Rams, Bills, Jags succeeding with new coaches
DENVER » Of the half dozen first-year NFL head coaches, Vance Joseph inherited what was widely considered the best situation: a team just one year removed from a Super Bowl parade with a championship-caliber defense and a renovated offense.
Unlike the other five teams that averaged 4.4 wins last season, Denver was coming off a 9-7 season and the job only came open because of Gary Kubiak’s health concerns.
Yet, it’s the Broncos (3-5) who are spiraling with five losses in their past six games while Sean McVay’s Rams (6-2), Doug Marrone’s Jaguars (5-3) and Sean McDermott’s Bills (5-3) are primed for playoff pushes.
Even Anthony Lynn’s Chargers (35) are on the rise after a winless first month that included three losses by a field goal or less.
While the 49ers are an NFL-worst 0-9, Kyle Shanahan could end up being the biggest winner of them all with his team jockeying for the top pick in next year’s draft.
“Of course it wears on you,” Shanahan said of all the losing. “If you sit there and you think about those words and the record too much and, yeah, it will affect you big time.
“But sitting and dwelling on that and worrying about your ego and things like that, it’s not going to make you play better.”
The dive has started to fray nerves in Denver, where calls for offensive coordinator Mike McCoy’s job fill the airwaves.
Suddenly, all that winning ugly over the past couple of years, highlighted by Denver’s defense carrying a diminished Peyton Manning to victory in his Super Bowl 50 farewell, looks pretty good in retrospect.
When Kubiak quit, defensive coordinator Wade Phillips joined McVay in L.A. and offensive coordinator Rick Dennison joined McDermott in Buffalo.
Phillips is having his customary first-year effect with the Rams, who sport the largest point differential in the NFL, and Dennison is directing an offensive turnaround with the Bills, who could end the league’s longest playoff drought — they haven’t qualified since 1999.
The Rams have missed out every year since 2004 and the Jaguars every season since 2007. If they continue their resurgence, the Chargers might get in for the first time since 2009.
Even the Broncos haven’t lost hope because they’re only two games behind the Chiefs, losers of three of four (but with a favorable schedule the rest of the way).
“We have time,” Joseph said, “but time’s running out. So, we’ve got to fix it right now.”
The problems in Denver are mostly on offense, where Joseph spent his first eight months on the job pondering whether Trevor Siemian or Paxton Lynch would be his quarterback only to see Brock Osweiler emerge as his best bet.
Joseph has seen his team average an NFL-worst 14 points since Week 3, suffer its first shutout in a quarter century and get blown out at home coming off a bye week by the battered Giants.
After a 51-23 loss at Philadelphia on Sunday that shattered the defense’s not-my-fault aura, defensive end Derek Wolfe said the “Broncos are beating the Broncos” with too many mistakes, turnovers, drops and flags before the snap and after the whistle.
Joseph acknowledged the coaching staff has to clean up its act, too.
Joe Woods’ defense is having too many breakdowns in coverage, Brock Olivo’s special teams are too sloppy and McCoy stubbornly sticks to a steady diet of three-receiver sets even though his quarterbacks have 18 sacks and 10 turnovers out of that formation over the past six games.
“It’s a league that’s really built and operated to have equal parts. So, the difference sometimes is the coaching. The difference is the scheme and play calling,” Joseph said.
“So, when you don’t win, absolutely you have to coach better. And that starts with me. Because in this league coaching is very important and the better-coached teams win.”
Right now that includes the Bills, Rams and Jaguars.