth.
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