Super Genius Doesn't Quite Describe It

This is from Monday, but Peter King decided that Scott O'Brien is the coach of the week.

Scott O'Brien, Denver special-teams coach. For the last two years, O'Brien, one of the best special-teams coaches of this era, went into the football-administration side of the business, running interference for Nick Saban in Miami. When Saban left for Alabama, O'Brien got hired by Denver coach Mike Shanahan, who wanted to upgrade the importance of special-teams in Denver. "There's no question Scott's brought a sense of urgency,'' said long-snapper Leach after Sunday's 15-14 win in Buffalo.

It was pretty urgent on Sunday when O'Brien called for the field-goal team to sprint onto the field (as I described above). When you work on the last-second, no-timeouts-left field-goal drill, as O'Brien did as recently as Thursday after practice, and you win the game because you practiced it and executed it, that's great coaching.

Um, isn't that just the definition of coaching? The Patriots apparently have great coaching because they practiced and executed Tom Brady throwing the ball to Randy Moss.

Frankly, I would've picked the Titans offensive line coach, because the Titans ran crazy straight through Marcus Stroud and John Henderson. Actually, I wouldn't have picked anyone, because "coach of the week" is a stupid award.

At any rate- Apparently Dipshit missed the Roscoe Parish return, the complete lack of a return game, and the two kicks Elam missed. I'm not saying it was all O'Brien's fault, but he certainly didn't do anything special that I could see. While I'm at it, I'm getting pretty sick of announcers who call special teams "one third of the game." Special teams are not one third of the game. Speaking in generalizations- if there's a scoring drive, you're looking at 5-10 plays, at least. So that's 10 plays on defense, and 10 plays on offense. Then that's followed up with 2 kicks, and then 10 more offensive and defensive plays. At the absolute most, a team will carry 6 players who are special team specific. And that's on the very very high end. That accounts for a kicker, a punter, a kick off guy, a long snapper, a returner, and a special teams ace tackler guy, like Steve Tasker. I would say Denver has 4- Sauerbrun, Elam, Leach, and Paul Smith. Hixon is more valuable because he's a returner, but he wouldn't make the team if he was only a returner. In fact, Darrent Williams was drafted as a returner, and then only barely allowed to return kicks because he was too valuable on defense (also, he had a nasty habit for running backwards and side to side). When was the last time you heard of a special teams coordinator being considered for a head coaching job. Hell- Rick Dennison got a "promotion" when he moved from special teams coordinator to offensive line coach. Anyway, you get the point- special teams is in no way, shape, or form one third of the game.

By the way- after one week, Denver has the number one defense in the league.

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