I think Gailey needed to go. The Bills aren’t godawful but they’ve been continually stuck in the middle of the league - not high enough to make the playoffs but not low enough to get any top draft choices. They have some genuine talent on the roster but Gailey just couldn’t seem to translate that into a string of wins.
I don’t know what either of these announcements mean in practical terms, but the Buddy Nix will remain as GM in Buffalo for now but Doug Whaley will “transition” to GM to replace him eventually. Ralph Wilson is turning over more power to the team’s CEO. There are reports the Bills’ coaching candidates include Doug Marrone from Syracuse, Ken Whisenhunt, and former Cardinals defensive coordinator Ray Horton. Clark Hunt wants to become more involved with the Chiefs, which to me sounds like bad news for Scott Pioli.
Love Smith is said to be interested in coaching the Bills or Cardinals.
Two teams with solid defenses.
Here’s the thing about Lovie Smith. If his defense gets a ton turnovers, he generally wins. If they don’t, he loses. Which is why his record against teams with winning records (teams that generally don’t turn the ball over so much) is so bad. I’m not sure relying on defensive turnovers is a great plan for winning.
Some quickly thrown together stats:
Bears under Lovie
2007 - 33 turnovers (8th in league), -1 turnover ratio, 7-9 team record.
2008 - 32 turnovers (2nd), +5 (9th), 9-7
2009 - 28 turnovers (16th), -6 (lower half), 7-9
2010 - 35 turnovers (2rd), +4 (11th), 11-5 playoffs
2011 - 31 turnovers (3rd), +2 (11th), 8-8
2012 - 41 turnovers (1st), +20 (2nd), 10-6 no playoffs.
There are a couple of ways to look at this. If you believe that a coach or system is a huge deal in the amount of turnovers, it looks like Lovie can help you out there, with 4 season out of the last 6 in the top 3 in the league. If you believe turnovers are more of a function of playing bad teams rather than coaching, his value takes a huge hit. I think it’s somewhere in between, that Lovie will certainly help your defense get a few more turnovers, but he also gets most of them against bad teams with bad QB’s and bad ball handlers. Unless you can count on getting those turnovers, I don’t think Lovie is that good of a coach.
Part of the problem with the Bears is that while they get outstanding numbers of turnovers by the defense, they have Jay Cutler and bad backups who throw way too many interceptions so the ratio takes a huge hit.
All said, I think Lovie is a fine coach if he has a great DE, a great MLB (the two most important positions in the Cover 2), and a great CB. I also think he can take advantage of bad teams. But I really think his success in Chicago is due mostly to those turnovers. If you believe that he is responsible for that, he’ll be a great hire. Personally, I don’t, so, in the end, I think he’s an average coach who can carry your team out of the cellar and keep them in the middle of the pack, but won’t win the Super Bowl.
That said, the Bills and Cards would be fine fits for his defense and his coaching.
Not terribly credible rumors say the Browns are agreed in principle with Chip Kelly and working out details, but other rumors said that he was by far their #1 choice, so maybe.
McDaniels, who was rumored to come in a package deal with Lombardi, is staying with the Pats. I hope that means no Lombardi.
I don’t really know anything about Chip Kelly other than that he’s rumored to be an offensive innovator. What scares me about those guys is whether they came up with one clever idea or system that works in college, and that’s all they ever do - they can’t adapt to what’s needed at a different level, they just do their gimmick. But I have no idea about what kind of coach Kelly is.
Have the Browns already been interviewing people? If they’ve got an agreement in principle with Kelly already, they’re going to run into Rooney Rule problems.
He’s a great coach when he has the backing of a multi-million dollar corporation paying for players and doesn’t have to be bothered with that whole thing called “defense”.
I am very intrigued by him transitioning to the NFL. There are numerous example of great college coaches failing in the NFL (Spurrier, Saban, that guy on the motorcycle), so high hopes may be too much. But with the successes that rookie QB’s can have (RGIII, Andy Dalton, Cam Newton), I am quite intrigued by seeing if the read option/spread/we have better athletes on offense than you do college offenses can work in the NFL. As quite the traditionalist, I think those offenses are great for college, but will severely limit long term success of QB’s by subjecting them to too many hits in the NFL. I wouldn’t be surprised if Chip has immediate success, soon followed by injury and catastrophic failure. But, all in all, his move to the NFL would be interesting, and I can’t wait to see what happens.
I wouldn’t call him a gimmick coach. Oregon has a lot of success on offense just by being well-coached and controlling the tempo. As far as the offense itself, all he’s trying to do is spread the defense out and involve the QB so it’s 11-on-11. The point of a read offense is to “block” a defender with the QB by isolating him and forcing him to declare where he’s going. As Jules alluded to, it’s not necessarily a pass-wacky offense. He has no problem giving the running back 20+ carries.
If this is true, then I have lost all respect for Kelly. Dude is supposed to be preparing for the national championship game.
Adam Schefter says Andy Reid is close to a deal with Arizona.
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Oregon has a lot of success on offense just by being well-coached and controlling the tempo
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Oregon has a lot of success when Nike starts putting a ton of money into the program. Then somehow miraculously at the same time as a huge influx of money came into the program, they got faster, more talented players to come to Oregon. Coincidence? I think not.
Chip Kelly is very good at creating advantages with highly talented players. It will be interesting to see how that will translate to the NFL.
I know that the Bengals Mike Zimmer is generating some interest. He has engineered some great defenses in Cincinnati with a bunch of castoffs. I don’t understand why I keep hearing the Bengals offensive coordinator Jay Gruden mentioned in this conversation. Before the Bengals hired him out of nowhere two years ago, dude was an Arena league head coach.
What I would like to see is Mike Brown be proactive and promote Marvin Lewis to GM (and recuse himself in the process) as Marvin is a great talent evaluator and motivator but an awful in-game manager as a HC. Promote Zimmer to HC of the Bengals, keep Gruden where he is and promote Hue Jackson to DC.
All would be right in the world if that happened. But Mike Brown will NEVER be the kind of owner that counts money and lets football people run the show. He has to be the meddlesome GM/owner…to the team’s detriment.
Heh. I’m a fucking idiot. Just reread this and realized that you said (and I typed) Chip Kelly. Oops.
For what it’s worth, Kelly was adamant that he has 100% of his focus on his upcoming bowl game. Now, every coach says that, but Kelly doesn’t seem to be wired to split his focus. He’s too meticulous for that. Of course, I also know next to nothing about him, so what do I know? Still, I would be shocked if the Browns, or anyone, has had much contact with Kelly.
From what I’ve read about him (pretty much 0 experience with him otherwise) he’s not just an innovative offensive mind, but extremely detail-oriented and aggressive. He seems like the type of coach who knows offhand how often teams succeed at 4th and 5-10. I like aggressive coaches who know the numbers and make decisions based primarily on that, conventional wisdom be damned.
I’m not concerned at all that he’ll force feed his offensive system into the NFL with sub-optimal personnel. And he’s so widely respected that his reputation seems to ensure that he’ll have a good offense in multiple offensive systems.
What concerns me is the lack of experience, the historical precedent of coaches like him failing, and very little mention of defense in his bio. I’m hoping he’s smart enough to bring in a defensive guru and be hands off on that side of the ball. I doubt he has that personality though.
Well I’m sold. That’s all I really want out of a head coach. I absolutely hate how almost all coaches coach in the NFL - essentially, they don’t try to maximize their chances, they try to reduce the chances that the loss will be blamed on a single coaching decision. So going for it on 4th and 1 on your own 30 yard line may be the unambiguously correct decision in some scenario, but if it fails, then the coach is going to take all the blame for the correct decision. So they punt, and some idiot football fans will say “yeah well you gotta play the numbers” as if what the coach is doing there is based on giving them the best chance to win.
NFL coaches aren’t even borderline cautious - they routinely make the clearly incorrect call all the time by a decent margin. Fans are always looking for one play, one decision, one reason that the game was lost, and they do all they can in their power to make sure it wasn’t something they did.
Belichick and Peyton are the only two in the NFL that I’ve seen (I mean, for all I know some random shitty team I never watch has a good coach) and I think they’re a clear tier above everyone else because of it. It also amuses me when Belichick makes a correct, aggressive, risky decision and then everyone rushes to say “OMG BELLICHICK FAILED DUE TO HIS EGO!” and all that other nonsense.
Preliminary discussions with Kelly’s agent, rather than him, is the refined rumor.
TYpically, a GM wants to be the man to choose the new head coach. What are the odds tha any genuinely capable prospective GM would take a job with the Jets, knowing that his fate is inextricably tied to Rex Ryan’s, and that Ryan is, in effect, his boss?
Nobody with options would take such a job, in my opinion.
Looks like the prettiest girl at the ball has decied to only dance with the one that brung her.
He’s a guy that by all accounts barely tolerates the shit that goes along with being a NCAA head coach. He has no interest in talking to boosters, shoe companies and doesn’t pound the recruiting trail like a user car salesman. Given the choice he’d probably practice his kids 80 hours a week if they let him.
In my opinion the NCAA coaches that flop in the NFL are the ones who make their bones recruiting by kissing babies, coddling spoiled primadonnas and reassuring worried parents. The ones that have an awesome Q-rating, worry about the TV ratings of non-conference games and generally win by selling the big program fantasy to 5-star recruits.
Kelly doesn’t appear to be any of these things. Plus it seems like the NFL would make him happier which makes it all the more surprising that he hasn’t taken a job yet. This year might be the year.
Interesting article on Andy Reid in today’s Philadelphia newspaper. It may seem bitter or anti-Reid, but it is quite accurate in his handling of Castillo as well as bringing his son onto the staff.
May? It’s vitriolic and in places it’s ridiculous, and the reference to “the drug-related death of a nepotistic hire” is cruel and inexcusable, no matter what the author says a few paragraphs later about how it’s sad that Reid’s son died. His criticisms include the fact that Reid was not “congenial” with the press and that Reid tried to win games late in the season by playing Michael Vick and others. That was selfish, you see. Reid has his flaws and the defensive coordinator situation in Philadelphia was terrible - the scapegoating of Castillo was a total mistake - but that column is pretty disgusting.