GOOD THING FANGIO ISN’T EASILY RATTLED
Elway has done Fangio no favors, but coach isn’t easily rattled
It’s a good thing the hair that hasn’t fallen out of Vic Fangio’s head turned gray long before he took a job in Broncos Country.
This football team is a mess bigger than the 11-21 wet spill that bounced everyone from Vance Joseph to Case Keenum out the door at Dove Valley Headquarters. Instead of issuing their new head coach a whistle, maybe the Broncos should have given Fangio a mop.
John Elway hates it when I suggest he’s a coach killer. But Elway has done his 60-year-old rookie coach no favors during Fangio’s brief tenure in Denver.
When the Broncos could have drafted an impact defensive player for their defensive-minded head coach, Elway instead
chose a quarterback controversy waiting to happen, asking veteran Joe Flacco to lead the team back to playoff contention while looking over his shoulder at rookie Drew Lock at the same time.
Add the hissing match Elway got into with star cornerback Chris Harris over money, and it’s enough to make me wonder why Fangio would trade hanging at Wrigley Field during his downtime in the springtime for attempting to install a world-class defense without his only world-class player in the secondary.
By most accounts, trouble doesn’t rattle Coach Vic. Maybe that’s one big reason new Broncos cornerback Bryce Callahan, who followed Fangio from Chicago to Denver, reverently refers to the coach as the Godfather.
Fangio talks with his hands, Callahan explained Tuesday, adding that the Broncos’ new on-field boss has “this swag to him, kind of like mafia guys.”
Callahan laughed at his description of Fangio. But here’s a serious thing: What sunk Joseph as the coach in Denver was precisely the kind of balderdash that Fangio has already witnessed in a foot
ball-crazy town that bleeds orange.
Acumen at X’s and O’s can make any coach a football genius. But how he will deal with the hullabaloo of a football crisis is the great unknown with Fangio, such a quiet man bynaturethathecangotoa Nuggets playoff game and have almost nobody in the Pepsi Center notice he’s there.
Josh McDaniels brought a brilliant offensive mind to Denver but was undercut by his Jekyll and Hyde personality in the meeting room. Joseph naively trusted that coordinators he hired — whether it was Mike McCoy or Joe Woods — were there to help him, when both hastened his demise.
On the other hand, Gary KubiakwontheSuperBowldespite his conservative offensive bent, because he deftly found a way to manage two huge egos, whether it was necessary to bench Peyton Manning or tone down Elway’s blowhard, competitive nature.
All the silly hoo-ha about Flacco’s recent comments that suggest he places a higher priority on winning than mentoring a rookie were blown out of proportion. But isn’t anything and everything involving a quarterback in the NFL ripe for melodrama and controversy?
No quarterback is ever more popular than his won-lost record.
“That is the nature of this business, and that’s the beauty of it,” Flacco said.
In a city where Elway and Manning established the gold standard, while any mere mortal quarterback is subject to being run out of town after throwing three interceptions in a game, I can almost guarantee you Fangio will have to deal with QB controversy the first time Flacco loses two games in a row. I’m also willing to bet how Fangio handles that controversy will be far more critical to his success than the brilliance of his defensive game plans.
In all likelihood, the defensive schemes of Fangio will look less sharp without Harris on the field for the Broncos.
Everybody loves Chris. But Harris pushed for renegotiation with a season remaining on his contract. While this tiff should be all about the Benjamins, it’s already gotten personal between this proud cornerback and Elway, whose obsession with winning makes it difficult for him to view anything in life as a compromise.
Linebacker Von Miller loves Harris like a football brother and fully believes he deserves top dollar as cornerback. Miller, however, also made one very pertinent observation about his own, sometimes edgy contract negotiation with Elway that is instructive in the case of Harris.
“I really wanted to be a Denver Broncos for life,” said Miller, recalling the deal he acceptedin2016.
If Harris is intent on being paid $15 million per year, I can’t begrudge him seeking every last dime. But I also don’t see any way Elway will pay Harris top dollar.
Would Harris hold out for less than top dollar? Would Elway call his bluff and force Harris to play out the final season of his deal, or consider trade offers for one of the team’s few Pro Bowl-caliber talents?
Whatever the outcome, let the money spat between Elway and Harris be resolved before the Broncos report to training camp in July.
This is a headache Fangio doesn’t need or deserve.