Sports Radio Interviews

The Broncos Hope Year Two Under McDaniels Is More Fruitful

Since Josh McDaniels was hired to replace Mike Shanahan in Denver, he has cleaned house and has been the center of controversy a few times.  Within weeks of his hire, McDaniels was rumored to have “listened” to trade offers for Jay Cutler and that didn’t sit well with Cutler.  The two were unable to resolve their issues and Cutler was traded to the Bears for Kyle Orton and a few draft picks.  Although Broncos fans were mad about the situation, looking back to last year, Orton actually had a better year, statistically, and that decision may be not be as bad as first thought.

Another player that McDaniels ran out of town was their leading receiver, Brandon Marshall.  Over the last three seasons, Marshall has 307 receptions with 3,710 yards, and is also only one of five players in NFL history to catch at least one-hundred passes in three consecutive seasons.  So why run him out of town?  It all started from what else, a contract dispute.  Marshall felt he should have received more money and when he returned for training camp after having hip surgery during the offseason, he wasn’t always fully committed to practicing and was suspended for conduct detrimental to the team after refusing to give a football to the ball boy and punted it away from him.  When I think of Josh McDaniels, I think of a young coach that is way over his head, similar to Lane Kiffin, but has had success before.  Maybe there is a method to his madness and he could be successful after all.  The Broncos like to keep their coaches around for a long time, but I am not sure if he will be.

Josh McDaniels joined ESPN 1600 in Denver to talk about how different training camp is this year than from his first one last year, whether he is going to vary the scheduling of practices from last season due to their fast start and fade down the stretch, and how he addresses the team and fixes the issues why the team played so horrible during the last half of the season.

*Note* This interview was before Elvis Dumervil tore his pectoral muscle yesterday.

His thoughts on how different training camp is this year than from his first one last year:

“I think I get my comfort and confidence from the players and I think we could tell that from the very first day that everyone reported in our very first team meeting and how comfortable they were just with the whole atmosphere, the structure that we were going to use, how we are going to coach them.  They are familiar with our system and how we are going to run training camp and I just kind of feed off of them.  So we have gotten off to a good start as far as running training camp, certainly not everything is perfect on the field yet but we are going in the right direction.”

Whether he is going to vary the scheduling of practices from last season due to their fast start and fade down the stretch:

“We are monitoring some players.  Certainly there are some guys that come in and out here that is just because we are trying to be smart with our team.  Our number one goal is to build toughness and come out of training camp as a fundamentally sound team and I would say right there with that is to be healthy for Jacksonville and we want to be able to start the season with a group on the field that we really want and that is going to require us to do some different things in terms of resting some players.  There may be some practices that we come in here and we are not in pads.  Yesterday afternoon we had a walk-through instead of a practice by we will be back to the two-a-day format today.”

His thoughts on dodging a bullet when Knowshon Moreno hurt his hamstring instead of hurting his knee:

“We always want all of our players healthy and training camp is going to, some of those things are going to happen.  We certainly didn’t look for that to happen on the first day but one thing that we did talk about during the offseason is to be able to handle the highs and the lows of the season more consistently and not let the highs affect us and get us too high and not let the lows bother us too much either.  That was part of the adversity and we talked to the team about that and you lose two good football players for a while in the first day of training camp and then you have got to just persevere.”

His thoughts on how he addresses the team and fixes the issues why the team played so horrible during the last half of the season:

“You are right.  We certainly didn’t play the way that we wanted to.  There is no one answer.  If there was that would be great, but this is a process of bringing in and having the right kind of football players on your team and having great leadership.  I think the way we work here and build our foundation is very critical to our success, not very early in our season but as we go through the year.  One of the things that you know is that if you are good at the big things early in the year than you don’t have to try to spend extra time during the course of the week that is not spent on your opponent trying to fix yourselves.  I think sometimes last year we had to try to do both and that can get draining emotionally and physically and can affect your football team down the stretch.”

His thoughts on why he doesn’t like to talk about injuries to his players:

“Well there is so many variable to injuries and timetables and where the rehab is at and then there is other situations that is not injury-related.  I think I would spend most of my time discussing it if that was the case.  Like this morning, we may have as many as 10-12 bodies that are not out on the field but they are for different reasons.  To sit there and define and explain every single thing like that, I think it puts pressure on the player, and again everybody’s body responds differently to treatment.  We don’t know exactly when these guys will be back there.  We hopefully have an idea about that to put a practice date or a game date on the body and all of a sudden he is not healthy.  Now there is pressure on the player because he didn’t make it back.  All of our players work extremely hard with a great training staff here.  They are doing everything they can to get back as soon as possible.  As soon as the guys are healthy and we feel they are comfortable with their ability to practice at a high level and we will be back out there.”

Josh McDaniels on ESPN 1600 in Denver with Vic and Gary

Tags: 2010 Denver broncos, 2010 NFL season, AFC West, Chicago Bears, Denver broncos coach, former New England Patriots Offensive Coordinator, Josh McDaniels, Kyle Orton, mile high stadium, one of the youngets head coaches in the NFL, Pat Bowlen, took over after Mike Shanahan, traded Jay Cutler for Kyle Orton