Title

Josh McDaniels Will Live to Fight Another Season

By C-O-U-R-T-N-E-Y!

McDaniels doing his best Elway grin. (Photo: www.broncostalk.net)

Reports out of Denver are that Josh McDaniels will return next year to coach the Broncos.  Although the franchise has been in serious damage control of late with Spygate II and the team’s lousy performance on the field, retaining him is not as big a surprise as people may think.  Uncertainty over the league’s collective bargaining agreement has a lot of franchises hesitant to pay a new coach to sit around and do nothing (while paying an old coach to sit around and do nothing).

I also think the Broncos don’t want this to be the next Mike Shanahan (Raiders—>Broncos) or Bill Belichick (Browns—>Patriots) situation.   Where McDaniels needs help is in the personnel department.  The Broncos have made some wildly bad trades (see Peyton Hillis for Brady Quinn), run some serious talent out of town (see Jay Cutler and Brandon Marshall), and wildly over-thought draft day decisions (see trading up for Tim Tebow, drafting Knowshon Mereno, this list could go on).

While McDaniels isn’t soley responsible for these moves (they do have a GM, Brian Xanders), a lot of their personnel moves clearly have McDaniels’ name all over them.  McDaniels has made a ton of mistakes, but my guess is that the Broncos also think he has learned from them and will look to build on what he has learned rather than starting over all over again.  The timing of it also telling: saying he will return next year in the face of SpygateII and an increasingly hostile fan base shows that a lot of people (or, at least, people that matter) within the Broncos’ organization must still believe in McDaniels.