I’ve been having this same argument with a friend of mine for 10 years now. I always point out that they started that season 7-1 but went 3-5 in the second half, and there was a clear feeling around the league that the team was bottoming out. Smith would not likely have done better than Trestman’s 8-8 the following year.
That said, Trestman, Fox and Nagy were all bad hires. /tangent