Why Gary Kubiak should be coach of the year.

The 49er’s have already clinched their division and have made an impressive turnaround with a rookie head coach.  Many people have already written Jim Harbaugh’s name on the Coach of the Year award and maybe deservedly so.  I just hope they wrote it in pencil because as amazing as that turnaround is, I don’t think it’s as amazing as the job Gary Kubiak has done with the amount of adversity the Houston Texans have had to deal with.

Both the Texans and the 49er’s finished last season with 6-10 records and both underperformed to their expectations of their respective fan bases.  The 49er’s failure cost Mike Singletary his job and gave Jim Harbaugh his first NFL head coaching gig.  The Texans poor performance only cost defensive coordinator Frank Bush his job and brought us defensive whiz Wade Phillips.

Both of these teams have similar schedules and share 5 common opponents (Tampa & AFC North) As of right now the common opponent W-L record is 2-1 for both the Texans and the Niners as both squads lost in Baltimore.  The Texans have a tougher strength of schedule currently at .458 to San Francisco’s .444.  They edge us out though in strength of victory though at .400 to our .380.  Their division is also a bit tougher than ours but they had no real challenger for the division crown and our division is being drug down by the winless Colts.

With these stats though and the fact that the (10-2) 49er’s are a game ahead of the (9-3) Texans and have already clinched their division I would normally lean towards Harbaugh for this award .  But if you look at what Kubiak has had to deal with this year and how well he’s done it, you can’t ignore Kubiak has done an outstanding job this year  The Texans injury woes are well documented so I won’t go through them individually.  Just ask yourself this, would the 49er defense be where it is without Patrick Willis or Justin Smith?  Would their offense be where it is without Frank Gore or Vernon Davis?  The Texans have suffered, on average, a season ending injury every game! According to Nick Scurfield of the Houston Texans, the Texans have 12 players on IR through 12 games. The 49er’s lost 2, and no one the caliber of Matt Schaub or Mario Williams.

This team definitely mirrors its head coach as nothing seems to phase it.  Lost our best defensive player? That’s OK we’ll replace him with a rookie whose now produced 6.0 sacks in the last 6 games. Lose our starting safety? Ok we’ll take the top defensive spot the next week. The league rushing champ is hurt at the beginning of the season? No problem, Ben Tate can get us 1k yards this year. Problem after problem has been solved with little to no panic.  Every week we seem to take another gut wrenching blow and every week this team just seems to respond.

If the Texans finish the season with a first round bye which, according to NFL.com, is where they sit right now, I think Gary Kubiak will have done the best coaching job in the NFL this year.  He will have had to do it with a 5^th round rookie at the helm and minus his best defensive player for 10.5games and his best offensive player for 7 games.