Hi everyone, and welcome to night three of [DFO] Hate Week.

Tonight’s a Very Special Night, as this evening is dedicated to Dok Zymm and her hatred of all things Shanahan.

My mind changed on how to do this over the course of the week.

Do I follow the original plan of presenting two men from the same era? It’s a nice pattern, and consistent with what I laid out opening night.

I could just focus on Mike Shanahan alone. There’s enough there on his own to fill an entire post.

Or should I do what tWBS would have done – just take a big ol’ hit and just do whatever

the fuck

I want?

I believe we all know the right answer here.

Marty Schottenheimer

I do want to kick off with something nice. While it might go against the spirit of Hate, it serves the purpose by making the other subjects look that much worse.

Marty Schottenheimer was one of the last “old school” head coaches. He played in the old AFL, the NFL, and the WFL between 1965-74. He began his NFL coaching career in 1975 as a linebacker coach for the New York Giants, and then was linebacker coach and defensive coordinator with the Detroit Lions. He was also defensive coordinator with the Cleveland Browns when, midway through the 1984 season, Schottenheimer was named Head Coach for the Browns, a job he held until 1988. During those four years he began a tenure of playoff infamy that haunted his otherwise stellar career, as he was victimized by both “The Drive” and “The Fumble” in consecutive AFC Championship Games. 

He was then Head Coach for the Kansas City Chiefs from 1989 to 1998, where they reached the AFC title game in 1993 but lost at Buffalo. Two of his Chiefs teams went 13-3 and locked up home-field advantage throughout the playoffs before flaming out in the divisional round.

After a single season with the Washington [Redacteds] in 2001, where he was fired by Dan Snyder, his final coaching gig was with the San Diego Chargers, under the equally odious Dean Spanos, from 2002 to 2006. He was fired after going 14-2 in 2006 because they were a #1 seed who lost their first playoff game. (By that measure, Dan Campbell should be sending out resumes and Mike McCarthy should never be let near another football team at all.) He was replaced by, of all people, Norv Fucking Turner, and Spanos tried to welch on the remaining $4.0 million Marty was owed but ultimately caved because opening his books would have been a “problem” at that time.

In all, Schottenheimer was 44-27 with Cleveland from 1984 to ’88; 101-58-1 with Kansas City from 1989 to ’98; 8-8 with Washington in 2001 and 47-33 with the Chargers from 2002 to ’06. The irony to those Chargers numbers is that, after Snyder fired Schottenheimer, the [Redacteds] went 33-47. (It’s not as good as Bill Walsh’s revenge on Paul Brown, but it did just fine.) 

Marty’s tree is quite impressive, since he often built it from scratch in his various locations.

Mikes McCarthy & Tomlin are doing the heavy work representing the Martyball lineage, but Cowher, Dungy & Arians make for a pretty good addition to the entourage. Marty’s ultimate legacy is still a pretty good representation of the good someone can do when they put time into developing the talent around them.

Mike Shanahan

Depending on who you talk to, Shanny belongs to either the Tom Landry coaching tree because of his work under Dan Reeves with the Broncos, or the Bill Walsh tree because of his work with George Seifert and being part of the Niners last Super Bowl (XXIX) in 1994. Both of these theories (purposely) ignore the fact that Al Davis had hired Shanahan away from the Broncos in 1987, only to fire him in 1989 due to personal conflicts – specifically with Art Shell, and that Dan Reeves hired him back, only to fire him in 1991 because of personnel conflicts – specifically with John Elway. It also omits the delightful fact that Elvis Grbac (remember him?!) says that in 1994 Shanahan ordered Grbac to throw the ball at Al Davis’ head during pregame warmups.

Either way, Shanahan leveraged his Niners coordinator success to land the Broncos job in 1995 after Wade Phillips was fired only two seasons after he’d replaced one of Shanahan’s mentors, Dan Reeves.

Denver’s where he made his legend, coaching there for 14 seasons, winning two Super bowls and paving the way for John Elway & Terrell Davis to qualify for the Hall of Fame. His ruining of RGIII was what cost him his last job, but he was interviewed by the Niners in 2015 before they decided to go with Jim Tomsula. One year of that, and then the failed Chip Kelly experiment, led them to hire Kyle Shanahan in 2017.

Meanwhile, the Mike Shanahan coaching tree,

weighs pretty heavily to the {Redacted} side of the equation these days, as people tend to focus on the new and shiny.

Mind you, the Raiders side should be ignored, because Davis made him hire Art Shell, and the Broncos side is mostly retired & seems a little creepy based on all the K’s, despite the obvious Super Bowl success.

Still, that one branch has won one Super Bowl, and a lot of the others have had at least one kick at the head coaching can. Let’s take a closer look at a Very Special One.

Now, I want you to harken back to December 2022. It was a heady time – we were almost two years into what looked like the first of Joe Biden’s inevitable two terms; Donald Trump’s real estate company, the Trump Organization, was convicted of tax fraud in New York; and Caleb Williams of USC won the Heisman Trophy, hopefully leading to his eventual selection by an organization that would best utilize his talents. That same month, Vulture released an article that shook the landscape of modern entertainment – “How a Nepo Baby Is Born”.

To tie this into my main point, yesterday we looked at how coaching trees are like the “three generation rule“. Well, the Scottish version of the three-generation rule is, “The father buys, the son builds, the grandchild sells, and his son begs.” Well, here’s proof

of how true that adage actually is. Kyle Shanahan,

a kid from the wrong side of town who just happened to have a last name that a few people remembered…

Okay, fine.

Look, I think we all agree that his career really should have died after 28-3. But he’s managed to stick around the game long enough to profit off his name and his name’s reputation. Somehow, the blame fell on Dan Quinn for the fact that the Falcons stopped running in the second half.

One day after that debacle, Shanny Jr. signed with San Francisco. In Santa Clara he found a good situation that he seems (once again) unable to capitalize on. Working with John Lynch, they seem to have built a team with everything but a functioning quarterback. He’s suffered through Bryan Hoyer (inherited), Nick Mullens, Jimmy Garoppolo, C. J. Beathard, Trey Lance, and Brock Purdy, which is how he’s managed to turn prime Deebo Samuel & Nick Bosa into two lose-from-ahead Super Bowls. He has a contract that’s due to expire after the 2027 season, but if he doesn’t make it back to the Super Bowl after this season he’s set to lose a vast amount of talent to salary-cap crunches, and he might not want to stick around for the rebuild.

But what has happened is that his marginal success has turned into opportunities for others

to turn that opportunity into dogshit. DeMeco Ryans is currently the star of this group, but if the Texans can’t get past the first round he’s going to eventually hit that glass ceiling that exists only for black coaches and be fired, and then really replaced by Rex Ryan’s kid. Mike McDaniel is 2012 Mike Shanahan, because he’s managed to ruin a potential franchise quarterback. Finally, Robert Saleh is the Josh McDaniels of the group, having left for his own opportunity only to have it blow up in his face thanks to one man,

whose hubris, dreams, and random bouts of drug-induced psychosis the modern podcasting industry has turned into pronouncements from the Oracle of Delphi. And like Josh McDaniels, after getting canned Saleh went crawling back to his old team just so he could feel loved again. Who knows – if Jed York fires Shanahan Junior, Saleh may have found the one opportunity Josh McDaniels never could create for himself.

In short,

Tonight’s sports:

NHL:

• Boston Bruins at New York Rangers – 7:00 PM – TNT; Sportsnet
• Edmonton Oilers at Chicago Blackhawks – 9:30 PM – TNT; Sportsnet

NBA:

• San Antonio Spurs at Atlanta Hawks – 7:00 PM – ESPN; TSN
• Memphis Grizzlies at Toronto Raptors – 7:30 PM – Sportsnet1
• Phoenix Suns at Oklahoma City Thunder – 9:30 PM – ESPN; TSN
• Orlando Magic at Sacramento Kings – 10:00 PM – Sportsnet1

NCAA:

• Duke at Syracuse – 7:00 PM – ESPN2
• Arkansas at Texas – 9:00 PM – ESPN2

That’s three pretty good days down. Tomorrow’s going to be awful, but necessary.