Dick Jauron, meet Dave Wannstedt. You seem to have more in common than you might care to know.
What is it about coaching Chicago’s football team? Is it dangerous, like a disease? Is it contagious? Incurable? For both men, the opening of this season looked more like a closing, as in curtains closing around them. The losses of the Bears and Miami Dolphins represented “just one game” in a long season, the saying goes. But these were more than ordinary losses.
The Bears had lost 12 of their last 14 games, so a 49-7 humiliation didn’t exactly serve to jump-start a new season with a new quarterback. It was more like a high dive into an empty pool.
At least the Bears were on the road against a playoff team. The Dolphins were at home against the Houston Texans.
This could happen only to Wannstedt: a Miami player, Jay Williams, meets up with Houston players Charlie Clemons, Corey Sears and Zach Wiegert arriving at the stadium at the same time.
“It was like a little reunion because we all played together at St. Louis,” Williams explained. “After we said our hellos and were about to say our goodbyes, I said, `I’ll see you after practice.’
“It was a slip of words, because I have much respect for Charlie, Corey and Zach. I told them, `Y’all know what I mean.’ But Charlie took that into the locker room, and they fed off it.”
The Dolphins have lost three games in a row, following their inexplicable fold coming down last year’s stretch with an inexplicable beginning.
All losses count only one game but some linger longer in the mind. Some serve as watershed events once the whole story unfolds.
Already, Bears All-Pro center Olin Kreutz has latched onto the urgency, imploring his teammates to trust one another, no matter who it is. That introductions still are required in the huddle is ominous.
The Dolphins might have the opposite problem. They may have grown too familiar with one anotherand with disappointment overwhelming their plans. Linebacker Zach Thomas was asked whether it’s harder to get over the mental or physical aspect of losing to the Texans.
“The mental,” Thomas said. “You start to doubt some things, but you can’t get caught up in that.”
Coaches can open their mouths only so many times for so many years before the words fall on deaf ears.
Dolphins defensive end Jason Taylor was asked this week if it would be beneficial for Wannstedt to break chairs (or his hand), to yell and scream, or to imitate coaches not as mild-mannered as either Wannstedt or Jauron.
“When it comes time to go on the field, when you cross the line and put your helmet on, it doesn’t matter what your head coach said 20 or 30 minutes ago in the locker room,” Taylor said. “It’s a tough deal. Dave gets a lot of heat for a lot of stuff. Do I think it’s right? No, but that’s the way it is. That’s his position and he has to deal with it. We all have our burden we have to bear and that’s his.”
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Now the Bears go to Minnesota, where Jauron is 2-2. The Dolphins go to the Meadowlands to play the Jets, where Wannstedt is 0-3 including that haunting 40-37 overtime loss in 2000 when Vinny Testaverde overcame a 30-7 deficit in the fourth quarter.
Come to think of it, maybe that was the watershed game. When you’re up 30-7 in the fourth quarter and still lose, how can you ever trust again?
As for the Bears, they haven’t been the same since the Philadelphia Eagles pummeled them 33-19 in Soldier Field during the 2001 playoffs, letting everybody know that one 13-3 season wasn’t enough to earn entrance into the realm of contenders.
“I think coaches take too much blame and, at times, they take too much credit, some of them, and the same goes for Dave,” Taylor said. “He’s obviously getting a lot of heat for a lot of different things.”
Of course, Tampa Bay’s Jon Gruden should get the blame for keeping such adages alive. By taking the Bucs to the Super Bowl in his first season, not to mention his resounding opening-game validation in Philadelphia on Monday night, Gruden makes all coaches nervous and all owners jealous. Gruden’s success actually is bad news for coaches’ security.
Listen to Bucs quarterback Brad Johnson rave about his boss:
“He is really an unbelievable teacher of the game. He says, `Run a play; this is why we are going to do it; this is what I expect.’ I always say if you are going to the disco, you want him to be the DJ. If you are going to McDonald’s, you want him flipping the burgers because they are going to be the best burgers you’ve ever had. That’s the way he is. Every day when I come to work, I’m excited to see him. I’m excited to learn from him.”