NFL: Would 49ers perform a do-over, with Shanahan and Gruden available

[StarDust Bum]

If the San Francisco 49ers had a crystal ball four weeks ago, would they have done things the same way?


If that crystal ball revealed the availability of Mike Shanahan and Jon Gruden?

If that crystal ball revealed their own struggles to name an offensive coordinator?

Would they have hitched their future to a defensive coach with limited NFL experience for the next four years?

Just asking.

Don't get me wrong — I was all for the 49ers hiring Mike Singletary back on Dec. 28. He earned the job in nine games of work and created a contagious, fresh vibe around the organization in the final weeks of the season. I think — given the Yorks' general caution about big-name coaches and their usually tight pocketbook — he is the best person they could have hired.

But the euphoria from the end of the season has faded and the tough reality of building the 49ers has begun. And in the meantime, the coaching world has been turned on its head.

If you wanted to compile a "Dream Team" of NFL coaches, now would be the perfect time.

Available: Shanahan, Gruden, Tony Dungy, Bill Cowher, Mike Holmgren. All Super Bowl winners. All without a team.

While Holmgren, Dungy and Cowher seem content to take time off and relax, the same doesn't hold true for Gruden or Shanahan. Both were fired in surprise moves. Both are driven men with wounded pride. Both wouldn't hesitate to jump back in the game.

And both just happen to have close ties to the 49ers and their winning tradition.

Shanahan resurrected his career with the 49ers, as offensive coordinator during the team's last Super Bowl run. Gruden spent 1990 with the 49ers as a coach's aide, sleeping on the facility couches, playing trivia games with Steve Young and soaking up all the information he could.

Both Gruden and Shanahan are rooted in the West Coast offense. When Shanahan was hired in 1992, the first thing he did was spend a week locked in a film room with offensive-line coach Bobb McKittrick, by then the team's West Coast oracle. Shanahan also went over to Stanford to spend hours with Bill Walsh, who was in his second coaching stint with the Cardinal. When Gruden was with the 49ers, he spent every spare minute sitting in the doorway of McKittrick's meeting room, furiously taking notes. These men understand the 49ers' offensive legacy better than any head coach other than Holmgren.

When pondering the 49ers' problems over the years, many observers — including this one — have thought the 49ers would be best served by tapping into their offensive legacy. By hiring a coach "like a Shanahan" or "like a Gruden." Few imagined the originals would come available so soon.

And when pondering the drawbacks of hiring Singletary, the biggest concern always has been building and sustaining a strong offense. Recent developments haven't eased that anxiety.

After Singletary fired Mike Martz — a sensible move considering their diametrically opposed ideas about offense — he said he wanted to hire his offensive coordinator "yesterday." That was a month ago.

Since then he has been mysteriously turned down by Scott Linehan. After two interviews, which should have made the geographical situation obvious, Linehan trotted out the excuse about not wanting to move his family. Then he immediately became a candidate for other jobs. So something about the 49ers job isn't very attractive. The commitment requested, the pay, the ideology, the fact that Singletary already has hired assistants, the 49ers' distance from the Super Bowl?

Now Singletary is looking for his second choice. This week in Mobile, Ala., site of the Senior Bowl, he interviewed fired Boston College coach Jeff Jagodzinski. Baltimore Ravens offensive coordinator Hue Jackson, who worked at Cal under Steve Mariucci, has emerged as a candidate. But now the search for the 49ers' seventh offensive coordinator in seven years has taken on a hint of desperation.

There's no guarantee Shanahan or Gruden would have been interested in working for the Yorks. No guarantee they aren't burned out after a run of tough seasons.

But they are proven NFL coaches who know offense, who could tap into the past and provide stability for the future. Would a crystal ball have changed anything?

Hey, I'm just asking.

[StarDust Bum]

NFL: Cowboys should hire Mike Shanahan to restore order

DALLAS — Mike Shanahan has replaced Wade Phillips as a head coach before. Clearly, it's time for him to do it again.


Cowboys owner Jerry Jones can put to bed all these tales of woe at Valley Ranch with one easy hiring. All the talk of loose discipline, of in-fighting between teammates, between players and coaches, all the stuff that sounds so crazy and in some cases so irrelevant can be shoved aside.

Shanahan may have just exhausted his stay in Denver, but when it comes to the Cowboys, Shanahan is change you can believe in.

Here's why the Cowboys can't continue with the Wade Phillips era.

Thirteen years and 13 NFC teams. That's what the NFC championship, once a regular playground for your Cowboys, now represents.

It has been 13 seasons since the Cowboys played in an NFC title game. That's the longest streak in club history. The previous longest was nine years — Tom Landry's last six seasons and Jimmy Johnson's first three.

Landry's teams had played in a remarkable 12 NFL or NFC title games in 17 years (1966 through 1982) before the drought hit.

Now, it has been 13 seasons under five head coaches, which immediately tells you the problem has more to do with Jones than the coaches themselves.

Barry Switzer's last two years, followed by two with Chan Gailey, three with Dave Campo, four with Bill Parcells and two with Phillips have failed to produce a single trip to an NFC Championship Game.

Meanwhile, 13 other NFC teams have played in an NFC title game since Dallas' last one. Only Detroit and Washington have been away from the game longer than the Cowboys.

Let an experienced and proven coach like Shanahan clean house. Tell him he needs to keep Jason Garrett for one more year as offensive coordinator and then decide if he wants to go a different direction.

Let Shanahan and Garrett decide what to do about Terrell Owens.

Now that Jones has forced Phillips to get rid of the two coordinators he was allowed to hire — Brian Stewart on defense, Bruce Read on special teams — let Shanahan figure out which way to go on those two fronts.

Shanahan is exactly the kind of experienced and successful coach Jones could actually work with. It wouldn't work for long any more with coaches as headstrong as Johnson or Parcells.

It wouldn't work with Bill Cowher, either, and I'm not even sure where Jon Gruden fits on the "head coaches you want to hire" rankings.

Shanahan knows about getting teams to championship games. He has endured a rough last three seasons in Denver with a team spinning its wheels and going 24-24. Prior to that, as offensive coordinator of the 49ers and head coach of the Broncos, Shanahan coached in NFC or AFC Championship Games six times in 14 years.

He earned three Super Bowl rings.

He has an understanding of what it takes to win and he proved it over a long and largely successful run in Denver. And unlike some who would question his hiring, I can't imagine Shanahan is incapable of trying to win with larger offensive linemen than he was used to deploying in Denver.

Unless Jones truly believes that "all publicity is good publicity" and he thinks the stories coming out of Valley Ranch for two months now are helping him sell tickets to his new stadium, then Jones knows it's time for major fundamental change at the top.

Or at least as close to the top as Jones will allow any coach to get.

Asking Phillips to get rid of his coordinators doesn't accomplish much. Asking Phillips, at age 61, to change his coaching style and personality is impossible.

Whatever you want Phillips to be in terms of a ruthless dictator, he isn't going to be that guy. Besides, the manner in which Jones has been at the top of all real decision-making since Parcells left the building doesn't allow for that to happen.

The good vibe Phillips and his more player-friendly coaching staff brought after Parcells lasted for one regular season. It was gone by the time the Cowboys lost to the Giants in the playoffs, and 2008 was an outright disaster.

The 2009 season doesn't have to keep going in that direction. A good, proven coach is ready to take over.

All Jones has to do is make that splash during Super Bowl week that he so dearly loves.

And then — for a time, anyway — the nonsense can disappear.

[StarDust Bum]

NFL column: Will Boldin be party-pooper for the Cardinals?

The Arizona Cardinals are in the Super Bowl, and for that a lot of people in Phoenix are surprised and happy.


Spend any time in the city and you can't miss them. They're so new at this, the red replica jerseys they're wearing look like they just snipped off the price tags, and they have to think twice when asked to name their favorite player.

Here's something they do know: It's not Anquan Boldin.

That could change, should Boldin catch a few touchdown passes a week from Sunday in Florida and help the Cardinals complete their fairytale season with the most improbable Super Bowl win since, well, last season.

For now, though, he's just a guy who seems intent on spoiling a pretty good party.

While the Cardinals were upsetting Philadelphia, Boldin was on the sidelines, arguing with an assistant coach while Kurt Warner was leading the team to a game-winning touchdown drive in the fourth quarter. Afterward, he ran into the locker room rather than join his teammates in celebrating the NFC championship game win on the field.

His team was going to the Super Bowl. Boldin was acting like a super jerk.

That's not all that surprising considering Boldin is a wide receiver, a position in the NFL that comes with an invitation to act petulant, greedy and somehow above everyone else on the team. Players like Terrell Owens, Chad Ocho Cinco and Randy Moss have combined to make this an art form over the years.

And it's not as if Boldin picked just this time to make the point that he's underappreciated and unloved in Phoenix. He's been complaining since training camp about the refusal of the Cardinals to renegotiate a contract that pays him an average of $4 million a year, while campaigning for a trade at the same time.

But, really, how dumb can you be? Your team is celebrating its biggest win ever and you're pouting because you didn't get the ball enough and don't get paid enough?

Didn't anyone along the way from Pop Warner football through high school and college ever explain that football is the ultimate team sport and that the Super Bowl is football's ultimate game?

Apparently not, and that's what has to make Arizona fans so mad. They don't care that Boldin considers himself grossly underpaid, or that he only made four catches in the Eagles game.

They only care that the Cardinals are somehow in the Super Bowl and have a chance to bring the franchise its first championship in 111 years. And they're afraid that somehow Boldin will find a way to mess that up.

My guess is they don't have much to worry about. The two weeks of hype between the conference championships and the Super Bowl may magnify what Boldin did, but be assured that next week both he and the team will go out of their way to claim everything is just peachy.

The emergence of Larry Fitzgerald as not only the best receiver on the team but perhaps the league also means the Cardinals' chances won't rise or fall on what Boldin does in the big game. They did manage to score the winning touchdown against the Eagles, after all, with Boldin on the bench until he was finally used as a decoy on the scoring toss to Tim Hightower.

Still, distractions do have a way of sinking teams in the Super Bowl. The arrest of Atlanta safety Eugene Robinson on the eve of the 1999 game on a charge of soliciting a prostitute didn't help the Falcons chances against Denver. And in 2003, Oakland center Barrett Robbins went missing for most of the week before ending up in the hospital, and the Raiders lost to Tampa Bay.

The Cardinals are going to have a tough enough time facing a Pittsburgh defense that is the best in football. The Steelers will key on stopping Fitzgerald, so it's even more important that Boldin makes the most of his chances.

Boldin needs to understand he'll have an entire offseason to make his case for more money and a different team.

For now, though, he's got just one game to show Arizona fans he cares about what really matters — winning a Super Bowl.

[Udog]

Thanks! Good stuff, Bum!

[frankb03]

If I'm the 49ers owner I'll take Singletary over both Shanahan and Gruden.

[BigWeiner]

Cowboys need Gruden

[StarDust Bum]

Would anything less then being a head coach be a slap in the face to either of them.......