Tom E. Curran • E-mail

Steve Sabol, President of NFL Films and the game’s greatest oracle, explained this week the essence of head coach-quarterback chemistry. 

“It’s always a clash of strong-willed, self-confident leaders,” Sabol said. “Both feel it’s their team. More than anything, the quarterback-coach relationship is a partnership rather than a friendship.”

And, in one current case, it’s neither partnership nor friendship.

Broncos quarterback Jay Cutler and the team’s newly christened head coach Josh McDaniels have, to put it mildly, gotten off on the wrong foot.

When McDaniels mulled making a move to replace Cutler with Matt Cassel more than a month ago and Cutler caught wind of it, the Broncos quarterback went into a snit from which he’s still not emerged. Now, after weeks of Cutler’s slapping the olive branch from the hand of McDaniels and owner Pat Bowlen, the Broncos declared Tuesday they would trade Cutler.

On Wednesday, Cutler told FOXsports.com that he didn’t mean it. “I didn’t want to get traded. ... I really didn’t want this. I love Denver. I really like my teammates. I didn’t want it to get this far.”

If, in a bizarre turn of events, Cutler winds up staying in Denver, he and McDaniels' relationship going forward could be prickly. But, as Sabol points out, that’s not unusual in the course of NFL history.

“I could count on one hand the number of relationships between head coaches and quarterbacks that were functional and still have a finger left to pick my nose,” he said. “Mike Ditka-Jim McMahon. George Seifert-Steve Young. Troy Aikman-Barry Switzer. I don’t think any relationship in all of sports is more delicate yet more important and significant than the one between head coach and quarterback. How one goes, so goes the other.”

Joe Theismann, the former Redskins quarterback and ESPN analyst said, “You’re talking about a relationship like the one between trainers and racehorses. You think of a quarterback ... very high-strung in a lot of instances. Skittish. Reacts emotionally. Doesn’t always think things out. And then the head coach needs to rein that in. Bill Walsh and Steve Young didn’t always get along. (Don) Shula and (Dan) Marino got into it. As quarterback, you’re basically in charge and the coach has to figure out what buttons to push.”

Speaking of the McDaniels-Cutler situation, Theismann said, “It’s like having a very talented son. The problem that Josh has is, he doesn’t know this son. Jay’s adopted or has come to Josh through a marriage and Josh doesn’t know which buttons to push. Obviously, one not to push is to not go talking about trading him.”

That’s an understatement.

Sabol ticks through the number of dysfunctional relationships:

Slide show   Week in Sports Pictures Flying on the hardwood, racing on the rink, getting physical on the gridiron, and much more. more photos

The famously sensitive Don Meredith holding up the playbook of stoic Cowboys head coach Tom Landry, looking into an NFL Films camera and saying, “This is our playbook. Everyone dies at the end.”

Packers legend Bart Starr, after a dressing down from first-year Packers coach Vince Lombardi during practice going into Lombardi’s office and saying, “You can’t expect me to lead this team if you do that to me in public. You have an issue bring it to me and we can fix it.”

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