The Case for Marty Schottenheimer

It doesn't seem like there are too many folks out there today who believe that Marty Schottenheimer should be retained as head coach of the Chargers.

So I offer the following fact not as a defense of Schottenheimer, just as a fact, a fact that I think warrants ruling out any notion that Marty Schottenheimer is a "bad" coach: The Chargers went 14-2.

And I don't intend for that to carry the meaning that what happened yesterday is okay, because the Chargers accomplished about through 17 weeks. I don't believe that at all. What I do believe, though, is that a 14-2 record at least buys the man an opportunity to make the case that what happened yesterday was not his fault.

The Chargers players -- the only people out there today who feel like Schottenheimer should keep his job -- say that yesterday's loss is on them, and not on the coach. Said Luis Castillo:

"We (the players) are responsible. After all the mistakes we made, it would be irresponsible to put it on (Schottenheimer) ... All I'm saying is you've got to put it on the players," he said. "You look at how the game went, you have to put it on the players first. You have to. You look at the mistakes that were made – the dropped passes, the penalties, the dumb fouls . . . as a unit, we failed."

"We made critical mistakes that you cannot make in a game like that. And I'll say this: It was mistakes that have nothing to do with coaching. There's no way to coach a player down from his emotion ... I mean, you can only say so much. It's things that were in our control that we'd been doing all year, and we made mistakes and we messed up. As players, we accept the responsibility.''

And Quentin Jammer:

"I think there's going to be plenty of fingers pointed, (but) what was going on wasn't Marty's fault. He wasn't dropping balls. He wasn't covering guys. He wasn't fumbling the ball. It was not Marty. You've got to look at this thing and think of what was really happening, and that was too many mistakes by the players, not the coaches."

There's more, after that pretty blue link below.

The question is, though, do those mistakes reflect upon Schottenheimer? Are those things his fault? I can't tell you the answer to that, but I do know that the Chargers haven't done things like all year long. For sixteen games, the Chargers were extremely fundamentally sound and almost always made fewer mistakes than their opponents. Marty Schottenheimer has always stressed fundamentally-sound football, so it's difficult, though not impossible, to pin yesterday's sudden rash of mistakes on him.

As for individual decisions that Schottenheimer made yesterday, the most popular one to point out is the go-for-it on 4th-and-11 decision that came in the first quarter. In defense of the decision, the field goal would have been a 48-yarder into the wind, and as Nate Kaeding demonstrated on his final field goal attempt, that's right on the edge of his range (it was a 51-yarder that came up well-short). The field goal from there was no gimme, in fact, it probably had less than a 50% chance of going in. It's also ironic that he's being criticized today for a risky decision, when the postseason criticism of him has always been, "he's too conservative."

The other major quibble was the challenging of the McCree interception/fumble that cost the Chargers a timeout, but in the grand scheme of things, I don't believe that one timeout was the reason the Chargers won or lost the game.

So what's the right answer? Is the popular opinion that Schottenheimer chokes in the playoffs accurate, or is it just an easy and convenient opinion to hold, because that's what everyone seems to say? I don't know the answer to that.

What is clear, though, what is perfectly obvious, is that Marty Schottenheimer is an outstanding football coach who could do great things for a lot of teams in the NFL. What is not clear, however, is if the Chargers are one of those teams. His track record, though, and the level of play he got the Chargers to achieve, at least affords him the right to make a case for himself.