He’s a Shula and That’s About It

He is his father’s son in his steely composure, his ability to stare down trouble, his quiet strength.

He is not his father’s son in that he cannot coach a lick of professional football.

Dave Shula spent an afternoon at a Southern California park Sunday, and he wouldn’t have looked more out of place if he were wearing Bermuda shorts and black socks.

His high-powered Cincinnati Bengals scored one touchdown in the first 57 minutes of a 60-minute game.

His Pro Bowl quarterback completed less than half of his passes.

His Pro Bowl receiver caught only four of those passes.

His No. 1 overall draft pick ripped the coaching staff.

And it has been going on like this for nearly five years.

Dave Shula outran his security guard off the San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium field Sunday following a 27-14 beating by the San Diego Chargers, but he can no longer outrun the reaper.

For the sake of his team, his city, the NFL and himself, it is finally time for the Bengals to fire football’s most famous son.

He has done worse than merely compile an 18-48 record since taking over after the 1991 season.

As evidenced Sunday, he has taken a team that could finally stabilize one of the league’s shakiest markets and turned it into another bad-smelling carnival.

Two games, two losses, two touchdowns by the first-team offense, and tiny rips in the locker-room fabric.

“This is as bad of a year as I’ve ever seen in the NFL,” said punter Lee Johnson, a 12-year veteran.

Remember. They’ve played two games.

Johnson continued.

“This was going to be our best year, our breakout year, the year we really do something,” he said. “And we have already fallen so far short of expectations. It’s been somewhat demoralizing.”

This was going to be the year that quarterback Jeff Blake and receiver Carl Pickens moved into the same sentence as Steve Young and Jerry Rice.

On Sunday, Blake completed only 14 of 33 passes, throwing as many interceptions as touchdowns (one), missing both short and long, missing badly.

Pickens caught only four balls for 63 yards. One of those was a 27-yard touchdown pass, and the rest was short stuff against the more aggressive Charger cornerbacks Terrance Shaw and Dwayne Harper.

His fellow wide receiver, talented Darnay Scott, didn’t catch a ball for the first time in 34 pro games.

“We’ve got some talented guys, and it’s just not happening,” Shula said.

This was also the year that running back Ki-Jana Carter, the first overall draft pick last season before a knee injury cost him his rookie year, was going to bring back Paul Brown-type football.

He carried only seven times for 13 yards on Sunday, giving him 21 carries for 27 yards in his pro career, and he’s quietly angry.

He said he left the game in the second quarter Sunday because of a sore shoulder, but quickly told coaches he was fine.

Yet the coaches, he said, didn’t listen to him.

“I don’t know, maybe they’re trying to weed me out,” he said.

He noted the presence of recently acquired Garrison Hearst, an underachiever who gained all of 16 yards Sunday.

Normal teams have quarterback controversies, the Bengals have running back controversies.

“Maybe [the shoulder injury] was the one thing they needed to put [Hearst] in there and leave him in there,” Carter said.

The Bengals have another No. 1 overall pick, defensive tackle Dan “Big Daddy” Wilkinson, who didn’t even play in goal-line situations Sunday.

Shula would only say, “We’re 0-2, but everyone else in our division has lost one game.”

He only spoke for a few minutes afterward, short answers and a familiar tight jaw. And that seemed to be more than he talked during the game.

He is the one of the few NFL coaches who doesn’t wear headsets. He is also one of the few NFL coaches who could not be picked out as the coach by an uninformed bystander.

Maybe it’s that his face is even younger than his age. And at 37, he is the youngest coach in the league.

Maybe it’s that his body language--hands on hips, legs crossed, eyes hidden behind sunglasses, motionless--speaks of an administrator rather than a coach.

He doesn’t jump in the middle of many scrums during practice, preferring to wander the edges of the field like a visitor. He doesn’t mix it up any more during games.

After he was scorned by some of the older Miami Dolphins when he was an assistant coach there during the mid-1980s . . . and then demoted by Jimmy Johnson from offensive coordinator to quarterback coach with the Cowboys . . . many wondered why the Bengals would consider giving him their top job.

Then almost from the moment he replaced Sam Wyche after the 1991 season, many wondered why he remained in that job.

He went 5-11 the first year, 3-13 each of the next two years, including suffering through an 0-8 start in the season during which his father became football’s winningest coach.

One of his former players, running back Harold Green, once called him the worst coach in Bengal history.

A survey once showed that other NFL coaches thought the Bengals were the team they could improve the most.

And yet he has survived beyond NFL tradition, beyond all common sense.

“Dave has been in a position that’s quite forgiving,” Lee Johnson said. “Quite forgiving.”

He added, “Since Dave has been here, we have cleaned house three times. . . . Every year, there has been 20 new guys here. So it’s not talent. Somehow, you just gotta figure this out.”

It shouldn’t be that hard. Fire the guy.

Not that President Mike Brown, son of the late Paul Brown, will. Not now, anyway.

Shula is one of the lowest-paid coaches in the league, and is in the final year of his contract, but the notoriously tight Brown is not in the habit of paying people off.

And who can understand the son of a legendary coach better than the son of a legendary coach?

So the Bengals will wait. Maybe give Shula this upcoming three-game homestand, which ends in their only prime-time appearance. Make it look like you’re being nice to a nice guy from a classy family.

Which is interesting, because Don Shula would have cut the kid a long time ago.