Schottenheimer Pulls A Coughlin

A mildly surprising bit of news from San Diego as Marty Schottenheimer avoided the chopping block after another playoff failure and will be back on the sidelines in 2007. It's only a mild surprise because of his 14-2 regular season record, best in the league, not because he lost his sixth straight postseason game on Sunday.

I think there's a strong case to be made for keeping Schottenheimer and I think there's a strong case to be made for cutting him loose. On the pro-Schotty side, you have the arguments of stability, cohesion and that regular season record. Sometimes teams come back from brutal playoff losses and climb the final rung of the ladder the next year. Sometimes they fumble the game away in the clutch and end up moving to Baltimore. You can never tell but there is something to be said for not rocking the boat because of one bad game.

There's also something to be said for bad mojo however. There wasn't a glaring moment of Martyball like the 2004 loss to the Jets against New England but there's still a sense that Schottenheimer tightened up in the clutch. There's been a lot of talk about his decision to go for it on 4th and 11 from the Pats 30 in the first quarter. I think he should have tried the field goal but it's hard to kill a guy for making a gutsy choice when the book on him is that he's too conservative. But things never seem to go his way and at some point a change for the sake of change may need to happen.

I think this whole thing has worked out as well as possible for the Chargers. Not all their fans agree, of course but Schottenheimer didn't really deserve to get fired here unless you are a subscriber to the cosmic, mystical this guy's doomed to fail school of thought. The team offered him a contract for 2008 but the coach turned it down saying he "was more comfortable proceeding forward, frankly, on the basis of the contract that I had already executed. When I looked at the whole picture, I just felt like we have this season to deal with.”

Good for him, most guys would have said yes to the extension just to get the $1 million buyout attached to it, especially when there's guff between Marty and GM A.J. Smith. It's refreshing to see someone who will work under the terms of the contract he signed, for better or for worse.