I think youāre mistaken. The Belichick coaching tree is notoriously shitty.
The Andy Reid coaching tree has produced:
John Harbaugh
Sean McDermott
Ron Rivera
Doug Pederson
Brad Childress (39-35 in Minnesota)
Todd Bowles (shame his shot has been with the NYJ but heās going to get another soon)
Pretty good chance Andy and his disciples account for 15% of the coaches in the NFL next year (assuming Pederson gets hired). I personally think Doug Pederson is a moron and a terrible head coach, but I digress.
Also a lot of the guys who got hired out from under Andy and failed as head coaches are/were still considered among the best coordinators in football after that and returned to that level and had success.
This is why itās always kind of funny when the most talented QBās offensive coordinators keep getting hired away. Unless they developed him, AND unless he wouldnāt have developed that well anyway, youāre basically taking a guy who doesnāt have to be a good coordinator to succeed. The guy whoās got bottom 10 talent and has his offense ranked like 15th is probably doing a better job!
I think the NFL head coach hiring process has to be among the most inefficient important things in sports. Like in reality there are 32 people in the world who would do the best jobs as head coaches in the NFL. How many of them are currently NFL head coaches? Maybe 10-15?
I actually think if you hired me right now to be a head coach in the NFL, Iād be in the top half of the league. Iāve never played football, Iāve never coached football, but I know how to hire an analytics expert and put him in my headset to tell me whether to go for it or not. I can go hire a great offensive coordinator and defensive coordinator, and let them call the plays.
Then I can literally just give broad commands like run/pass and go for it/kick the fg/punt. Iāll scoop up allll the win% floating around in the ether because the BEST coaches in the league get fourth down decisions wrong over 20% of the time. The worst are getting it wrong like 30-35% of the time.
The other thing is that the whole league is a copycat league. I actually think, and have thought for four or five years, that the league is ripe for the taking by a run-dominant offense.
You see some teams flirt with it a bit and have some decent success, but nobody is really going all-in on this. Think about it. What does every defense prioritize? Pass rushing DEs and good corners. Thatās where they spend their money. What are the most expensive positions on offense? QB, WR, and high end OT.
What are the cheapest positions on offense? Interior OL, depth OL, RB.
Look at the Eagles roster, theyāve got 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th offensive lineman that could probably start on 10-15 teams in the league. They should put them on the field! Run 7 offensive lineman out there with a TE and a WR and see what the defense does. I bet they donāt match up. I bet they CANāT match up. Youāre going to get your extra lineman blowing up LBs, or depth specialty pass rushing ends who arenāt good against the run.
Best part, you save a shit load of cap space to spend elsewhere. The big drawback is that if youāre losing late in a game you have to throw and you canāt. OK, but I can run a no huddle rushing attack, too. I can get my guys really good at hustling to the line of scrimmage and running the next play. So weāll still be able to mix that in unless itās literally the last two minutes of the game.
I think the NFL incorrectly assumes that yards/play ā points is the strongest statistical correlation to wins. I think it should be drive efficiency, or points per drive. If every drive takes 10 minutes and each team only gets three possessions, and I score 21 points, Iām almost always going to win, right?
In a vacuum, a more skilled team prefers more possessions for each team, and thus less variance. But weāre not in a vacuum, weāre in a league that pays QB/WR/OT/DE/CB, and weāre in a league where every team is built to play nickel defense and rush the passer. Thatās very exploitable.
also Nagy
but yeah the BB tree has been non stop failures but the NFL keeps trying.
thereās zero chance youād be anything other than bottom 3 as a NFL head coach
Well Mike McCarthy still has a job today, so thereās one.
Wish we could do it and make a bet. What I posted is more like making me the head analytics guy but giving me final say on in-game decisions, but obviously nobody is taking that away from the HC so youād have to be the HC in this little experiment.
But I think there are enough good coordinators and enough horrific fourth down decisions in the NFL that just being an analytics guy and delegating everything else to your coordinators would put you in the top half of the league. I think there are also a lot of strategic oversights due to the fog of war during games, and having the head coach just be making those broad decisions and watching the flow of the game rather than being the play-caller would have a lot of value.
Like Eagles/Bucs, great example. Bucs corners are playing like 10 yards off all game, and nobody on the Eagles staff thinks like, āHey, maybe we should call a 6 yard hook or a slant or a drag route or something?ā
What do you think the HC is doing Monday thru Saturday?
Iām not sure that a team of poorly motivated players who donāt trust the head nerd in charge is going to do very well.
The same type of stuff the coordinators are doing, if I need to hire extra assistants to make up for the fact that Iām not a football coach, I can. Breaking down film, game planning, making roster decisions, planning practice, film review with players, etc.
Iām not going to roll in there with a pocket protector and glasses and a calculator. Iām pretty sure I could get buy-in from the players. I think they like going for it on fourth down.
I covered the NFL for several years, I was in the locker room and interviewed players and coaches. I understand what other people are doing in those areas.
The issue that you pointed out that would be a problem is not getting any respect from my assistant coaches. Theyād probably be undermining me trying to get me fired from Day 1.
Iāve watched All-22 film a decent amount. I know enough to be able to break down a play after the fact, and show you more often than not (but not always) who fucked up and how, or to say, āIf they do X, we should do Y,ā but not enough to then design plays or form a specific game plan from that, or to coach fundamentals/techniques.
So Iād issue broad directives strategically each week, my assistants would do all the hard work, theyād resent the fuck out of me, and theyād go tell the GM to fire the analytics coach cause heās not a football guy and they can do all the actual work and just go for it a lot.
not just that but also media/the bosses/owner (often meddling owners) etc, analytics is only a small part of being a successful head coach (and it can backfire as it hilariously was the key reason the chargers didnāt make the playoffs)
Also have to give up your entire life for it during the season. You sleep at home (if even that) and thatās basically all you get when you get home.
Why should the team owner hire you instead of just hiring the analytics expert you would hire to be the head coach?
https://twitter.com/BuffaloBills/status/1483513885638463489
Pretty, pretty, pretty good.
They shouldnāt. Iām not saying I should be a head coach, nor am I saying Iām in the top 1,000 people in the world at it. Iām simply saying that Iād be better than like half the 32 they keep hiring/firing.
My take is more about how incompetent the NFL is at hiring head coaches and current head coaches are at some of the key parts of their job, as well as about how thereās IMO a ton of overlap between the duties of head coaches and coordinators.
As a result, there is a model that could be utilized where the head coach was more like a strategic thinker/analytics driven decision maker who was largely responsible for hiring competent coordinators and empowering them to do a lot of the work while then making very good in-game decisions at a broad strategic level.
Likewise, I think the NFL is ripe for a Moneyball-style revolution in how talent is evaluated, compensated, and how teams are built.
Respect the confidence, but no, in my opinion you wouldnāt be better at something than the people at the highest level of their profession that have dedicated their entire lives to that pursuit, simply because you would factor cowardly punts into your decision making instead of āgoing with your gutā.
The players would obviously know that their team hired someone with zero coaching experience at any sport at any level, and yeah, thatās just a nope. Failure to launch. Abort. Their coaches have such a huge impact on their ability to make a living, you just arenāt going to get a couple hundred people in the organization to ignore reality and be motivated to produce great results for you.
If the thought experiment is that, if you take your analytics and strategic beliefs and mind control an existing NFL coach and that you would achieve better gameday outcomes, I can maybe get on board with that.
The win percentage some of these guys light on fire on a weekly basis outweighs any possible tactical advantage. They routinely torch 5%+ on individual decisions!
There are almost certainly coaches torching 1-2 expected wins per year. And we havenāt even discussed game theory based play calling.
even fat mike only does it once every few games so not a chance thatās accurate
No way.
Under ten for sure.
Out of the entire population of the planet, seems like it has to be pretty much exactly zero.