January 16, 2009
Golden Denver Parachute Saves Again
by Keith Weiland
Keith@IntheBullseye.com

Head coach Gary Kubiak is the Bronco Whisperer, talking to ghosts of Denver’s past, helping them cross over from purgatory to Houston. He is in the process of finalizing some hires to his staff v2.0, having confirmed Frank Bush as his defensive coordinator last week and reportedly preparing to announce David Gibbs as his defensive backs coach next week.

Surprise! Both apples of Kubiak’s eye didn’t have too far to fall from the Bronco tree. Bush, believed to have been Kubiak’s originally preferred choice for the role three years ago, spent nine years in Denver alongside His Kubiness on the coaching staff. Gibbs, the son of Texans zone blocking guru Alex Gibbs, spent four years coaching secondaries with Kubiak’s Broncos.

It follows a familiar trend. Sometimes it is a familiar one quite literally as Kubiak, being the true family man, already employs as offensive coordinator the son, Kyle Shanahan, of his former head coaching boss, Mike.

As such, instead of using his stopwatch to verify 40 times of draft prospects at next month's scouting combine, Kubiak plans on using it to time the motility rates of lil’ Gibbs and Baby Shan. Dude's a forward thinker, a latter day Gregor Mendel for the pro football set.

Though unlike Baby Shan, who may in fact be good at his job (TBD '09), D-Gibbs has some creds on the ol’ CV. He turned the Chiefs corners and safeties into a pretty solid group at his most recent stop, posting some of the team’s best secondary statistics in a decade during his tenure in Kansas City. Perhaps more importantly, he spent considerable time at the collegiate level developing young defensive talent, an alleged deficiency of his predecessor, Jon Hoke.

I’ve used this space to poke fun of Kubiak’s xenophobic insecurities when it comes to his acquisition of both staff and veteran players. But if it works, it works. The potential for internal harmony now at Reliant Park seems ever greater than some sort of mish-mash new Colossus of coaching philosophies, an ideological melting pot holding a torch to shelter the tired and hungry masses from the wretched refuse of lesser teams.

So welcome, lil’ David. Thanks in some part to your geneology, you have in fact inherited the tired and poor, also known as the collective talent (or lack thereof) pre-assembled for you in the Texans secondary. To wit, your beacon of hope, Dunta Robinson, is an unrestricted free agent attempting recovery from drastic leg injuries suffered little more than a year ago.

Yeah, that’s the good one. And he still has yet to reach his ceiling, so please check into that, TIA. The others? They really are quite secondary. Please develop their competency immediately, or like your predecessor, you’ll be the next ghost in town.

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