Welcome back, Mike Shanahan, to the super six of NFL coaches.
Shanahan had long been a prominent partner within the active coaching elite that also included Marty Schottenheimer, Bill Parcells, Joe Gibbs, Bill Cowher and Mike Holmgren. They are the top six among active coaches in wins, top 17 overall.
Going game after game after game with the same quarterback, though, was threatening to ostracize Shanahan from pooh-bah status.
The other five changed quarterbacks within the past year. And all acted as if they’d rather have their molars yanked than their starting quarterbacks.
“I think one of the hardest things for a head coach to do is to bench his veteran quarterback for a young quarterback,” said Mike Mayock, an analyst for the NFL Network and a son of a former coach. “He can do it at left guard. He can do it at inside linebacker and it won’t generate the intense scrutiny and it won’t jeopardize the team chemistry.”
Now that Shanahan has replaced 10-year veteran Jake Plummer with rookie Jay Cutler as his starting quarterback for the game Sunday night against Holmgren’s Seattle Seahawks, the aristocracy has again closed its circle. Each member of the super six has made the super switch this season.
In fact, Shanahan is not only back in, he may have just made the boldest move of the bunch.
“This is completely different, what Mike Shanahan is doing, because this is a very young player and he doesn’t have a lot of NFL exposure even, much less experience,” Parcells said Tuesday. “So I don’t think you can compare all these moves as being, ‘OK, it’s a quarterback switch so it’s the same thing.’ I don’t think it is the same thing.”
Schottenheimer waited two years before playing Philip Rivers, and only then because an injury to veteran Drew Brees left him no choice. Look at the Chargers now. Parcells heard pleas for Tony Romo, a seldom-used fourth-year player, from the start of preseason yet stubbornly stuck with Drew Bledsoe until surrendering halfway through the sixth game. Five Romo games later, that long-lost obnoxious catchphrase – How ’bout them Cowboys? – has returned.
Gibbs may have stuck with veteran Mark Brunell about a year too long, given the quarterback’s second-half slump last season. Jason Campbell finally got his chance two games ago, just long enough to convince our nation’s capital that Gibbs waited too long.
“Joe is extremely loyal to his veteran quarterbacks,” said Joe Theismann, a former Gibbs and Redskins quarterback. “Overly loyal. I know he did because I went through it with him. He should have pulled me long before I got hurt in ’85. I look back, my head was in the wrong place. I wasn’t making good decisions. I didn’t throw the ball well in the game I got hurt in.”
Cowher twice had to replace his young, accident- and mistake-prone incumbent, Ben Roethlisberger, for the effective veteran, Charlie Batch, this season. But whenever Roethlisber- ger was healthy, Cowher never wavered – and the Pittsburgh Steelers’ season sunk in his conviction.
Holmgren had to use Seneca Wallace only because Matt Hasselbeck was injured. Hasselbeck’s knee is healthy now and he will start in the prime-time, televised game at Invesco Field at Mile High, where Cutler, a rookie from Vanderbilt, will make his NFL debut. And no, the success of Romo, Rivers and, on a smaller scale, Campbell, did not impact Shanahan’s decision.
“No. 1, Tony Romo has been in the league for four years,” Shanahan said. “He is not a first-year guy. And Rivers has been in the league for (three) years, so it’s quite different. There is a lot of pressure on a first-year quarterback, there is no question about it. But I think this kid can handle it.”
When injury isn’t a factor, the only way a head coach will consider switching quarterbacks is if the poor play of the incumbent leaves him no choice. In Dallas, Parcells could no longer live with Bledsoe’s shortcomings. Besides an unwillingness to use dump-off receivers, an oversight that led to an abundance of drive-killing sacks, Bledsoe began throwing too many interceptions.
Brunell, at 36, didn’t have enough arm, a major deficiency on a team that included the big-play likes of Santana Moss, Antwaan Randle El and Brandon Lloyd at receiver.
Plummer? His shortcomings were best quantified on third down. He ranked 30th with a 49.0 completion percentage on third down this year. His third-down rating of 64.2 was 31st in the 32-team NFL. Even in 2005, generally considered his most efficient season, Plummer was 32nd in third-down completion percentage.
It wasn’t so much Shanahan wanted to change quarterbacks as Plummer’s third-down inefficiency made him do it.
“You have to remember, you invest your offseason programs, you invest your entire training camp into getting one particular quarterback ready to play,” Theismann said. “It’s hard to give that up and go in another direction. And the quarterback position is so much about experience, so much about knowledge, and coaches value that tremendously. But at the same time, quarterback is the only position where you can shake things up on the team. You can change a right tackle or change a wide receiver, and it doesn’t matter. This is where you can make a difference.”
Mac Engel of the Fort Worth Star Telegram contributed to this report.
Staff writer Mike Klis can be reached at 303-954-1055 or mklis@denverpost.com.
