Some people get what they deserve, and when the Denver Broncos fired Josh McDaniels on Monday, he had it coming. Not because the Broncos are 3-9, but because almost from the moment he took over in Denver, McDaniels insisted on doing things his way.
Rather than biding his time and bridging the gaps between new and old regimes, McDaniels stormed into Denver like a mad man, hell-bent on changing the culture by force. And here's the thing about people like that—they don't really engender much sympathy. So where it might be possible for a different coach to survive a 3-9 start this year, McDaniels didn't leave himself much room for error.
When he drafted Tim Tebow this past spring I wrote that "given the context here, especially since Josh McDaniels appears to be exactly the kind of uncompromising ass that karma tends to punish, you get the feeling that a massive Tebow failure in Denver might just be part of a larger narrative. And that narrative's theme? Josh McDaniels thinks he's much smarter than he is. Drafting Tebow in the first round might have made sense for someone, but Denver's not that team. Something tells me this is going to end badly for McDaniels." But before we get to Tebow, let's talk about the guy that drafted him.
I've joked about Josh McDaniels over and over again throughout his time in Denver, because frankly, people like Josh McDaniels deserve to get made fun of. He's the sort of joyless tight-ass that once made Broncos rookies report at 5:30 a.m. to practice comedy skits. Can you imagine trying to be funny at 5:30 a.m.? You get the sense that Josh looks at himself as a tyrant, willing to push people to the brink to accomplish his goals. But he's more of a piss ant.
Or, put it this way: Josh McDaniels is Niedermeyer from Animal House. Now ask yourself: Would YOU want to play for the guy that was "later killed by his own troops in Vietnam"?
"My age has never been a factor, and it never will be a factor," McDaniels said when he was introduced in Denver two years ago. "It's about performance…It's about doing your job to the best of your ability."
But age was ALWAYS a factor with McDaniels. It didn't have to be, and plenty of other young coaches have found success in the NFL (Mike Tomlin and Raheem Morris, for two examples), but McDaniels conducted himself like a coach with a Napolean complex. And he's not particularly short, so... What else could he be compensating for?
It's not as if struggling with a turnaround is a fatal transgression in the NFL. Jim Schwartz was hired in Detroit at the same time as McDaniels, and despite a 4-22 record so far with the Lions, the team and fans have been patient with him. Same with Raheem Morris in Tampa Bay, who had a far more disastrous start to his tenure with the Bucs than McDaniels' 8-8 debut in Denver last year, but weathered the storm because players actually liked him.
The problem with McDaniels is that he never cared about that last point. Being liked wasn't important. He made that clear from the moment he took over in Denver. Winning his way meant winning with his guys, and he wasn't afraid to get rid of anyone that didn't fit that criteria.
As he told the Denver Post this past spring, "When there are things that come up that you feel contradict your belief or your message that you've extended to your players, I think you have to react and hold yourself accountable to what you're saying you're all about."
"Or else your words become hollow and they stop listening," he continued. "If you don't do that, you ask whether you really believe in your own message. And I do."
If anything, it seemed like McDaniels took it as a good sign that stars like Jay Cutler and Brandon Marshall bristled under his authority. So where wiser men would have used finesse to ease the transition, McDaniels opted for brute force—trading his star quarterback (Cutler) before they ever played a game, and suspending Marshall after he demanded a trade, himself. Then, after a year where Marshall was a one-man wrecking crew for the Broncos offense, McDaniels did trade him.
And instead of Jay Cutler and Brandon Marshall, McDaniels opted for Kyle Orton and Eddie Royal. At some point, that sort of trade-off catches up with you, and this season's Broncos are a prime example.
As Shannon Sharpe said last year, "You can't keep getting rid of good players. At some point, it catches up to you. All players are not alike. You can't treat them all the same. Josh needs to realize that. He has a lot to learn about dealing with players."
Now, at 3-9, the team has descended into irrelevance. That might be forgivable from someone else, but not from a coach as unsentimental and callous as McDaniels. Nobody's going to fight to save someone like that. And in the end, getting rid of negative influences serves the greater good in Denver. It follows the Josh McDaniels blueprint to a tee. It just so happen that he's the "locker room cancer" this time.
He took a team that seemed to be on the doorstep of championship contention and decided they'd be better off playing with less-talented guys that were "coachable" and "fit the mold." Now, they're 3-9 and much further from a championship than when he began.
So, can Tim Tebow be the savior in Denver, or does this mean he needs one of his own?
At this point, you'd have to lean to the latter, right? What coach is going to come into Denver and embrace the challenge of utilizing Tim Tebow? Doesn't it feel like destiny that some team like the Patriots will eventually poach the former first-round pick for something like a fifth-rounder?
That's his best hope at this point. In McDaniels, Tim Tebow may not have had a kindred spirit, but he had the benefit of playing for a coach whose legacy was intimately tied to Tebow's success. And they did share a connection unlike those of most players and coaches.
Remember Tim Tebow's bizarre description of their pre-draft meeting?
"I was jacked leaving that room. I didn't even want to visit another room. It was not enough time. We were excited, we were enthusiastic. There was passion. It was just intense, and it was ball, and it was juice. The juice level in that room was high, and it was awesome."
I don't want to think about what "juice" was exchanged between McDaniels and Tebow that day, but whatever happened, it was enough to convince the Broncos to trade up in the draft and spend a first round pick on a player that still hasn't proven he'll be able to play every down in the NFL. That was okay, though; as long as McDaniels hung around in Denver, you knew that Tim Tebow would have every opportunity to shine.
But now? The road to success just got a lot more complicated. Whichever coach inherits Tebow's talent will have much bigger problems to solve than how to use a goal-line quarterback, and what used to be a dream situation might just become a nightmare. Who knows what'll happen over the long term, but from an outsider's standpoint, the odds of Denver's next project adopting McDaniels' pet project seem slim.
As someone that loathes Tebow's continued superstardom despite obvious limitations—for God's sake, he's releasing a memoir later this year—it's pretty hard not to smile as the Tebow dreams come crashing back to earth. But even I have to admit, this is a pretty crappy break for God's Favorite H-Back.
As Josh McDaniels showed us this week that people get what you deserve, now Tim Tebow's stuck twisting in the wind with a bad Denver team, earnest about getting better, but facing a path to success that's more uncertain than ever. In other words, while McDaniels proves karma's inevitability, Tebow's ultimate truth might be just the opposite. Sometimes, life just isn't fair.
(Not that I'm complaining...)
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