Watching the Denver Broncos close out the AFC Championship Game on Sunday, my thoughts turned to the Simpsons.
(And no, not simply because Homer was once gifted ownership of the team by former boss Hank Scorpio. “It’s not the Dallas Cowboys, but it’s a start.” My how things have changed.)
No, the moment that I couldn’t help but recall was from the show’s 4th season, an episode called “I Love Lisa,” in which the children of Springfield put together a President’s Day Pageant, featuring a musical number that paid tribute to America’s “lesser known Presidents”.
“We are the adequate, forgettable, occasionally regrettable, caretaker Presidents of the U-S-A!”
There have been 44 Presidents in our nation’s history, only slightly less than the 51 men who’ve been Super Bowl Head Coaches. Both are incredibly exclusive clubs, ones that require oversized ambition, serious ego, and being comfortable with a tremendous amount of scrutiny. And as we prepare for two weeks of hype building to the game that roman numerals couldn’t handle, one thing seems abundantly clear.
Gary Kubiak is one of the most nondescript coaches the Super Bowl has ever seen.
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Yes, if we’re being honest, the Broncos head man is less a Lincoln, or Kennedy, and more of a Chester A. Arthur. That’s not meant to disparage Kubiak in any way of course. After all, he made it to the big game. The rest of us should be so lucky!
“I woke up this morning and we get to play again,” Kubiak told the media at Monday’s press conference, “So that’s a great thing…Like I said, we just kept grinding and found a way to get it done. Just very proud of everybody.”
But there’s little chance, in the immediate term at least, that Denver’s Head Coach will be mentioned with the same adulation, the same awe, the same breathless one-name reverence that we reserve for Landry, and Noll, Shula, heck, Belichick and all the other headsetted heroes of the gridiron that are worthy of our Sunday worship. Gary Kubiak isn’t “The Coach”. He’s just, well, the coach. And that seems to be working out just fine.
“Gary and his whole staff just did a tremendous job,” said John Elway, moments before hoisting the Lamar Hunt trophy, “Really stepped into a hot seat, and proved everybody right.”
Indeed, Kubiak’s hire was met with a great deal of skepticism when it was announced one year ago. His previous tenure as Head Coach of the Texans had been solid, but unspectacular. A record of 61-64 in Houston culminated in a 2-11 free-fall in 2013 that cost him his job mid-season. He signed on as Baltimore’s Offensive Coordinator in 2014, and improved the Ravens’ attack, turning it into the 12th ranked unit in the NFL. Still, when John Elway announced that he was hiring his close friend, and former backup quarterback, to be the new head man, the reaction was fairly consistent.
Him?
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Some wondered whether Kubiak was actually the best man for the job, or if Elway’s personal affection had clouded his judgement. Others asked, fairly, if his rather rigid zone-blocking offense was the best fit for Peyton Manning’s shotgunning, audiblizing, Omaha-ing ways. And at a time in football when everyone is looking for the next big thing, be it a red-hot young coaching candidate, an innovative statistical approach, or a ground-breaking idea that will transform the modern game, bringing in Gary Kubiak to run the show felt, to many, like the ultimate “stuck in the past” move.
And yet, here are the Broncos, back in the Super Bowl for the second time in three seasons, proving once again that you can never really trust the narrative. They’ve done it with defense, with much of the credit belonging to Wade Phillips, who was out of the NFL altogether until Kubiak handed him the reins to one of the most gifted groups the league has ever seen. The result? A Denver defense that led the entire league in DVOA, but also proved remarkably flexible. As chronicled Monday by ESPN’s Bill Barnwell, after an entire season of dialing up the blitz, Phillips did just the opposite against the Patriots, choosing to sit back in coverage, and trust Von Miller, DeMarcus Ware, and Malik Jackson to create havoc on their own, a task they were more than ready for. By now you’ve probably seen, or heard, that Brady was hit 20 times by the Broncos’ defense, more punishment than any quarterback had absorbed all season.
“Let’s bring the orange crush back,” explained Ware, who’ll be making his first Super Bowl appearance in his 11th season in the league, “That’s what I felt like we played like last night. We played over and beyond our standards…That was, I think, the all-around closing game that’s going to carry over and motivate us in the Super Bowl.”
“We got off on the ball probably as well as I saw us get off all year,” added Kubiak, who perhaps needed to take a moment and consider his phrasing, “We talk the morning after the game about players of the game and stuff. We couldn’t pick a guy. We played great defense. We have plenty of balls to go around for them.”
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But while the Broncos Head Coach may struggle to recognize the occasional double entendre, he proved far more adept at handling the team’s quarterback quandary throughout the season. For most of the year, Peyton Manning has looked like a shell of his former self, throwing 17 interceptions to just 9 touchdowns in the regular season, and posting a QB rating of just 67.9. But as Manning’s play became truly untenable, Kubiak did his very best to play lightning rod, shielding his quarterback by insisting that it was his mistake to send him out there, injured, in the first place. While Manning got well, Kubiak asserted his complete confidence in Brock Osweiler, right up until the moment when, with the playoffs approaching, he decided instead to see if he could coax just a few more games out of the quarterback whose “laser, rocket arm” now appears to be held together by duct tape and spit.
“They were good (conversations),” Kubiak said of his time spent trying to gauge Manning’s readiness, “They were tough from a standpoint of him physically trying to get himself back to that point…. Seven or eight days before San Diego when I watched him work out, watched where he was physically… I knew he was ready to get back in there and lead the football team.”
“You try to do your part and contribute,” noted Manning, “There’s no question it’s been a different season. My role had been different, and my contributions are different, but I’m fortunate and grateful that I have the opportunity to contribute still, in some way. It’s a great honor to be going back to the Super Bowl.”
The reality is that Peyton Manning has been largely a passenger for this Super Bowl run, carried back to the sport’s biggest stage by the incredible talent of those around him. Manning is the game manager now, asked, simply, to take what’s given, and avoid turnovers, something he’s managed in both of the Broncos’ playoffs games thus far. And Kubiak deserves a great deal of credit for getting one of the most accomplished quarterbacks in the sport’s history to accept that new assignment.
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None of that, of course, is going to help Gary Kubiak stand out in a crowd, become a Media Day sensation, or suddenly become one of the biggest personalities in the Super Bowl coaching fraternity. Chances are, he’ll never be a game-changing revolutionary like Bill Walsh. He won’t cross over into a larger-than-life cultural figure like Mike Ditka. His features aren’t likely to be remembered quite as vividly as the square jaw of Bill Cowher, the intense scowl of Jon Gruden, or the perfectly coiffed hair of Jimmy Johnson. And yes, it’s highly doubtful that “Gary Kubiak NFL 2016” will be available on your Playstation anytime soon.
But then, not everyone can be iconic. And there’s nothing wrong with quietly, efficiently, unremarkably getting the job done. When he arrives in the Bay Area, Gary Kubiak won’t be thought of as a game-changer, but as a football lifer, a creature of habit. That probably suits him just fine.
“We’ll go right to work,” Kubiak made clear on Monday, “We’re not going to wait on anything. The fact that we have two weeks—our preparation, how we do things as coaches and stuff, we’re going to stay committed to our routine that we’ve used throughout the course of the year.”
After all, if it’s not broken, why fix it? Gary Kubiak’s hire may have struck many as mediocre.
But his results have been anything but ordinary.
