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February 1, 2004
Dan Henning to the Rescue
Veteran coach put his golf game on hold to revamp struggling Panthers' offense
By Joe Menzer | JOURNAL REPORTER
The Carolina Panthers are grateful that Dan Henning decided his golf game could wait."I like to play golf. That's one of my passions," said Henning, who left his clubs behind in Jacksonville, Fla., to return to the NFL and Coach John Fox's Carolina staff in February of 2002.
Coaching is another of Henning's passions. As the Panthers prepare to face the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XXXVIII today, Henning is receiving much of the credit for helping the team reach the NFL championship game.
Considering that the Panthers wielded one of the worst offenses in the league in 2002, Henning's first year as their offensive coordinator, the turnaround is nothing short of remarkable.
The Panthers will be facing the Patriots today for the first time since the final game of the 2001 regular season. The Patriots, who went on to win the Super Bowl, crushed them 38-6 at Ericsson Stadium. It was Carolina's 15th consecutive loss, setting a single-season NFL record for futility, and by halftime, the word was out that it would be George Seifert's final game as the Panthers' head coach.
Henning was in Jacksonville playing golf at the time. He hadn't been in coaching since completing a three-year stint as quarterbacks coach with the New York Jets in 2000. At age 59, it was going to take what he considered a perfect situation to get him back into the whirlwind life of long hours, little rest and hotel residency (Henning has stayed in an uptown Charlotte hotel since joining Fox's staff).
He knew he was going to get back in, despite the fact that he was approaching the usual retirement age and had plenty of money. He couldn't resist the pull of the game. In fact, at the very time the Panthers were finishing their disastrous season, Henning was engaging in repeated conversations with former boss Bill Parcells about possibly joining his staff in Tampa Bay, where it appeared Parcells was headed.
But when that fell through and Parcells decided to wait another year before returning to coaching, Henning found himself being wooed by Fox. It didn't take long for Henning to say yes to Fox's offer of becoming his offensive coordinator.
"This wasn't the only place I could have come to," Henning said. "The reason I came back here to work in Carolina is that because, geographically, it was one of the only places I was willing to go to at that point in time. Plus, John convinced me that he believed in the same things that I have been successful with (Joe) Gibbs and Parcells and the way he wanted to try to win football games."
General Manager Marty Hurney also was familiar with Henning because of their mutual ties with the Washington Redskins. When Henning's efforts with quarterbacks Joe Theismann and Doug Williams helped the Redskins win Super Bowl XVII and Super Bowl XXII, Hurney was a sports writer covering the team for the Washington Times.
"I was able to observe Dan in the '80s. He has always been one of the best offensive minds in the league. And Dan had a plan," Hurney said.
The plan involved doing the best he could with what little the Panthers had on offense in the 2002 season. One of the first things Henning did upon joining Fox's staff was to pull a videotape of the Panthers' season finale against the Patriots the previous year. He watched it closely, trying to see who played hard despite the fact that the team was finishing off a horrendous season.
"The type of player I like and that I have had success with in the past is one that never gives up. They like to play the game," Henning said. "They don't care what the score is or what the situation is. I like to look at things when it's not going well to see who is giving 100 percent effort and who is giving that little extra and who likes to play the game."
He noticed that wide receivers Muhsin Muhammad and Steve Smith were that type of player. Center Jeff Mitchell and tight end Kris Mangum were two others.
"There were a number of them, but those guys in particular stood out," Henning said. "And there were some that stood out the other way - and they never made it to minicamp (the next spring), thanks to John."
Stocking the cupboard
Despite the fact that Henning found some keepers from the 1-15 team in 2001, he headed into his first season with the Panthers knowing that he was pretty severely limited on offense. He and Fox made their simple strategy well known: they would try to run the football first. Then they would occasionally think about throwing it.
They signed free-agent running back Lamar Smith and free-agent quarterback Rodney Peete, two old warhorses who would serve important stopgap purposes.
"We had invested most of our currency on the defensive side of the ball in Jonh's first year," Hurney said. "Dan did everything he could with what he had. And he also worked within our formula that we were going to stretch the defense and control the ball and try not to make mistakes. And we did that."
The Panthers won four of their last five games to finish Fox's first season 7-9. But Henning's offense was ranked 31st in a 32-team league.
Nonetheless, he saw encouraging signs. So did Hurney and others. The foundation was set, they believed, for even more improvement if a few of the right pieces could be added.
Those turned out to be running back Stephen Davis and quarterback Jake Delhomme, who were signed as free agents, plus first-round draft pick Jordan Gross, who became the starting right tackle and played like a veteran. The Panthers also signed wide receiver Ricky Proehl, who played a limited but key role in the 2003 season.
Richard Williamson, who stepped aside as offensive coordinator but remained as receivers coach when Henning arrived, said that the acquisition of Davis was the key to everything.
"What happened was when we got Stephen Davis he was a big asset. He could run the football and that allowed us to do more things. Once you've got that going for you, you can move to other things," Williamson said. "Dan does a good job and we do a good job of moving people around and try to get to spots that we can take advantage of somebody's defense.
"Dan does a real good job of that, but you have to have people who can do some things, and now we have a runner that can open up some doors. If things aren't going exactly right, you just turn around and hand it to him. But the threat of that and being able to play-action pass off of that (where the quarterback fakes a handoff) has made a big difference.
"We weren't a down-the-field passing team under George. Now we are. Our receivers have a lot more yards per catch than we have in a while."
And, when it comes to strategy, Henning is a master at keeping it simple while making it look to opponents like it's something entirely different. Dom Capers, the head coach of the Houston Texans, said that the Panthers are among the league's best at disguising what they're going to do.
"One of the things I like about Carolina's offense is that they only run about four running plays. Henning does a great job of changing formations and motioning to where you can't tell exactly what's coming," Capers said. "It's a lot of window dressing; there's a lot of camouflage. When it comes down to it, they're running the same plays, but they're camouflaging them well by using different personnel and different formations. That's where he's very effective; they're very good at that."
Taking off
Fox's decision to replace Peete with Delhomme at quarterback at halftime of the regular-season opener against Jacksonville was another key move for the offense. But it was Henning, along with Fox, who had the courage to continue handing the ball off to Davis even when the Panthers fell behind 17-0 early in the second half of that game.
Delhomme won the game with a 12-yard, fourth-down pass to Proehl with 16 seconds left, but Henning's patience in sticking with the running game helped wear down the Jaguars and got the Panthers back into the game that helped put this magical season on track.
As the season went on, the Panthers gradually moved away from what Delhomme called the "Stephen Davis left, Stephen Davis right, Stephen Davis up the middle" offense, giving the new quarterback a chance to blossom slowly. That also kept costly mistakes by Delhomme to a minimum, which in turn helped the Panthers win a number of close games.
"I think ... one of the most interesting subplots of the season has been to see how our offense has evolved over the course of the season," Hurney said. "If you look at some of the things Dan did late in the season after we clinched the division title, he did things in those games to get us ready for the playoffs. He opened up the offense more. He had a plan. It didn't just fall out of the sky. I've always respected Dan, and he is one of the top offensive minds in the league."
Peete, who played under Henning when both were with the Detroit Lions in the early 1990s, seems to know him best. He said that the NFC Championship game, which the Panthers won 14-3 at Philadelphia despite running 40 times and throwing only 14, was a perfect example of how Henning operates. He goes with what's working and stays with it - and sometimes he'll stick with the running game even when it appears not to be working, figuring that punishing runs by Davis and DeShaun Foster are like a boxer's body blows that wear opponents down over the course of a bout.
"It doesn't matter to him that we're not ranked No. 1 in offense. It doesn't matter to him that we're not throwing for 400 yards," Peete said. "He reflects the way that we play as a team, in the respect that we don't care who gets the credit; we don't care who is going to be the focal point that particular week, as long as we win the game.
"If the defense is playing well and shutting them out, we're not going to do anything as an offense to disrupt that. The Philadelphia game is the perfect example of that. We threw the ball three times in the second half.
"He's just been steady throughout the whole situation. He has stuck to his guns and what he believes in, and it's worked."
Henning said that he is well aware of the reputation of the New England defense heading into today's game. But when he was asked if he believed the Patriots' defense would dictate what his offense can do, Henning shook his head in gentle disagreement.
"I am not of that philosophy. I believe it's the other way around," Henning said. "We dictate the formation, the personnel in the game, the snap count. Do we take into consideration what's on the other side? Yes. ... We have to deal with whatever they throw up there. But they also have to deal with whatever we throw up there."
He added that he would love to run the ball 40 times and throw only 14 again, as the Panthers did against Philadelphia, "because that would mean that we would be ahead."
Perhaps then he could get back to his golf game, which has been on hold for two years. Then again, he's having so much fun that he might stick around and keep coaching for several more years.
"I went about trying to get better and better at golf a few years ago," Henning said, smiling. "But what I found out at this stage of my life is that you can play a lot of golf, but you can't coach at the same time. Or you can do a lot of coaching and play a little bit of golf. So that's where I am right now. I'm doing a lot of coaching and a little bit of golf - and someday I'm going to go back to a lot of golf and no coaching."