...I don't know the rhyme or reason, why he'll start a Wali Lundy week 1, but make a Steve Slaton come in slowly, or an Arian Foster to come in even slower. Personally, I think the more pressure is on, the more conservative he wants to be. I think he needs to get over that.
I think our run game would have been much better, if he moved Caldwell to Center, started Arian Foster earlier, and or given Moats the ball more.
I know he has his reasons for all the moves he made, or didn't make, but I can't understand why he wouldn't put game changers in the game.
TK,
What I quoted of yours, above, is not an isolated incident.
Expand what you just said, and apply it to the favor he shows to Walter and Anderson vs. putting Jacoby Jones in there at the expense of making one of those two guys take a lower seat on the totem pole at WR.
So we have multiple instances of a head coach with roster problems...
1. Doesn't demote Myers at center, thereby making a statement that whoever gets Myers' job better do a better job or Kubiak's going to demote THAT guy and then put another person in there until the center position is made better. Maybe injuries precluded that Myers stays at center, though, so I give Kubiak a little bit of breathing room on this one.
2. Jacoby Jones. And I know there's one or two posters who are going to throw out the snaps stats and show that Jacoby got fair shots. Whatever. He's a dangerous guy and should be in there as a true #2. Period.
3. Running back mistakes. The unearthing of Steve Slaton in 2008's draft is now beginning to look less fantastic because he hung his hat on Steve, thinking he might have finally solved that puzzle. But then the fumbles began, then the Chris Brown experiment backfired in what can only be described as a colossal failure. We had a chance at Cedric Benson, laughing at him the first time and then relenting and showing such abject indifference that we let the Bengals outbid us. Oops. Then we had a shot at maybe a 1-year contract with Larry Johnson. Sigh. And finally, we sat Chris Brown's butt on the bench in the very last game and saw a heavy dose of Arian Foster. Gawd I hope Kubiak doesn't think he has found his saving grace at RB now. But, as we all know, there is a pattern here with Kubiak...
4. Kris Brown. Like I have said:
Do we want to be seen as a kinder, gentler NFL franchise? Bob McNair votes "Yes!" Fine by me. Kubiak doesn't have to cut Kris after the MNF game. All he has to do is cut CHRIS Brown, since he's dead weight anyway. Then we could have signed a kicker in his place, sat Kris down and gave him a breather (let him clear his head), and let the new guy take a stab at it. Heck, if the new kicker stinks it up...it might give Kris Brown something he hasn't had in almost a whole decade: Competition and accountability. Think about it for a sec, and what that does to a guy's performance when he knows damn well that he has nobody looking over his shoulder. Even from a subconscious standpoint, it has an impact on someone's mentality toward his job.
5. I'm adding two new guys to this list:
Connor Barwin and Amobi Okoye. These are two guys who might just be in over their heads, though Barwin's "motor" seems to be producing more RPM's than Amobi's.
These situations reflect roster decisions, with the last one being more of a drafting issue, I suppose. But the drafting issue turns into a roster situation pretty quickly because as we have seen from Kubiak: He will literally will his favored kids to success. Everyone likes to see this sort of loyalty to a small degree. But loyalty at the expense of the entire team is indicative, IMO, of someone who doesn't see things in a Big Picture mindset.
Which then goes on, IMO, to reveal why Kubiak also has problems with finding ways to beat divisional rivals and his problem with what some of us perceive to not being able to out-coach teams who are better than us.
In the grand scheme of things, Gary Kubiak is not currently a head coach whom I think is going to deliver a Super Bowl. Bob McNair believes he is, or is only saying this because it's all he can say right now. Who knows.
Casting our offensive statistical explosiveness aside, I ask myself one critical question: At the end of the day, is our head coach a guy who finds ways to beat the teams in his division (even if it's only going .500 against them) and does he inspire confidence with the decisions he makes regarding gameplanning and gameday strategies?
Kubiak doesn't get graded higher because he has Andre Johnson. Remove a few wild cards from this equation and let's really think about what we have here at head coach.
Alas, he's what we got and I concur that we should support him. But I want you to expand your critical thinking (that I quoted) and move it toward looking at Kubiak through that lens a bit more. It's why there's a constituency on here who can't find it within themselves to Keep Hope Alive.
I really feel that any success we're going to have in 2010 will be a reflection more upon the players than the quality of our head coach; that we'll win in spite of Kubiak, not because of Kubiak. Which makes people wonder what we'd do with a real gameday strategist at the controls of this team.