This I like. This is what I was hoping for.
Fun fact… Mike Macdonald at 36 is literally half the age of Pete Carroll who is 72. Seattle sure likes its extremes I guess.
The Packers, which fired defensive coordinator Joe Barry last week, have replaced him with Jeff Hafley, who is leaving the head-coaching position at Boston College to join Green Bay. Sources indicate that Hafley’s move was due, in part, to not wanting to have to deal with NIL issues, fundraising, and recruiting in the college game.
I have a hunch that the media and fans on the outside really don’t get how things actually work in front offices. Being an HC should be an executive position. It’s often called the CEO of the team, which in many ways is apt. What it takes to be a great HC and what it takes to be a great OC or DC has surprisingly little in common. Being an OC or a DC is not really an executive position, often not even a managerial one. You might sometimes be in charge of hiring and managing the position coaches, though not usually. In most ways it’s an Individual Contributor role.
In business we frequently see tech start-ups which are usually pioneered by engineers, designers or scientists create great products out of the gate. They do all the important ground work through sheer force of will and brilliance to make the company grow. Eventually they take on investors, start hiring, start worrying about balance sheets and find themselves as a CEO. As often as not, they fall on their faces as CEOs. The skills to be an entrepreneur and to be an executive simply don’t have that much in common.
With OCs and DCs, doubly so young ones, they just don’t have the makeup or experience to be good HCs. They usually end up learning on the job. There’s of course outliers, but it’s kind of crazy to assume that the hot OC is naturally going to be the next hot HC.
I have no doubt that Owners and GMs can just as easily fall into the trap as fans, so hiring these guys is always going to happen. But when a guy like Ben Johnson or Eric Bieneimy get passed over it’s probably because the guys doing the hiring are actually scrutinizing them. They aren’t just assuming it’s a straight-line promotion the way the media does. Ben Johnson might be a terrific offensive mind, but we don’t have any idea if he can lead, if he can build a culture, if he can hire and fire, if he’s worked with enough different types of people to consistently get things done in an organization through indirect influence.
I personally don’t buy that Johnson or Slowik “dropped out” of the head coaching cycle. I think it simply became clear that they weren’t getting offers and wanted to control the narrative. Which is fine, but I don’t buy the unfinished business excuse at all. They simply aren’t ready and if they are self-aware enough to realize that as they go through the process that’s a good thing.
Are you talking about just immediately, as in their very first head coaching position? Because I thought most head coaches in the NFL were previously an offensive or defensive coordinator. The one that immediately comes to mind for me, of course, is Bill Belichick. But to your point, he wasn’t exactly a world beater at his first head coaching gig in Cleveland.
It’s kind of crazy to assume anyone is going to be the next hot HC. Do you realize the insane turnover across the league?
Any hire is a gamble. But going from OC or DC to HC is practically a requirement. Name a successful NFL HC without that background.
It’s interesting to me that he’s never actually been a defensive coordinator before at any level.
The Bears have filled out pretty much their entire coaching staff in the last week or so.
They retained Matt Eberflus which was a bit of a shock. The fear was that backfilling his staff might be tricky if he’s viewed as a lame duck. From the outside looking in, I’d say that proved to only be half true.
After firing Getsy, we replaced him with Shane Waldron.
Waldron is an experienced play caller which is great. He’s a Shanahan/McVay disciple which no one will complain about. He got a lot of hype for helping shape the big Geno Smith reclamation in the wake of Wilson leaving. His scheme won’t be a complete 180 from Getsy, which is good or bad depending on your perspective, but hopefully the players don’t have to relearn the terminology from scratch.
Coming into the offseason Waldron wasn’t getting a ton of talk, largely because the Carroll firing was something of a surprise to many. There were probably sexier picks on the offensive side of the ball, but Waldron seems to have the best combination of experience, youth and success. Most of the other candidates would have been coming in as first time OCs or were recently part of an ugly flame out. After some reflection I’m actually getting excited about the hire regardless of what happens at QB.
Flus and Waldron seem to have built out a pretty compelling offensive staff.
Waldron brings over two of his assistants from Seattle. RB Coach Morton and importantly his QB Coach Joseph are key hires and keeping some familiarity should help us hit the ground running. Joseph shares a lot of credit for Geno’s success the last couple seasons with Waldron, and obviously we need some expertise in developing the QB position. Joseph was supposedly responsible for Seattle’s Red Zone preparation which is an interesting asset from an assistant QB coach. Joseph is coaching in the Senior Bowl which will probably be relevant come draft day. Morton gets some of the credit for Seattle’s top 5 running attack the last couple seasons, so I have a hard time quibbling with that hire too.
We then added a dedicated Passing Game Coordinator in Thomas Brown. I LOVE that choice, not so much because Brown is special - his stint as OC in Carolina wasn’t exactly sparkling - but because it shows an investment in the passing game. Waldron was a PGC under McVay, where Brown was an RB and TE coach at the time, so that’s multiple sets of eyes focused on throwing the damn ball.
When Brown was in LA he had the title of assistant HC under McVay so he’s probably well thought of by both McVay and Waldron. I’m willing to assume the trainwreck in Carolina had more to do with the circumstances than his play calling and game planning.
The new WR coach Beatty is the only guy that doesn’t trace back to Waldron or McVay. He’s got a mountain of experience as a WR coach as he’s been in that role in one form or another since 2011. I’m not sure if it’s a red flag that he seems to change teams damn near every offseason or not and doesn’t seem like a guy who has been given more responsibility over time. He was with the Chargers the last couple seasons which is fine, but his most notable attribute seems to be the fact that he coached DJ Moore at Maryland.
One the defensive side of the ball we actually added a Defensive Coordinator. Eberflus is expected to retain play calling duties, so Washington is likely to help with game prep. Washington is another guy who carried an assistant head coach title at his previous stop in Buffalo. Washington coached here under Lovie and he does have experience as a defensive coordinator. He’s tougher to evaluate as a hire but he’s a 4-3 guy and the DL that he coached in Buffalo most recently was pretty damn good. He’s got a lot of experience and has worked under several defensive minded head coaches.
Few thoughts here. Keeping Eberflus seems to have allowed us to move faster on the hiring front for offensive staff. In that way, it was a sound strategy. I have to think that all those Seahawks/Rams guys would have been desirable candidates. Their track records are great, and they come from a sexy coaching tree. Waldron likely was given full reign over the offense and he clearly has a well stocked rolodex. On both sides of the ball, we seem to have biased heavily towards proven experience which after the previous fiascos seems wise. We have a surfeit of passing game specialists and former assistant HCs…which is nice.
Andy Reid and Tom Coughlin.
I was debating doing a meta-analysis of it, but got lazy. There’s no magic bullet, but it seems just as likely that a position coach will jump straight into being a successful HC as an OC/DC will. And with some obvious exceptions, the OC/DCs that shape up to be good HCs tend to either be older or having their second go-round.
Off the top of my head:
Harbaugh 1 - Special Teams Coordinator
Harbaugh 2 - QB Coach
Reid - QB Coach
Payton - QB Coach, earlier stint as a failed OC
Morris - DB Coach (the first time)
Taylor - QB Coach
Pierce - LB Coach
Mayo - LB Coach
Dikta - Special Teams Coach (couldn’t resist)
Tomlin - DB Coach, 1 year as a meh DC
Vrabel - LB Coach, 1 year as a fake/bad DC
McDaniels - Various position coach, 1 year as an OC but wasn’t super sexy at the time
Stefanski - Various position coach, 1 year as an OC but wasn’t super sexy at the time
Shanahan - OC for 10 years before becoming a HC
Not scientific but for every McVay there seems to be 2 or 3 Nagys and Dabolls. There’s a recent trend of fast-rising coaches that make a pit stop as an OC for one year, but they feel like a different category than the classic 3-5 year OC on a really good team who’s ready for a promotion.
I would definitely not characterize his tenure as the Giants offensive coordinator as a failure. They got to the Superbowl in 2000. Though they lost to the Ravens in humiliating fashion, they utterly crushed the Vikings 41-0 in the conference championship to get there.
I will grant you that Jim Fassel stripped him of play calling duties halfway through the 2002 season – Payton’s last with the Giants – but still, Payton had notable success. And I mean, cut the guy some slack. His mom had just died.
Well there are outliers right there. And Coughlin was a head coach at two different universities before he was coach of the Jaguars, so that’s a bit of a different story.
And I was talking about current head coaches, Coughlin hasn’t coached for almost a decade now.
Just as you can’t expect a coach to be a McVay, you also can’t expect them to be a Reid.
Most HCs got there after being OC or DC, which is logical. It gives play-calling experience (usually, not always but it’s common) and puts you near the top of a hierarchy of coaches. It’s a natural progression.
If you are looking for a new head coach there are generally two places you look. Either someone with head coach experience (in either the NFL or college) or someone who was a coordinator. The opinion that it’s a bad idea to get someone with coordinator experience is, well, it’s a strange opinion from anyone who has knowledge about football.
He was shit canned. Fassel called plays during the Super Bowl season. I suppose calling it a failure is harsh, but I’m not sure it really helped his candidacy much as a HC candidate years later.
No, he didn’t. Payton did.
Fair enough. I was talking about coaches with multiple Superbowl wins.
Washington hires Dan Quinn:
I had heard Quinn was the likely hire there.
I find it interesting that he was hired right after Macdonald. Was he waiting for the Seattle job to be filled first because he was hoping to get hired there…? 
(Probably not, I’m guessing it’s a coincidence.)
Huh, my bad. I thought I recalled Fassel being a big playcalling guy and the Payton drama was a return to form.
Fassel took over play calling duties halfway through the 2002 season, which unsurprisingly meant that that was Payton’s last season in New York.
To add insult to injury for Payton, after taking over playcalling duties, Fassel’s Giants went 7-2 to finish the season and made the playoffs. Then they ran up the score on the 49ers 38-14 in the wildcard round, but oddly the league stopped the game in the third quarter and never let them finish playing. Weird.
Fassel got the Giants job in '97 and had Jim Skipper as the OC before Payton, do you recall who called plays then?
I don’t recall, no. He was an offensive coordinator before he became the Giants head coach, and then after the Giants fired him he became the Ravens offensive coordinator. (I hated that.)