Welcome Home, Coach Kubiak

Written by John Edward Betancourt

While a coaching change is sometimes necessary for a football team, and often warranted when it comes, it leaves fans and players uneasy. After all, we get used to that coach, so do the players and few of us are ever comfortable with the unknown. In fact sometimes you never truly know what you get in a new coach until the season begins...take Josh McDaniels for example. 

So leave it to John Elway to accomplish several things this week. Not only did he find a coach out there that is known as a fiery competitor and managed to turn around a losing franchise, he also found someone that pleases the fans by hiring the fifteenth head coach of the Denver Broncos, Gary Kubiak.

For those unfamiliar with Coach Kubiak, this is the town that brought Gary into the football fold. He was John Elway's backup at quarterback from 1983-1991 before he left the game to head out into the coaching world where he joined up with the San Francisco 49ers as a Quarterbacks Coach and snagged a Super Bowl Championship Ring with the Niners in Super Bowl XXIX. But his coaching pedigree continued to grow when he returned to Denver with Mike Shanahan to serve as Offensive Coordinator from 1995-2005 where he pulled in two more rings in Super Bowl XXXII and XXXIII.  

Kubiak then left the Broncos to become the Head Coach of the Houston Texans where he took a perennial loser and turned them into a fiercely competitive squad and a playoff contender. Unfortunately, poor play always falls on the coach's shoulders and Matt Schaub's sudden fall from grace put an end to his career in Houston.  Quite frankly, that's their mistake, because after a brief stint in Baltimore as the OC, he has come home at last to coach a team that is in need of inspiration.  
We now know that John Fox rarely fired up his players or had them ready to play when it mattered most, and that won't be the case with Kubiak at the helm. He is well known as a man that inspires a team and fawns over the details to make sure they are prepared when they take the field.  Plus, few men in the league are regarded as offensive/quarterbacking geniuses like Gary Kubiak. He got incredible play out of John Elway and it should be amazing to see what he will do with Peyton Manning, should he choose to return. 

Either way, the franchise has managed to soothe some of the pain of the ugly loss the Broncos endured in the playoffs and I think the team is in incredible hands with Coach Kubiak at the helm, and I'm looking forward to an incredible season where the Broncos will no doubt leave it all on the field. Welcome home, Coach Kubiak. We missed you. 

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