Tom E. Curran • E-mail

The fist is drawn back, brass knuckles firmly in place.

All the fist needs is an excuse. A flat, lazy, confused performance by the Denver Broncos defense. An August evening where confusion reigns for the Denver offense.

Then — with the force of a few million “Told ya sos” behind it — the fist will come crashing.

Josh McDaniels knows all that. And he’s way past worrying about it. At 33, seven months into his first head coaching job, he’s already battle-scarred. He sees the fist and he’s ready to duck it.

And — finally — he gets to counter-punch.

“I think that people have underestimated plenty of things through the past seven months,” McDaniels said by phone last week. “Everything that people say, everything that critics may want to write, it all rings hollow until the season. When you play the games, that’s when the truth is told.”

McDaniels’ rebuttal began in Denver’s 17-16 exhibition loss at San Francisco. For the league’s 31 other head coaches, the first preseason game is relatively meaningless. For McDaniels, it was his chance to begin answering those who believe he’s in over his head.

“With all the distractions we’ve had this offseason, it will be good for everybody to get moving into Josh’s first year — for us to play, for him to coach and for our team to start to shut some people up,” said Broncos wide receiver Jabar Gaffney.

McDaniels never got a honeymoon period in Denver. Hired in January to take over after franchise icon Mike Shanahan was stunningly fired after a 14-year run, the early debate was whether A) Shanahan needed to go and B) whether McDaniels, a longtime Patriots assistant coach and offensive coordinator, was ready to take over a team.

Before that debate was put to rest, the Jay Cutler Affair blew up in late February. To Cutler, the Broncos talented young quarterback, the fact McDaniels would entertained the possibility of trading him and replacing him with former Pats quarterback Matt Cassel was a betrayal. Through March, McDaniels worked to allay Cutler’s concerns while making sure it was clear the head coach wasn’t answerable to the quarterback. But Cutler wouldn’t forgive and move on. He dug in his heels, demanded a trade and was shipped to the Bears.

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When the deal was made in early April, few people cared about the bounty of picks Denver got in exchange for Cutler or whether ex-Bears quarterback Kyle Orton could cut it with the Broncos. Nobody was talking about the fact that McDaniels coordinated the most devastating offense in league history, the 2007 Patriots with their 75 touchdowns and 18-1 record. It was forgotten that, in 2008, McDaniels had helped Cassel — a career backup and an ineffective one at that — lead the Pats to an 11-5 record.

The conversation was, basically, whether Josh McDaniels had ruined his career in Denver in his first 70 days on the job. 

Ignore the football debate for a moment and consider how harsh the mental challenge must have been for McDaniels. He’d worked the levels of football to get to this point. From being a kid playing football in Canton, Ohio learning from his father, Thom, an Ohio coaching legend. To being a quarterback/wide receiver for a Division III program, John Carroll University. To a succession of gofer jobs, assistant’s jobs and then the coordinator’s job in New England.

Then, having been rewarded for his diligence with his own team, McDaniels had turned into a punching bag for reasons that had nothing to do with Xs and Os.