Kansas City Star: Genius coaching label more of a curse than blessing

[bubba9497]

Genius coaching label more of a curse than blessing

By JOE POSNANSKI

Kansas City Star

http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/sports/7432056.htm

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Joe Theismann summed up the genius thing best. "Nobody in football should be called a genius," Theismann said. "A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein." Unfortunately, few people listen to the good sense of Joe Theismann.

These days, it's hard to find a football coach anywhere in the NFL who has not had his brainpower compared to ol' Norman Einstein or Shecky Da Vinci or Velma Curie. In just a cursory Internet search, you can find the term "genius," or "guru" linked to the likes of Mike Martz, Brian Billick, Steve Spurrier, Mike Holmgren, Bill Parcells, Bill Belichick, Jon Gruden, Steve Mariucci, Marvin Lewis, Al Davis (as in "Evil Genius") and, inexplicably, John Mackovic.

And, of course, nobody in Sunday's game has his intellect discussed, debated, celebrated and denigrated more than the Chiefs opponent today, "The Mastermind" himself, Denver's Mike Shanahan. Maybe that's what happens when you allow people to call you "The Mastermind." Anyway, these days the debate rages over whether Shanahan is: Option A. A brilliant offensive guru who won two Super Bowls.

Or: Option B. A condescending so-and-so who hasn't won squat since John Elway retired.

You'll notice that there is no Option C. Nobody can just say that Mike Shanahan is a perfectly fine football coach who does as much as he can with the players given to him. That's simply not considered in football.

You are genius or doofus, guru or goof. In baseball, it's understood that a manager can have some affect on the game but mostly he just spits a lot. In basketball, other than Phil Jackson (who gets labeled genius occasionally because of the Zen mumbo jumbo thing), coaches are mostly asked not to tick off their best players.

In pro football, though, coaches are expected to outsmart, outfox and outcoach the other guy. They are expected to reinvent the game every week. A coach who wins a few games is immediately compared to Galileo. A coach who loses a few games is branded a dunce and, in the case of former Giants coach Ray Handley, has his face splattered on the back of the New York Post with a gas meter on his forehead pointing to E.

III A brief history of the football genius: In olden days, football coaches were not called "Geniuses." They were called "Greasy" and "Curly" and, of course, "Papa Bear." In fact, it was Papa Bear, George Halas, who pulled off the first true genius stunt in pro football history. In the 1940 NFL championship game, he and his Chicago Bears unleashed the newfangled "T Formation" offense on the heavily favored Washington Redskins.

The result: Chicago won 73-0.

Still, people kept on calling him "Papa Bear." The idea that a football coach could be a genius did not really come along until the 1960s, when San Diego Chargers coach Sid Gillman was designing a futuristic offense.

"Being part of Sid's organization," Raiders owner Al Davis once said, "was like going to a laboratory for the highly developed science of professional football." Unfortunately, Sid's teams lost in the league championship game five out of the six times they played in it, and they rarely actually led their leagues in total offense. Meanwhile, Vince Lombardi's Packers won championship after championship, and people mostly didn't call him a "Genius." In fact, Lombardi seemed to win because he wasn't a genius, because he kept things simple, because he motivated and inspired and intimidated and bullied. That still seems to be a good way to win games, as Bill Parcells proves.

Through the 1970s, some geniuses came and went - among them, Don Coryell, George Allen and Chuck Knox (who once said "Football players win football games") - but anti-genius Pittsburgh coach Chuck Noll won four Super Bowls.

Then, in the late 1970s, San Francisco coach Bill Walsh arrived. And everything changed. Suddenly, throwing short passes wasn't just a way to move around the defense; it was brilliant. Suddenly, moving the quarterback around in the pocket wasn't a way to keep him from getting killed; it was visionary. Walsh wasn't just "a genius" he was "The Genius," capital letters, and after him teams did not want football coaches named Greasy and Curly anymore. They wanted their very own Copernicus.

III A cautionary tale about geniuses (The Mike Shanahan story): Let's face it - everybody wants to be a genius. One of the Internet's hottest spots is a place where you can take an online IQ test just to find out if you are a genius. People will fall for anything (I scored a 148 on my IQ test!).

So you couldn't really blame Mike Shanahan if he believed all the hype about himself after the Broncos won back-to-back Super Bowls in 1998 and '99. After all, the Broncos and Elway had never won a Super Bowl before he arrived. Shanahan took a sixth-round draft pick running back, Terrell Davis, and turned him into one of the most dominant forces in NFL history. The papers called Shanahan "The Mastermind," and people generally treated him as if had reworked the theory of relativity.

Shanahan, at least outwardly, acted as if that was about right.

Then, Elway retired. Shanahan decided that Bubby Brister could pretty much recreate what Elway did - there's a genius thought - and when it quickly became apparent that was not in the cards, Shanahan decided that Brian Griese could certainly recreate what Elway did. Then Davis got hurt. And the Broncos went a lousy 6-10. They did make the playoffs the next year with Griese and without Davis ("The Mastermind is back!") and got stomped by the Baltimore Ravens. They have not sniffed the playoffs since.

This year, the Broncos have played well at times, and they have lost to the Chicago Bears, and they have had lots of injuries. They need badly to beat the Chiefs today just to stay in the playoff race.

People still call Mike Shanahan "The Mastermind." But they use a very different tone when they say it.

III A tale about a non-genius (The Dick Vermeil story): Though Dick Vermeil is one of only four coaches to take two teams to the Super Bowl (Don Shula, Dan Reeves, Bill Parcells) - and could become the first to take three teams - he has never really been called a genius. No, in Philadelphia he was just called a nut-job because he worked 23 hours a day, slept at the stadium, and famously asked assistant coach Carl Peterson to have them quit shooting off fireworks on July 4, 1976.

"But it's the 200th birthday of our country," Peterson said. "I don't care whose birthday it is," Vermeil said. "Tell them to cut out that racket." In St. Louis, he was eventually beloved but in a Mr. Magoo sort of way.

Offensive coordinator Mike Martz was the "Genius." Vermeil was viewed as sort of a grandfather who everyone respected but no one let use the remote control.

Even in Kansas City, Vermeil is not seen as some kind of genius. He's seen as a superior motivator, a man who knows how to build teams, a cryer, a hugger, a teacher, a wine connoisseur and a winner. Genius doesn't fit in the equation.

And that's good. Because if there's one thing Dick Vermeil has figured out in all his years of coaching, it's that you don't win by outsmarting other coaches. Everybody spends a thousand hours studying film. You don't win by developing some new play that will change football forever.

Everybody runs more or less the same stuff. You don't win by inventing some new rocket-science defense or offense. Even if your device works for a little while - run and shoot, no-huddle, 46-defense - everybody catches up quickly.

No, you win games by playing better, by turning the ball over less, by committing fewer penalties, by breaking big plays, by preventing big plays, by playing hard every week … all the same things that the coaches named Curly, Greasy and Papa Bear figured out years ago. The more the game changes, the more it remains the same.

The real geniuses - like Norman Einstein - understand that.

[bulldog]

You don't win by inventing some new rocket-science defense or offense. Even if your device works for a little while - run and shoot, no-huddle, 46-defense - everybody catches up quickly.

No, you win games by playing better, by turning the ball over less, by committing fewer penalties, by breaking big plays, by preventing big plays, by playing hard every week … all the same things that the coaches named Curly, Greasy and Papa Bear figured out years ago. The more the game changes, the more it remains the same.

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this is what I have been saying all year.

the Skins are not going to be able to consistently outthink everyone else at the line of scrimmage and create the perfect play.

we are going to win by getting the better of the line battles and getting better execution by the qb and wrs.

[inmate running the asylum]

Originally posted by bulldog

this is what I have been saying all year.

Yeah, but you been reading my stuff all year. :laugh:

Originally posted by bulldog

the Skins are not going to be able to consistently outthink everyone else at the line of scrimmage and create the perfect play.

So lets do away with Spurrier's friggin audibles then. :laugh: