Henning shows he's an old pro

HOUSTON -- Carolina Panthers offensive coordinator Dan Henning, a former Boston College mentor, fielded questions from the media about a variety of topics yesterday. Among them: How he has been able to keep finding employment in a profession in which coaching staffs change at a rapid rate.

"I've landed in a lot of places," he said. "I've enjoyed a number of them and I've been disappointed in some of them. If you stay in this business long enough . . . all you have to do is look at this year, the turnover this year, seven head coaches, 14 defensive coordinators, and on and on. It doesn't surprise me that that would be the norm.

"When you're young, and people think you can do this and that you become a hired gun," Henning said. "When I was getting into this business, I had five young children and three or four in college at one time, so if anybody offered me a lot of money, we went. Some of them were good, some were not so good. But when we've been with good players, we've been successful."

Henning coached BC from 1994-96. He was an assistant with the New York Jets from 1998-2000 and also served as a head coach with the Atlanta Falcons (1983-86) and San Diego Chargers (1989-91). He joined the Panthers staff last season. After having worked with such quarterbacks as Joe Theismann, Doug Williams, and Vinny Testaverde, he is given much credit for the emergence of Carolina quarterback Jake Delhomme.

Still, he has not had a head coaching job since he resigned from BC at the end of the 1996 season, after compiling a 16-19-1 record. The resignation came amid a team gambling scandal, but Henning insisted his resignation had nothing to do with the controversy and everything to do with the team's record.

Asked yesterday whether he had any disappointment about not having had a head coaching job since, he said, "If you are a coach in the NFL and you can't handle disappointments, you're in serious trouble."

Henning said that while he has much respect for the Patriots' attack, he downplayed talk about whether the Patriots will confuse and frustrate Delhomme Sunday. "There are 11 players out there and if they can confuse us then they can confuse us," he said. "But we're going to use John Wooden's theory and worry about our team a lot more than their team."

Asked what particular satisfaction he has taken from this season, Henning said, "The group that I work with specifically, the offensive coaches and offensive players, I walked around in practice [on Monday] and I said to myself that I don't think there's one guy on that group that I don't like. Now there's a few guys I'd like to change a little bit and some would like to change me.

"But in all the years the thing that our coaching staff felt proudest of is that with all the selfishness there is, they are unselfish."