Has firing a coach ever turned a team around?

The Game Room
21

Back to the OP’s main point. As a rule, if a team is playing horribly, does firing the coach/manager in the middle of a season actually accomplish anything? Or is the team just taking action for the sake of taking action?

Surprisingly, it DOES tend to help in the short run. When a coach or manager is fired, even if he’s replaced by an interim coach who’s not likely to keep the job for long, his old team USUALLY plays better, for a little while.

If a 40-60 baseball team fires its manager, the team is likely to go on a tear and flirt with .500 for the rest of the season.

If a 4-9 NFL team fires its coach, the team is likely to win a few games down the stretch, and finish 6-10.

If a college fires the coach of its 10-16 basketball team, the team is likely to go on a short winning streak, giving fans hope for an NIT bid.

That DOESN’T necessarily mean the team has gotten much better, or that the interim coach is a brilliant guy who should be given the job permanently. Teams that keep a successful interim coach usually find out the next season that the team is still lousy and that the interim coach’s seeming “magic touch” has worn off.

So, why does firing the coach give a temporary boost? A lot of possible reasons come to mind. Take each with a grain of salt:

  1. Even if the canned coach was a capable guy, losing brings out the worst in people. Maybe the stress of losing made him an angry, bitter guy who alienated his players with his tirades, which made them tense, which made them play even worse. Once he was gone, his players relaxed, had a little more fun, and started to play a little looser.

  2. Players knew that a new coach and, possibly, a new general manager would be coming soon. They knew their jobs might be on the line, so they played harder, to show the next coach/GM that they’re worth keeping.

  3. After a coach has been around a while, players get used to him, sometimes TOO used to him. They’ve HEARD all his speeches, they’ve SEEN all his motivational tricks, they KNOW everything he’s going to say, and they start to tune him out. Sometimes, a fresh face with a fresh voice and a new set of motivational tools can get the players’ attention. The new, unfamiliar motivational tools may work, at least until the players get used to the new coach and start to tune HIM out.

  4. Don’t discount pure dumb luck. Over the long run, good teams play well and lousy teams play poorly. But even great teams go through rough patches, and even lousy teams can get hot and go on a winning streak. SUPPOSE the Los Angeles Lakers are going through a rough time, and start the season 10-15. The owner panics, and fires Phil Jackson. Well, a team as talented as the Lakers is almost BOUND to get its act together and start winning again. Once it does, the new coach will be the beneficiary, and will look like a genius who saved a sinking ship- even if the same thing probably would have happened had the old coach been given a little more time and patience.

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Another baseball example: Morgan’s Miracle

In 1988, the lackluster and underperforming Red Sox were below .500 at the All-Star break. Manager John McNamara was fired and they named Joe Morgan (no, the other Joe Morgan) as acting manager while they persued guys like Pinella and Torre.

Meanwhile, the Sox won their first 12 games under Morgan (“Morgan’s Miracle”). He was named the permanent manager, and the team went on to win the division in '88 and '90 (losing to the A’s in the ALCS both times).

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The 2005-6 Miami Heat were about .500 team for the first quarter of the season. Pat Riley fired* Stan Van Gundy and took over as coach. They finished the season as the top team in the Eastern Conference and won the NBA championship.

*Technically, Van Gundy resigned but it was obvious to everyone that he was asked to step down.

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Correction: They actually finished 2nd in the conference to the Pistons.

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You could extrapolate this fine example out to Eddie Sutton’s departure and The Rick’s arrival too, although it took much longer. Hell, rebuilding a program on probation and returning it to the pinnacle of glory takes some time!
:smiley:

26

I agree it’s harder to turn around a football team because of the intricacy of the team structure: offence, defence and special teams, plus the complexity of the game books.

However, there’s one example of a coach in the CFL who came in, in the mid-season, for the same struggling team, and both times turned it around: Pinball Clemons, with the Toronto Argonauts.

Pinball Clemons was one of the great Argo players, specializing in run-backs for touhdowns. He got his nickname because he just seemed to be able to bounce around through the defenders, just like the ball in the pinball machine, and make a TD.

He started the 2000 season as a player, and ended it as coach. The Argos were coached that year by John Huard, who built up a dismal 1-6-1 record. The Argos fired him, and made Pinball the head coach, who played a couple more games and then retired as a player.* The last ten games of the season, the Argos under Pinball had a winning record: 6 wins, 4 losses. It wasn’t enough to get them into the playoffs, but it was a remarkable turn-around.

Pinball coached the Argos in the 2001 season, but the Argos again had a poor season and again failed to make the play-offs.

In 2002, Pinball was named president of the club, and Etchevary was named coach. He had a losing record: 4 wins, 8 losses. Pinball fired him and resumed coaching duties. For the last six games of the season, the team had a winning record: 4 wins, 2 losses, and this time they made the playoffs, beating the Roughriders to advance to the East Division final, where they lost to the Als.

So, even agreeing that it’s hard to say whether the new coach brings anything new to the table, and that a talented group may just be able to pull together at some time in the season, the fact that Pinball did it twice suggests the he had specific talents as a coach that enabled him to turn the team around.

After the 2002 season, he stayed on as head coach for until 2007, including winning the Grey Cup in 2004.

*Pinball’s last game as a player was against the Saskatchewan Roughriders on September 15, 2000. The Argos billed it as “Pinball’s Last Run”. The Riders won, 44-17, much to the delight of Mrs Piper and myself, who were in the front row. It was one of the bright spots in an otherwise dismal Rider season.

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Mid-season firings in football are pretty rare, possibly because the season is so short (in terms of number of games).

A post-season change from college football: 2001 Cal, 1-11 (and the win was over Rutgers who was just as bad). Fired Tom Holmoe, hired Jeff Tedford. 2002 Cal went 7-5, and would’ve gone to a bowl except they were on probation for violations committed in the previous regime. (Holmoe couldn’t win even by cheating.)

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The 1977-78 Seattle Supersonics (NBA) started off 5-17 under Bob Hoskins, replaced him with Lenny Wilkens, went 42-18 the rest of the way and wound up losing to the Washington Bullets in the NBA Finals. The following year Seattle won the league title under Wilkens. Wilkens made some lineup changes when he took over, but I can’t remember what they were.

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There are some managers who can see there are players who can help the team while other managers still what they can’t do. When Davey Johnson took over the Mets in 1984 the previous manager played a good-field not hit second baseman named Brian Giles. Johnson decided that Wally Backman, who wasn’t playing because he was poor defensively and couldn’t hit left handers, deserved to play because he had a good on base percentage and could steal a base. Johnson figured he could find another infielder (Kelvin Chapman and later Tim Teufel) who could play when other teams started a lefthander.

There is a story about football coach George Allen that near the end of his life he became coach of a community college team and took them to the first winning record they had in 20 yers. What he did, other than banning earrings, I don’t know. Allen had some motivational techniques that some players, like the late Merlin Olsen, didn’t care for (such as taking them to a hospital for crippled children before a game). Olsen compared Allen to a loud drum: gets you motivated at first but soon turns into annoying.

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Well, if we’re not talking about in-season changes, there’s always Billy Martin, whose teams always showed significant improvement his first year on the job (before they got sick of him).