It was another cruel blow, no?
The San Diego Chargers' Marty Schottenheimer, the renowned "Coach Who Will Get You Close" - got his team there again last weekend.
Close.
And that's all.
But was the blow self-inflicted, as the conventional wisdom seems to be, or was it another karmic thunderbolt from the football gods? (Gods by the way, who have seemingly some reason to be really, really, pissed off at Marty.)
Marty's post-season coaching record is now 5-13. As Steve Spurrier might say: "Not too good!" While many coaches could only dream of making 18 playoff appearances, the fact that Marty is so far sub-.500 exists as de facto proof that he's a big game choke artist with a whistle.
That may be true. Or not.
It sure is the simple answer. It's the one that fits. And it's also the one that often bitter and vindictive sports fans like to use as a club against one of the top-10 coaches in terms of wins in NFL history.
But let me offer what I can only call the "Lemony Snickets" defense of Marty and his post-season foibles. In essence, what if he was simply a victim of a "Series of Unfortunate Events."
Let's begin by admitting that too much is made of NFL coaches, and their perceived power to win football games. While it's true that the best coaches have "that knack" for motivating millionaires, creating a culture of togetherness, pulling the right strings in the midst of chaos, reality dictates that winning in the NFL is quite often as logical as the bounce of an oblong pointy ball.
I look at who Marty was vanquished by this year, as a prime example of how quirky history and perception of coaches can be. Bill Belichick is by all rights, one of the best, if not the best coach in the NFL right now. However, he's not a god. Nor a "genius."
Belichick, himself, was the benefactor of a "Serious of Very Fortunate Events."
If Drew Bledsoe doesn't get hurt mid-season, if the "tuck rule" was never "discovered" while his team was standing on the gallows in the snow, if his special teams don't make several game changing plays at Pittsburgh, if Brady doesn't recover from that sprained ankle in time, and if Adam Vinitieri wasn't so clutch ...
Well, then what?
"Sweatshirt Bill" might have run out of time and patience in New England, just as he had in Cleveland before.
The reason sports fans don't like to think that luck plays a massive part in the fates of teams, players, and coaches, is because we like an orderly sports universe.
No, we crave it.
If we can create order, we can make proclamations on said order. We can claim to understand that order, and we can glorify those who seemingly master chaos, and tame it into winning.
But who says any of it make sense?
On three possessions in the second half, the Chargers gave the Patriots second life on stalled possessions with a triumvirate of stupidity, arrogance, and folly. Usually, when a team does this ONCE in a game, it changes the outcome. Twice is usually fatal. And three is nearly unheard of.
The will of a defense to keep returning to the field for what is essentially double-duty, demoralizes the mind, body, and spirit.
And none of those plays were Marty's "fault." Unless you want to use the blanket statement that Marty's teams are "undisciplined." Fine. Seems that way now, after one game full of stupid plays.
But was this team undisciplined on the way to 14-2? You can't have it both ways.
Marty has endured The Drive, the Fumble, three missed Lin Elliot field goals, Nate Keading wide right from 40, and now this debacle. How many were REALLY his fault in the playoffs?
When you say Marv Levy lost four straight Super Bowls, does anybody bother to mention that he probably had the lesser team in at least three of them?
So many factors go into winning a single game, it's idiocy to make one game a referendum on a coach's ability. And just because Marty now has a "collection" of playoff games to judge, doesn't make it any more relevant. It remains, a collection of one-game situations, assembled over a long period of time.
If you flip a coin 20 times, and bet on "heads" half of the time, you'd expect to come within a few flips of making money.
But when you get 18 out of 20 on "tails" it doesn't mean anything really. It's just a "Series of Unfortunate Events."
Steve is a native Washingtonian and has worked in sports talk radio for the last 11 years. He worked at WTEM in 1993 anchoring Team Tickers before he took a full time job with national radio network One-on-One Sports.
A graduate of UC Santa Barbara, Steve has worked for WFNZ in Charlotte where his afternoon show was named "Best Radio Show." Steve continues to serve as a sports personality for WLZR in Milwaukee and does fill-in hosting for Fox Sports Radio.
