Advice to Kubiak: Self-imposed pressure not necessary, healthy
Sports psychologists will tell you pressure comes from within, that it’s basically manufactured between your ears. In that regard, perhaps Gary Kubiak is his own worst enemy. Pressure — be it internal or external — seems to have affected the Super Bowl-winning coach of the Denver Broncos in ways from his personal health to his ill-fated quarterback decision.
It’s fair to wonder — based on his approach this season — if Kubiak ever was able to enjoy his Super Bowl victory. On the surface there was champagne, a parade and rejoicing. But deep down there were issues. The 2015 Broncos were mostly guys who had played for former coach John Fox. And Kubiak inherited a Hall of Fame quarterback to whom he had to relinquish some control of his offense.
So maybe this Super Bowl title didn’t feel like it really belonged to Kubiak. Maybe he feels like he still has more to prove?
Maybe Broncos fans never let him enjoy it. After all, the moment the victory parade through downtown Denver was over, the pundits and callers on sports talk radio were already going on and on about what Denver would have to do to repeat.
There really wasn’t an offseason.
Most of the Broncos found time to celebrate.
They escaped town and took vacations and safaris. And even though some fans and media members fussed about it, Von Miller did his own thing during the offseason, skipping some team workouts to appear on a reality TV show. Good for them. They earned it. Yet the moment the players returned, they were engulfed, and the weight of the world went back squarely on their shoulder pads — a full six months before the next meaningful kickoff. Perhaps that’s part of the problem.
It certainly appears that Kubiak has felt that pressure, selfimposed and otherwise. He appears to be the kind that keeps it inside, to his own detriment. He suffered a transient ischemic attack — essentially a ministroke — during a game in 2013 while coaching the Houston Texans. And this season he was knocked down immediately after a game by what was later described as a complex migraine condition.
From the start, Kubiak has coached this year’s team as if his life depended on every outcome. It doesn’t; it never has. He just helped deliver Broncos fans the Holy Grail. He and his team are allowed a short honeymoon.
As hard as this is for many fans to swallow, things will be fine even if the Broncos don’t win Super Bowl LI. Nothing that happens this season will ever take away Super Bowl 50.
Still, there is a question at the most important position, quarterback. That’s where the selfimposed “Super Bowl or Bust” pressure the coach has placed on himself could muck things up down the road.
In his overpowering drive to win it again, the coach is sacrificing what’s best for the immediate future. He’s still playing the wrong kid.
A content and emboldened coach, fresh off a Super Bowl win, would normally embrace breaking in a new quarterback, especially a highly touted firstround pick such as Paxton Lynch. Yet the moment offseason workouts began and the barrage of questions came, Kubiak went into a win-at-all-costs mode with his quarterbacks.
The tension was too much for veteran Mark Sanchez to handle. He kept messing up in practice. So Kubiak went with the unproven, less talented and more book smart Trevor Siemian. He even went to the odd and pointless length of naming marginal Siemian, a seventh-round draft pick with no real upside or longterm future as a starting NFL quarterback, a team captain at midseason.
While the Broncos are 7-3, Siemian has been underwhelming and Kubiak is publicly saying he has to get better.
Pressing to win this year like his career depends on it, Kubiak has stymied the development of his future quarterback (at least general manager John Elway thinks so) in order to play a guy he trusts simply to not mess up.
What this means is that 2017 — a season when Lynch should have been able to take the next big step — will instead be another season of transition under center, with a heaping helping of newfound pressure to come with it.
Knudson writes for The (Fort Collins, Colo.) Coloradoan, part of the USA TODAY Network.