News / Sports
San Diego Chargers Fire Head Coach Marty Schottenheimer
Despite leading the San Diego Chargers to an NFL best 14-2 regular season head coach Marty Schottenheimer was fired on Monday night by the organization.
Many believe that the decision to fire Schottenheimer had more to do with the acrimony that existed between the head coach and Chargers GM A.J. Smith than it did with team performance.
It was well known by all that Schottenheimer and Smith didn’t even speak with each other during the 2006 season and when the Chargers dropped their playoff game against the New England Patriots it became the perfect artillery for the GM to use.
While the situation between Schottenheimer and Smith was definitely a ticking time bomb it wasn’t the only reason for the decision. This off season has already been particularly rough for the Chargers coaching staff. Wade Phillips left to take the Dallas Cowboys head coaching position, Cam Cameron was lured to the Miami Dolphins as their new head coach. Cameron took the Chargers assistant strength and conditioning coach Matt Schiotz with him. Greg Manusky left his linebackers coach position and became the San Francisco 49ers defensive coordinator. In all the Chargers lost five coaches to other teams and it became a reflection on Schottenhemer.
In mid January Chargers owner Dean Spanos had offered Schottenheimer a one-year extension on his contract but the Marty turned the deal down saying he wanted more security. By Monday it became clear that Spanos would not be able to offer Schottenheimer that security. Spanos stated “the process of dealing with these coaching changes convinced me that we simply could not move forward with such dysfunction between our head coach and general manager. In short, this entire process over the last month convinced me beyond any doubt that I had to act to change this untenable situation and create an environment where everyone at Charger Park would be pulling in the same direction and working at a championship level. I expect exactly that from our entire Charger organization in 2007."
San Diego will now get to work on looking for Schottenheimer’s replacement, a task that will more than likely prove difficult this late into the offseason.
