Time for the pendulum to swing in the NFL

By John McMullen  |   Friday, April 10, 2009  |  Comments( 9 )

Denver Broncos
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I'm not sure where it all started, but the new breed of NFL coaches is ruled by ego.

Denver Broncos coach Josh McDaniels is just the latest megalomaniac to rise to the top of the NFL mountain.

Denver fans, along with the team's front office, were convinced they had their heir-apparent to John Elway a year ago.

Fast-forward a year later, and it's almost unthinkable how quickly McDaniels shifted gears and got everyone to believe that the rifle-armed Jay Cutler wasn't the answer. Cutler certainly didn't help matters with his immature behavior and will now be plying his trade in the Windy City, after the Bears surrendered a pair of first-round picks and Kyle Orton for Cutler.

The funny thing is, McDaniels is probably giddy. He truly believes the soft-tossing Orton, just like the pedestrian Matt Cassel, is a better fit for his system than the physically gifted Cutler. After all, in McDaniels' mind, a guy with the talent of Cutler could never truly comprehend the complexity of the scheme developed by his delicate genius. It's a classic Freudian defense mechanism of projection to lay the blame on Cutler, thinking that the QB's ego was the twisted one.

I know Cassel went to the Harvard of the West and Orton studied at Purdue while Cutler attended one of the nation's best academic universities in Vanderbilt, but talent always equates to obtuse for people like McDaniels.

Robots, who do not think or improvise, are what many of today's NFL coaches want.

If McDaniels, Brad Childress, Andy Reid or a dozen or so of their clones had players like Fran Tarkenton, Steve Young or Randall Cunningham, it's conceivable none of them would have ever found the field.

Political junkies like myself believe in a pendulum-like effect in that world. The party in power almost inevitably becomes unpopular and the people, looking for change, respond by voting the other way. The pendulum swings, accelerating back the other way, often much farther than anyone wants. That's how the extreme wings of the respective parties garner power.

Last week, I wrote that if I went up to Broncos owner Pat Bowlen with the thesis that Cassel was a better option than Cutler at the quarterback position, I would have likely been labeled a lunatic.

Nothing has changed.

The pendulum has swung too far, and it's about to come back the other way.

It's time for NFL owners to hire coaches who value talent over their systems.
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About John McMullen

John is the managing editor of The Phanatic Magazine, the assistant managing editor of The Sports Network and the co-host of the highly rated 'Johns on Sports' radio show on WTBQ in New York. Every Saturday from 6:30-9 p.m. (et) you can hear John along with his co-host, John Gottlieb, talk to the...
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