FanPost

And So It Begins ... Coaches Throwing Henne Under The Bus!


When a coaching staff makes a tough decision, sometimes an unpopular decision like benching a starting QB, they usually come out saying things like this:

"After making long evaluations of all the details involved, what I've decided to do here as we move forward is Chad Pennington is going to be the quarterback," Sparano said. "Took a lot of things into consideration, weighed an awful lot of options out. This is not an indictment at all on Chad Henne. This is not an indictment on his future.

"This player has gotten an awful lot better right now. He's come two-fold from where he was. But this is something I need to do. At this particular time as I look ahead, my decision is Chad Pennington's strengths are a little bit better suited for where we need to be right now."



Read more: http://miamiherald.typepad.com/dolphins_in_depth/2010/11/henne-benched-penningto-starts-vs-titans.html#ixzz15Gt2vOkI

Or this:

``I always see a spark when he's (Pennington) in there,'' Sparano said. ``He's got a lot of energy. What is most interesting is to see people still respond to that even though he wasn't the starting quarterback [before this week].''

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/11/14/1924647/new-qb-a-spark-for-fins.html#ixzz15GtWxXO7

In the beginning of the move, the coaches are positive about everything. They are positive about the player coming in (Pennington) and the player being replaced (Henne). But given some time, and especially after guaging the public and press reaction, the coaching staff starts to leak the real reasons for the change to the media. This is a way coaches justify the decision to those who are against the move. Things like this start to come out:

"This week I discovered Chad Henne was calling for a lot of max protection on resnap calls. With Pennington there Fasano will run more routes"
It was Henne that was calling for max protection, and thats why there were little Wr running routes and why they were not getting open

Omar Kelly (OmarKelly) on Twitter

(shout out to phin_fan for his Fanshot with this from Omar)

What this one little statement does (the person who gave this information to Omar is not mentioned) is throw a bunch of cold water on some of the critics of the move. How many times have we heard the Henne wasn't allowed to audible? Well in this statement, Henne had the ability to call for max protection, effectively changing the play at the line of scrimmage. That is an audible. Another compliant about the play calling was the number of 2 man routes. Again, according to the statement above, that is something Henne audibled into, not a play call from the sideline.

I will be willing to bet that there will be more of these types of comments to come out in later weeks. This coaching staff is going to continue to justify their decision to replace Henne with these types of little digs. They are going to say that plays that Pennington is making have been there all year and the offense (meaning Henne) wasn't taking advantage of them. They are going to point to any statistical improvement to prove that the offense wasn't the problem through 8 weeks, but the execution (meaning Henne).

It is really sad, but it is going to happen. This is the gradual process that all coaching staffs do to justify unpopular decisions and to try and keep their jobs. So sit back and watch as a coaching staff throws one of their players under a bus, gradually killing his confidence.

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of The Phinsider's writers or editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan though, which is as important as the views of The Phinsider writers or editors.