Mike Evans lays out five strikes against former Stanford coach David Shaw
Jan 25, 2023, 1:06 PM
Former Stanford head coach David Shaw might become the next leader of the Broncos.
Pro Football talk reported on Tuesday night that Denver could make a head-coaching hire as soon as today, and Shaw is one of the favorites.
Count Mike Evans as not a big fan of this possible move. At all. On Wednesday morning’s “Schlereth and Evans” on 104.3 The Fan, Evans laid out why the Broncos hiring Shaw would be a huge mistake. It was a great rant, with a lot of interesting points.
“Forget about three strikes you’re out, five strikes. Here they are. Number one, he’d be a first-time NFL head coach. Gee, that works out great. Second strike, he’d be making the jump from college to the NFL. Only three of the last 12 college coaches making the jump to the NFL since 2000 have winning records. Strike three, his last four years at Stanford he went 14-28,” Evans said.
Shaw has all of those things working against him. His finish as Stanford was not strong, and the Broncos have been burned by first-time head coaches the last three hiring cycles.
“Strike four, for all the ‘Sean Payton quit on the Saints’ people, that’s why we can’t hire Payton, what do you say about Shaw once he realized it was going to be too tough for Stanford to compete in this NIL / transfer portal world? He quit on them, walked away from them. And strike five, you’re talking about hiring a guy who nobody else around the NFL is interviewing. And he would only have gotten the job here because of cronyism. Stanford cronyism,” Evans said.
The Walton-Penner Family Ownership Group has a lot of connections to Stanford, including with CEO Greg Penner, his wife Carrie Walton-Penner and partial-owner Condoleezza Rice.
“He only would’ve gotten the job because of his Stanford ties to this ownership group. You’re telling me with your first big hire, with everybody watching, you settle on somebody simply because he was at Stanford? Come on. If you hire David Shaw, it’s right out of the Dick Monfort playbook. Sorry, it just is,” Evans said.
Evans got in a shot at the Rockies owner at the end, a guy who seemingly never makes a tough or different hire, but simply promotes from within. In a lot cases, it seems to with be his friends.
For his part, Schlereth wouldn’t love the Shaw hire, but he also wouldn’t loathe it like Evans.
“Would I be supportive? Absolutely. Would I be disappointed? No, I wouldn’t be completely disappointed, but I’d be a little bit shocked. In the fact that he hasn’t be an NFL head coach which is something I wanted based upon the lack of success we’ve had with first-time coaches who have never been a head coach before in the NFL,” Schlereth said.
To listen to full episodes of Schlereth and Evans, click here.
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