As the Denver Broncos’ coaching search goes on, experience could matter — and that would be a good thing

Jim Harbaugh’s decision to remove himself from the Broncos’ coaching search doesn’t change one thing: The Broncos’ candidate pool is still experience-heavy.

Five of the seven remaining candidates have prior head-coaching experience, if college is included. Four have previous NFL stints.

• Jim Caldwell: Indianapolis 2009-11, Detroit 2014-17
• Raheem Morris: Tampa Bay 2009-11, Atlanta (interim) 2020
• Sean Payton: New Orleans 2006-21
• Dan Quinn: Atlanta 2015-20

And recent history shows that this is the best direction in which to go.

Let’s forget about the fact that 7 of the last 10 Super Bowls — and 17 of the last 25 — were won by coaches with prior NFL head-coaching experience.

Shoot, four of the last six Super Bowls went to coaches over the age of 60. So, stop the ageist arguments against coaches of Social Security age. Bruce Arians and Bill Belichick did just fine as they neared 70. There is no reason why Caldwell, one of the game’s most gifted QB teachers, can’t do the same.

It goes beyond Super Bowls, too. Let’s look at getting INTO the playoffs — a place that the Broncos haven’t been.

In the past 10 years, 39 playoff teams were guided by retreads. Eighty-seven were led by first-time head coaches.

But overall, just 89 teams — 27.8 percent — went into seasons in that span lead by coaches with prior NFL head-coaching experience. That compares with 231 teams who began seasons with coaches in their first head-coaching gig — including the Broncos in each of their last six seasons under Vance Joseph, Vic Fangio and Nathaniel Hackett.

In the last decade, 43.8 percent of teams with “retreads” made the playoffs … compared with 37.7 percent of teams with first-time head coaches.

That should be enough to make teams think twice before dismissing prior experience — and, yes, prior failure.

The notion that experience — even if it involves losing — should eliminate coaching candidates is bonkers. In what other field is experience in the job regarded as a detriment?

It dismisses the notion of learning from prior mistakes.

Imagine if the Broncos had written off Mike Shanahan because he went 8-12 with the Raiders. Or Gary Kubiak because he finished 63-66 in Houston — including 2-11 in his final season there before the Texans sacked him.

Caldwell, Morris, Payton and Quinn all enter this process with success and failure. Even Morris had a 10-6 season in Tampa Bay with Josh Freeman as his quarterback, an accomplishment that looks even more audacious in retrospect. And Payton, as accomplished as he is, was on watch for three consecutive losing seasons — all 7-9 — in New Orleans before a late-2010s revival.

The Broncos’ search last year had just one of 10 candidates possessing prior head-coaching experience. It wasn’t a failed search solely because it resulted in a coach who mismanaged his way to the shortest non-interim head-coaching tenure in Broncos history — but a little more experience in the pool than just Quinn’s five-plus-year Atlanta stint might have helped the Broncos come to a better decision.

Some may want the fancy new toy. The clean slate. But many of those tabula rasas become nicked in a hurry, anyway.

So, as for me, give me a “retread.”

Or, better said — give me “experience.” Because we all learn and improve by doing. So, why wouldn’t the same be true of being an NFL head coach?

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