The Perfect Pro Football Coach

Author

Chapter 1

Is This Any Way to Run a Business?

In early February 2007, owner Alex Spanos summarily fired Marty Schottenheimer from the head coaching position of the San Diego Chargers of the National Football League. Prior to Marty’s arrival, this once-proud franchise, which is located in one of America’s most beautiful and desirable cities, had been experiencing unnerving on-the-field problems, and had sunk to new depths in recent times. The situation had gotten so bad that, when quarterback Eli Manning came out of Ol’ Miss as the number one choice in all the league draft, upon advice of his father, Hall-of-Famer Archie, and his brother, perennial All-Pro Peyton, he absolutely refused to sign with the Chargers. This snub was a surefire sign of just how poorly the Chargers were regarded. Spanos had hired Schottenheimer in 2002, after fans had endured three moribund years of head coach Mike Riley, who produced the meager total of only fourteen victories against thirty-four losses, including a dismal one-win season in 2000. In fact, in the seven years just preceding Marty, the Chargers averaged only a little more than four wins per season.

Considering how destitute things were when he arrived, casual fans could only conclude that Schottenheimer, who was one of the NFL’s most experienced head coaches, must have fallen flat on his face to have earned early walking papers in San Diego. Oddly enough, the opposite was true. In fact, he actually achieved considerable success with the team. During his five years, he only won forty-seven games, including a twelve-win season, and a fourteen-win season in the year he was dispatched. The Chargers, in their forty-seven-year history, had never before won fourteen games in a season. He did have the unfortunate experience, however, of losing a thrilling home playoff game by three points to the eventual Super Bowl champion New England Patriots.

The press release at the time of his termination alluded to a dysfunctional relationship between the coach and general manager and the fact that two of his assistant coaches had been selected by other teams for head coaching positions. And so, a coach who had just won more games than anyone had ever done for the team that had been struggling mightily to win a third of its games, was told to hit the bricks. This same coach, incidentally, has exactly 200 regular-season wins in his career, and ranks third all-time behind only coaching legends Tom Landry and Don Shula.

Not to worry, long-suffering Charger fans; of course the team’s management had a superior replacement waiting in the wings to take over. The new guy turned out to be the dynamic Norv Turner, who had most recently been fired by Al Davis at Oakland after a 9-23 record, and a then-lifetime winning percentage of 41%. (The Chargers were lucky he was available!) It was abundantly clear that Schottenheimer had been let go for strictly negative personal reasons, probably motivated by anger, with virtually no regard for what he had accomplished on the field. It is apparent that when he was fired, the team had little idea about who his successor would be. Impulsive emotion carried the day as the team blithely ignored continuity, and the real chances of upgrading the most important position in the entire organization.

The John Gruden situation in Tampa Bay is another more recent example of this rush to judgment mentality which often possesses NFL owners. While it is certainly true that Chuckie hadn’t accomplished a whole lot since his Super Bowl win, it appears that he was fired because his latest 2008 Buccaneer team started 9-3, but failed to make the post-season. Any owner would be frustrated under those circumstances, but how about filling John’s shoes with a 32-year-old defensive backs coach who had never even been a coordinator on an NFL staff? That new coach promptly won a total of three games, six less than Gruden won in 2008. I suppose Gruden’s exit shouldn’t be surprising, since the same team cut loose Tony Dungy, whom I grade out as only the third best All Time coach in NFL history. (All Time as it will be used herein, refers to the specific rankings which I have calculated.)

The 2010 NFL season has provided yet four more clear instances of the manifest shortsightedness by the so-called ownership brain trusts when it comes to dealing with head coaches. Based on an excellent 11-5 record, playoff appearance, and even a post-season victory, the Dallas Cowboys were deemed the smart money choice to make a serious Super Bowl run in 2010. Enigmatic owner Jerry Jones had just sunk a billion or so into his brand- spanking-new pleasure palace, and had even sweet-talked his fellow owners into staging the grand event there in February 2011. If only his Cowboys could represent the NFC, what a deal that would be! Unfortunately, quarterback Tony Romo went down for the season early. When the Boys stumbled to a miserable 1-7 start, one week after giving coach Wade Phillips a vote of confidence, Jerry sent his previous year’s playoff coach packing. Amazingly, it was the first time Jones, who has had plenty of experience hiring and firing coaches (including Tom Landry), had ever fired a head coach during the season. Clearly, Jerry’s emotions took over.

A very similar set of circumstances occurred in Minnesota, where Brad Childress apparently forgot how to coach overnight. In 2009, Childress literally had his Vikings one Brett Favre interception away from a Super Bowl berth in a classic NFC championship playoff shootout in New Orleans. After that thrilling, very close call, hopes were high for 2010. As has become his style, Favre, of course, had to be begged to come back, and kept the team wondering until he finally decided to suit up just one more time. Unfortunately, the future Hall-of-Famer’s magic had finally been used up - although Brett clearly didn’t think so. When he ignored Childress’ play calls and ended up at odds with his coach, Brad was shown the door at mid–season. The fact that Childress had tried to right his ship by cashiering the useless and openly obnoxious in-season signee, Randy Moss, also somehow put him out of favor with Viking team brass.

The Denver Broncos, especially under coach Mike Shanahan for all those years, has been regarded as a classic example of the stability and success that an NFL franchise can achieve. The circumstances of Shanahan’s departure after twelve years at the helm notwithstanding, Denver decided to rob the cradle and bring in a Bill Belichick clone as his replacement. The Broncos new head coach, baby-faced Josh McDaniels, had been nowhere and done nothing other than spend a few years under Bill with the Pats. After less than two full seasons, during 2010, Denver terminated him two-thirds of the way through the season, clearly admitting their magnificent goof. The McDaniels situation reflects how little research often goes into these critical head coach hiring decisions. The McDaniels hire will be discussed in more depth in a later chapter.

The 2010 season witnessed the end of what I view as the Singletary Experiment. The San Francisco 49ers had retained interim appointee and hall-of-fame player Mike Singletary on as the permanent head man in 2009, and endured with him all the way through fifteen games of 2010 before dismissing him. Incredibly, management probably would have done it earlier had Mike’s underachieving team not still been in the playoff hunt, competing in a very poor NFC West division. The Singletary case reconfirms an observation I will discuss in detail in Chapter 13. For reasons that aren’t exactly clear, good players just do not make good head coaches in the NFL. Mike Singletary, who has tremendously admirable qualities both on and off the field, is just another of many, many terrific players who have bombed out when they pick up a clipboard.

There were seven new head coaches who started the 2012 NFL season. Of this group, rational arguments can be made for most of those moves. Some might question letting Jeff Fisher go in Tennessee after sixteen years, and replacing him with an offensive line coach. Few fans, however, could call Bud Adams’ move in that case as knee-jerk or reactionary. The slate for 2013 is a little more questionable, with Mike Mularkey out in Jacksonville after only one season, and Pat Shumur after only two in Cleveland. The Jaguars situation can probably be attributed to a new owner wanting his guy, and the Browns seem compelled to change coaches every other year no matter what. Again and again, however, we observe coaches being sent packing for reasons other than the W’s and L’s.

While San Diego and some of these more recent cases may be extreme examples of impulsive firing of a head coach for reasons other than strict on-the-field performance, the practice is hardly isolated or exceptional. Every year, the gang of NFL owners that masquerade as half-baked entrepreneurs fire coaches with impunity. Once the ax has swung, the departed coaches are all too often replaced by individuals whose credentials, track records, and chances for success stack up as decidedly inferior to those of the guys they have just run off. Although the teams present considerable argument to the contrary, it is embarrassingly apparent that they have done precious little research into what makes a successful NFL head coach. Unlike private industry, NFL owners don’t have to answer to stockholders. Curiously, blindly infatuated fans are willing to fight to buy tickets no matter what the outcome on the field. As a consequence, one failure begets another, and before the fans know it, the big net is soon swished out again to scoop up the next-in-line warm body to hopefully inspire the local eleven to victory.

Given the unprecedented popularity of the NFL, and overwhelming financial success of the 32 member teams, it is indeed strange that the coach selection process is such an ignored and inexact science. Furthermore, with virtually unlimited resources, it is downright incredible how often these owners tend to select the same pack of losers who keep getting rehired time after time, only to produce encore disappointing performances in each successive assignment. In the NFL, there can be no argument that the right head coach does make a difference – a huge difference. This fact is demonstrated time and again, when an established top coach decides to finally step down. Despite leaving the system, players, coaching staff, playbooks, and virtually everything coaching-wise that is tangible in place, it is truly remarkable how often very successful franchises struggle mightily for years until the next right man is finally found. In all professional sports, it is extremely difficult to follow a very successful head coach.

The Steelers got lucky with Bill Cowher, and now certainly again with Mike Tomlin, after Chuck Noll called it quits. What about America’s team in Dallas? Once the Landry carry-over momentum after Johnson and Switzer fizzled out, the truth is that this exemplary franchise had only brief runs, and has never been the same since Tom was sent off to his lake house. There is little question that the head coach is the key position in every NFL franchise. If it is not adequately filled, the organization is doomed to underperform at best, and fail miserably at worst. It is this transition of power that the following pages seek to examine in detail.

It is important that the reader understand that the analysis presented herein and conclusions reached are necessarily the product of performance on the field as an indication of success. Coaching records have been sliced and diced, and the standards of performance that were developed are based on these numbers, and these numbers alone. This book does not to any great degree take into account the intangible aspects of a coaching tenure with a particular team. Some coaches with mediocre winning percentages, for instance, are highly regarded as players’ coaches with wonderful, warm personalities, and are revered by fans and players alike. They may be pillars who give back a lot more to their communities than just on-the-field coaching. Success, however, as defined herein, is restricted to wins and losses. Folksy Bum Phillips, for instance, who passed on recently and was universally acknowledged as a wonderful and good-hearted soul (as well as a respectable on-the-field coach) with a 52% head coaching winning percentage, is considered less successful (i.e. lower-rated) than a sometimes terse and abrupt Brian Billick, who has won 56% of his games. The numbers tell the story.

It also was not possible to make adjustments for individual coaching situations or predicaments. Very frequently, a new coach steps into a negative situation, where his inherited team had performed poorly for the previous coach. Obviously, if things had gone better, he would never have gotten the job. It may take a few seasons to right the ship. This situation is even more apparent for a coach who takes over a brand-new expansion franchise and is locked into a decided personnel disadvantage for the first few years. The counterpoint is that in most cases, these new coaches are given more time and latitude to nurture and grow a team. Dom Capers is a case in point at Carolina, where he actually maneuvered a brand-new Panther team to the conference finals in only three years, showing that it can be done. Unfortunately, his dramatic lack of success after that banner year got him fired less than two years later. Tom Landry also took over an expansion team, and went on to become one of the winningest coaches ever. Chuck Noll started off a dismal 1-15 with the Steelers, and yet his lifetime coaching record is still among the best.

Given the importance of the head coaching position, and yet mindful of the seeming cavalier indifference inherent in the process that teams use to select these key managers, this book presents the results of a study undertaken to look back at NFL head coaches over the past half-century. Guided by the well-trodden, but nonetheless very valid notion that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it, a comprehensive look at NFL’s coaching history is in order. The coaching records of every head coach in the NFL (and AFL) since 1960 have been studied to determine what common characteristics the very successful and very unsuccessful head coaches have possessed.

In order to establish a perspective on the inscrutable position of head football coach, and also at least a modicum of creditability with respect to this subject, I felt it necessary to lay a foundation of sorts through the observations of a player who has actually worn a helmet and cleats, and been forced to run twenty gassers after practice. That player, in this case, is the author, who, while never achieving a high degree of notoriety on the gridiron, did pay attention to his coaches at various levels of competition. Even though my unspectacular career as a player mercifully ended far short of the NFL, I do feel that much of what I experienced firsthand does extend and apply across all football coaching endeavors. Having been there has enabled me to better understand the head coaching position, and formulate my own opinion as to what it generally takes to succeed. I use my own blood, sweat, and tears as a point of departure to review, shape, and analyze the hard data that the past half-century of NFL head coaches has produced.

The coaching records and biographies of some 275 head coaches have been contrasted and compared with the intent of preparing a list of qualities and résumé attributes which NFL general managers should investigate when making head coach hiring decisions. No employment decision is one hundred percent failsafe at the outset, but the chances of failure can be significantly minimized if certain criteria and guidelines are observed. In Chapter 17, I present a profile of the ideal (i.e. perfect) head coach based upon the successes and failures of the almost 300 men who called themselves head coaches in the NFL over the past half a hundred years. I had to sift through a huge scrap heap to jettison the dismal and mediocre in hope of discovering that tiny pinnacle of superiority from which we are able to craft and sculpt the perfect pro football coach.

Chapter 2

Put a Sneaker on It

When I snuck the Life Magazine into my room and used a pair of scissors to cut out several black and white pictures from a feature article on the New York football Giants, it never occurred to me that my mother might not