Last week, sportswriters had Marty Schottenheimer of the San Diego Chargers dead, buried, and fired after the Chargers' playoff loss to the Patriots. However, expectations were confounded when the Chargers decided to bring back Schottenheimer for another year. Under Schottenheimer, the Chargers have gone from doormat to regular season dominance, but sportswriters think that "it don't mean a thing if you can't get a Super Bowl ring."
But that's more a matter of sportswriter bias than anything else. Sportswriters don't understand the technical aspects of football very well, but they can count how many times a coach or player has been to the Super Bowl. So they keep things simple by focusing on the ring. However, winning the Super Bowl is usually a matter of things that neither coaches or players can control at playoff time--getting hot at the right time (last year's Steelers), getting the right supporting cast for a dominant player (Green Bay with Brett Favre and Denver with John Elway), or organizational dominance (New England, San Francisco). Coaches like Marty Schottenheimer and Tony Dungy who have achieved consistent excellence in the intensely competetive NFL deserve enormous credit whether they win Super Bowls or not.
The same is the case with players. Even if Peyton Manning of the Colts never gets to a Super Bowl, he'll still be right up there with Joe Montana and John Elway as one of the best players ever to play a game.
Marty Schottenheimer had a great year as a coach. There shouldn't have been any doubt about whether he should be brought back again.
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2 comments:
I agree that Marty Schottenheimer is an excellent coach, over two-hundred regular season wins, are evidence of both his ability and his longevity. I agree that he deserves the opportunity to coach the San Diego Chargers again next season; however, failure to succeed in the playoffs next season will no doubt end his tenure in San Diego.
The organization strongly believes that is building toward what you called “organizational dominance.” At the very least they believe that they have Super Bowl winning talent on both sides of the ball. With the presence of so many weapons on both sides of the ball, one wonders how much influence over the regular season wins Schottenheimer had. There is little doubt that he was out coached by Belicheck in the playoff game; in a game where he had the advantage of home field and better overall talent.
Schottenheimer over his career seems to have wilted under the pressure of big moments. It seems that he lets the pressure get to him, and that affects his teams as well. Unfortunately, Schottenheimer seems destined to be remembered for his great losses rather that his wins, and forever associated with other individual’s greatness: John Elway and the Broncos’ “The Drive” for example.
I look at it differently. The media should focus on Schottenheimer's consistent record of excellence rather than his playoff losses. If Schottenheimer's teams were being blown away in the playoffs that would be one thing. But most of these playoff losses have been extremely hard-fought affairs between top teams. Schottenheimer isn't a poor playoff coach any more than Bill Cowher was a poor playoff coach all those years in Pittsburgh or Marv Levy was a poor Super Bowl coach when the Bills lost four Super Bowls in a row. Things just haven't broken right for Schottenheimer to win the big one. When they do, Schottenheimer will be a media genius.
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