Schott Through the Heart

San Diego- After another season of falling short of the Super Bowl, San Diego Chargers team president Dean Spanos has decided to relieve Marty Schottenheimer of his coaching duties due to what he terms a "dysfunctional situation". Chris Mortensen of ESPN first reported the story on Monday night citing that a big reason for the firing had to do with GM A.J. Smith and Schottenheimer's relationship. The bad relationship between the two is in large part due to the fact that Schottenheimer was angry that Drew Brees was let go. This is in large part speculation, but I recall hearing something about this last year (we here at cursedcleveland.com do little to no research for our articles).

Spanos also cited the loss of numerous assistants as a reason for the move. Both the offensive and the defensive coordinators left town and tight ends coach Rob Chudzinski, as well as linebackers coach Greg Manusky accepted jobs as offensive and defensive coordinator respectively for other teams. Clearly though, the loss of Rob Chudzinski will be the hardest pill to swallow.

Now in Cleveland we are all familiar with "Martyball" but the guy has had a bad break here and there. His style was obviously overly conservative at times and lets not forget the time he told Ernest Byner to fumble the ball at the goalline in the 1987 AFC Championship game. Incidentally, if you google the word "fumble" you get the Byner fumble listed at number 2 (true story). One could claim that giving the ball to Ladanian Tomlinson a little more wouldn't have been conservative, it would have just been plain old smart because he is that unstoppable (can't even imagine what he would have been like on Tecmo Bowl).

A little food for thought. Let's say last year's Super Bowl was refereed by impartial officials and the Steelers lost by about 10 (that is a conservative estimate). What would Bill Cowher's legacy be? Would all the Cleveland fans still want Cowher to come out of retirement to coach their team after years of playoff losses? Didn't think so!

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