Head Coach Mike Shanahan is causing quite a stir in the world of football. In Sunday’s game against the Detroit Lions, Shanahan benched Donavon McNabb in the last two minutes of the game. As you can imagine the press hounded him for the decision and asked him as to why he made the move. Shanahan stated that Rex Grossman the second-string quarterback was better at running a two-minute offense than Donavan McNabb. Despite the reasoning, he still received a lot of criticism for taking out a veteran quarterback and replacing him with a second-string. Not many people were thrilled with his decision.
Today, Shanahan comes out and also says that McNabb’s physical fitness played a major factor as to why he was benched. Now, people want to know which the real reason for the last minute move is. If you didn’t already know, Shanahan was fired from Denver after 14 years before he moved to Washington. During his time as head coach in Denver, they won two back to back super bowls in 1997 and 1998. The records show that he is a good coach.
Handling the public is an important part of organizational behavior. The CEO of a company has to work with the public on a daily basis. On the same token, the manager has to work with his employees on decisions made. A bad decision can quickly change the credibility that a manager once had. It’s interesting to see what happens with the debacle in Washington because it is a great lesson in OB. Will he be able to recover from the onslaught of media attacks regarding his decision to bench McNabb? Will he still be the head coach for Washington after this season?
Warren Buffet often said “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.”
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I agree with you that PR (public relationship) is becoming more and more important in a world with so many media. They will only focus on the wrong things you do, and magnify them as much as they can. It is necessary for the companies to have a good PR manager to handle these media. BP, for example, was criticized by the whole nation after the accident. But look at what happen now, people seldom talk about this accident. I think their PR did a pretty good job. This is a good article and we may use the opinion in it for our future job.
ReplyDeleteThis saga with McNabb really has been a disaster. Mike Shanahan's son is the Offensive Coordinator for the Redskins, and McNabb, according to insiders, has decided that the son doesn't deserve the job, and only has it due to nepotism, as seen with a few of his comments that seem to go against the "company line". As for your questions, it's his first season, so he'll still be coach when the next year starts, but I'm not sure Donovan McNabb is still in Washington at the start of next season. The PR debacle in this week is matched only by the disaster relating to Randy Moss and the Minnesota Vikings this week. There's another fun one to look up...
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing to me how much this has been analyzed over the last few days. The part that I found most amusing was the fact that sports talk shows here in Philly were talking about it just as much as anywhere else because of our experiences with McNabb as our quarterback over the last few years.
ReplyDeleteI think coaching in the NFL is a very interesting position when it comes to management because not all of them get a say in who they have on their team. Andy Reid is in a privileged position being able to draft his team and coach them. You hold more of the blame, and the praise, for the team's performance in that kind of situation, but I think it's easier than having no say in who you work with.
I think that this is an issue that has been brewing for a while that people just didn't want to face until they absolutely had to. Unfortunately, it'll turn into a media frenzy, not like it hasn't already, where everyone on the team will have their opinion posted all over the news and the internet somewhere. It might have been easier to address some of this talk of 'the possibility of being benched' earlier, but that's not ever easy to do.
Tom's right about the Moss situation...that's absolutely unbelievable if you haven't seen anything about it yet. I have him on my fantasy team, he was my #2 pick (NICE!!!), so I've been well aware. I guess there's always next year...
Its funny how quickly coaches can swing when public opinion puts pressure on them. Remember when Michael Vick came in for the injured Kevin Kolb? Andy Reid was going to put Kolb back in once he got healthy and all of a sudden there was public outcry that Kolb wasn't as good as Vick, and I believe I heard a public official make a comment about how "they should just cut their losses with Kolb". So Reid changes his decision about Kolb (who was supposed to be Philly's "quarterback of the future") last minute and keeps Vick in. Then Vick gets hurt, Kolb comes back in and does well.
ReplyDeleteIts amazing how NFL coaches can be so easily influenced by the public's dire need to win games. It's disgraceful. Anything to win...
Oftentimes companies act this way as well. Anything to manipulate the numbers so the stockholders are happy...