The most over-rated coaches

In My Humble Opinion
1

Pick your favorite sport, and state your case!

**Basketball ** - Larry Brown. Yes, I know there are a billion Larry Brown apologists out there, but what has this guy really done? One NBA championship with a team that is now better than they were last year with who? Is it Flip Saunders? Larry Brown is the T.O. of coaching. A somewhat talented mass of dysfunction that can’t stick around anywhere too long. I can’t stand him, and I long for the day he retires. The funny thing is, I’m not even a big basketball fan. But I lived in Philadelphia when this boob coached the team. NBA finals? WOOOO… big deal. Didn’t he also coach one of those USA Dream Teams to a Bronze medal? Stop the presses!

**Football ** - Bill Cowher - I think I read 10 playoffs in 13 seasons. Sounds good. Except, no Super Bowls, 1-4 in AFC Championship games AT HOME, and 0-1 in the big dance. He is a chip off his mentor, Marty Shottenheimer, two guys who have mastered the art of coaching not to lose, instead of to win. Cowher may actually have a chance this year, since as the 6th seed, they’ll be on the road throughout the playoffs and they play better on the road. But for crying out loud already, get a ring! Some guys just don’t have it. Bill Cowher doesn’t have it. Whatever **it ** is.

**Baseball ** - Dusty Baker - WTF has this guy ever done (except get his kid run over in the WS)? Close runner up is Tony LaRussa. Mr. Arrogant. It’s baseball, for crying out loud. I’ve played it since I was 6. I think we can all master the lefty-righty percentage plays. Genius, my butt.
Your picks?

2

basketball: i’m not really sure, there are so many marginal people that get in as coaches. i think if i were forced to make a pick, i’d say don nelson.

football: marty schottenheimer. i will fight this to the death. great from monday to saturday, but makes re-tard-ed mistakes on sundays like clockwork.

baseball: i may agree with dusty baker. having bassr bonds on your team in san francisco makes everyone ELSE make coaching decisions. they inherit yours.

hockey: um…not entirely sure. same with baskebtall. so many fringe people get the jobs.
no, waitaminit…crap…he coached the rangers…the blues…he gets slurped all the time by commentators…arg.
i can picture his face, but i can’t remember his name. fuck me.

3

Could you be thinking of Mike Keenan? He is an excellent choice. Squirrelly little fellow, he will be remembered as the man who won the cup with the NY Rangers… forever removing my favorite chant at any hockey game with the Rangers. “1940!”

The good old days.

You are right about hockey. Unless you are a die-hard hockey fan, most of the coaches names won’t stick with you when you are listening to a sports broadcast.

4

College basketball: Eddie Sutton. He’s amassed more than 600 wins, but has never won a national championship. Also, I don’t understand how he ever got another job after the his incredibly scuzzy and awful tenure at UK.

Football: Has to be Schottenheimer. He can’t win games that actually matter and his ineptitude in playcalling and clock management is matched only by Mike Martz.

Baseball: Baker’s an idiot, but I would say that Lou Piniella is a decent candidate, because he’s highly regarded as a manager despite having only one World Series win and several losing/3rd place finishes in the late 90’s in the AL West (which wasn’t a tough division.)

5

Just a warning: after his tenure at Cleveland, loads of people would’ve put Bill Belichick on the “overrated list.” After mediocre showings as a manager in many cities, Joe Torre and Casey Stengel would’ve been called “overrated” before taking over the Yankees.

For that matter, 6 weeks ago, the conventional wisdom was that Joe Gibbs was an overrated has-been, and that the game of football had passed him by.

Anybody think they’re overrated now? (That’s rhetorical, I’m sure some people still think so.)

As Joe Theismann put it ineptly, “Coaches aren’t geniuses. A genius is somebody like Norman Einstein.”

VERY few head coaches in the NFL or the NBA are idiots. Most are very smart guys who know the game waaay better than even knowledgeable fans like you and (I like to think) me. Some make costly mistakes they’re never able to dig their way out of (a smart football coach who makes the wrong guy his franchise QB is going to suffer through 4 or 5 bad seasons, and then get canned). Some get off on the wrong foot with their players, and are never able to win back their respect or loyalty. That can make them look mighty bad- but given a second chance, some turn out to be much better than they initially look.

All that said, are their coaches I think are praised too highly, and/or given more credit than they deserve? Sure. These guys aren’t necessarily BAD coaches, but all receive more acclaim than their records deserve, in my opinion:

  1. Tony LaRussa. Given the great talent he’s usually surrounded with, a guy this “brilliant” should have more championships to his credit.

  2. Brian Billick. He was hired as an offensive genius, but the Ravens have never shown much on offense. Their one Super Bowl win was almost entirely attributable to Marvin Lewis’ defense.

  3. Tony Dungy. Sigh… look, I like the man. He seems like a genuinely fine human being. But the Colts were already a very-good-but-not-quite-great team when he got to Indianapolis, and they STILL look like a very-good-but-not-quite-great team now. He’s supposed to be a defensive genius, but I haven’t seen much real improvement in the Colts’ defense since he arrived. He’s had plenty of time to build a stifling defense in Indy, but I still don’t see one (think Tom Brady, Carson Palmer or Jake Plummer is terrified of playing the Colts? I don’t).

  4. Larry Coker (and most Miami coaches before him, save Jimmy Johnson): In the past, Miami followed a mind-blowingly simple path to success.

a) Recruit every top athlete in Florida
b) Play 10 creampuffs plus Florida State
c) Squeak past Florida State
d) Play for the national title in your own home stadium in front of your own fans

That was a great strategy, and it allowed even mediocre coaches like Dennis Erickson and Larry Coker to win titles. But now, Miami is in a decent conference, and can’t just steamroller everybody. They have to prepare harder for each game (it doesn’t appear that they do) and they have to make adjustments when opponents put up a tough fight (and it doesn’t appear they do).

ANY coach could have won with the Miami teams of the late Eighties and early Nineties. It’s not so easy now. And I think Larry Coker is now being exposed as a coach who’s not handling his new responsibilities well.

6

Good point. Belichick reminds me of another guy that I almost put on my list… that BTOG* himself, Bill Parcells. He’s another train wreck, who hasn’t won anything without Belichick on his staff, and he would have lost one of his two Super Bowl if Scott Norwood wouldn’t have been wide right.

And if memory serves, Torre was considered a hack until his stay with the Yankees. And his ability to manage Steinbrenner has impressed me as much as his ability to manage that team on that stage.

One baseball guy I go back and forth with is Bobby Cox. The Braves winning the division for 14 years is truly amazing. But only one ring is disturbing.

Very true. I have a good friend who is an actual NFL assistant coach (team and name withheld). He took me to the team’s training facility and gave me a glimpse of what these guys do each week… they break down every play of their game, offense and defense, they break down every play of their next opponent, offense and defense, and when I say break down, I mean an all-out pull-every-play-apart exercise. Each player is noted, where they go on each running and passing play, what the opponent’s trends are on certain downs and situations. It goes on and on. It gets entered into the computer. Statistics of all sorts are generated. These guys bust their asses, and he’s forgotten more about football than I’ll ever know. But we can all have opinions, can’t we? HA! I still give him crap every chance I get.

And I do believe that most of us regular fans know simple basics, like clock management. Something that Mike Martz and Marty Schottenheimer can’t seem to grasp.

*Big Tub Of Goo

7

Did anyone else read the title of this thread and think, ‘Greyhound’?

8

I thought about the $250 wallet that I bought my wife for Christmas several years ago.

9

Phil Jackson. Go to the Warriors or the Celtics and win a championship, then I’ll be on the Phil Jackson bandwagon.

10

My choice in baseball would have to be Tony LaRussa, if for no other reason than the definition of the word “overrate.” Larussa is treated by the media - helped along by himself - as a truly Godlike genius of baseball, despite the fact that, really, he’s no better than a lot of guys.

I’ve never noticed Dusty Baker being much ballyhooed for genius.

11

Football: Andy Reid. Cannot manage the clock, cannot get plays in on time, is inflexible and unimaginative with an offensive system he inherited (record low run/pass ratio), horrible judge of talent (drafting record is not good, Koy Detmer and Mike McMahon as back-up QBs).

He has been very successful, but incapable of performing in the crunch. This year was the beginning of the end.

12

I’m going to have to disagree here. I think Dungy’s done a great job defensively with what he’s had to work with. Right now they’re ranked 11th in the league in yards allowed - just the bright side of average - but they’re 2nd in points allowed. But couple that with their offense and they’re a powerhouse. That offense, with Manning, James, Harrison and Wayne, is eating up a disproportionate amount of their salary cap. They don’t have the cap room to build the kind of dominant offense that Dungy had in Tampa. He’s working almost exclusively with inexperienced players (there are two guys on the entire defense that are even 30 years old), and the rest are cast offs from other teams who’ve found new life there. To get that kind of defensive performance from the limited cap space they have and the personnel that that money buys is pretty impressive.

That’s not to say I don’t think Dungy’s overrated. I think he falls apart in the postseason, when he coaches the January games the exact same way he coached the September ones. He’s a genuinely good guy and his players love him, but he doesn’t strike me as much of a motivator.

13

Phil Jackson was the first to mind for basketball. Kobe, Shaq, Pippin and freakin’ Jordan won those titles, not his Zen mastery. Without them he’s soon unemployed as either a coach or chuckle author.

Another vote for Brian Billick. Subsequent to one SuperBowl, his records have curbed that once almost intolerable arrogance and undeserved regard for his own intellect.

14

Tony LaRussa.

Take off those damn transition lenses in the dugout too. It’s a nightgame fer crissakes.

Colege Footaball: Bob Stoops.

15

Combined number of titles won by Bryant, O’Neal, Pippen and Jordan without Jackson = 0. He does pay a lot of attention to his rep, but his Bulls continued to win without Jordan (55 wins the year after he left, and they should have made the conference finals at least).
Overrated? Maybe. The most overrated? Not even close. If he’d won half as many championships as he’s won, maybe there would be a case. But he’s won nine of them, and he’s tied with Red Auerbach, who coached Bill Russell, Bob Cousy, John Havlicek and Sam and K.C. Jones. No schlubs there either.

I think the cases for Don Nelson and Larry Brown are both solid. Nelson’s Mavericks teams always won the regular season games they were supposed to win, played no defense and flopped in the playoffs. When he quit last year and gave the team to Avery Johnson, who had almost zero coaching experience, they immediately improved and started playing better defense.
If Detroit keeps winning, people are going to wonder if Brown was holding the team back. There’s no reason except for coaching style that they should be scoring so much more this year.

16

OK, so who do you think could win a title with the Warriors right now? You’re not asking for a great coach, you’re asking for an unearthly coach.

17

I am a Steeler fan, and sadly, I see a strong parallel between Reid and Cowher. Cowher hung his star to Kordell Stewart, who, like McNabb, was a great athlete who could play QB. Stewart went through the same phase that McNabb seems to be going through. Stop running, and be a pocket passing QB. Look what’s happening. The Eagles imploded. I know there are a number of other solid reasons why the Eagles went south this year (TO, injuries, etc.), but the fact is, these coaches are an arrogant bunch who won’t admit to making a mistake. They will never admit to misjudging talent, or making a bad draft pick.

Reid is no idiot. His backup choices are Detmer and McMahon simply because these two guys aren’t going to cause the fan base to scream to take McNabb out of a game. Cowher did the same thing in Pittsburgh. 8+ years of Kordell Stewart. Remember Jim Miller? He earned the job in training camp and held it for exactly one half of the first game before being benched for Stewart. Tommy Maddox was a retread insurance salesman fluke that NO ONE thought could compete for the starting job. Charlie Batch? Anthony Wright? Tee Martin? Brian St. Pierre? Pete Gonzalez? That’s just off the top of my head. Cowher removes the QB controversy by keeping guys in reserve that feel lucky to have a job. Andy Reid has followed this model to a “T”.
[pathetic Steeler fan rant]

It always amazed me that Cowher wasn’t ripped after Stewart left via free agency… Chicago figured out he sucked after 6 games and sat him. He was cut and went to Baltimore (I think), got cut, bounced around, and was picked up and cut again by Baltimore this year. He actually was beat out by Anthony Wright, a guy that sat behind him in Pittsburgh. Thank you, football gods for letting Rothleisberger slide to the Steelers!

I don’t understand why these guys won’t use the gifts that got them to the NFL in the first place. Black or white isn’t an issue to me. These guys are athletic. They played QB in high school and college with success by running, throwing on the run, and spreading out the defensive coverage. These guys rarely turn into pocket passers. You need a guy like Brian Leftwich, who is a statue and has been for most of his career, who can stay in the pocket. Just like you can’t turn Leftwich into McNabb (or Vick), you can’t turn McNabb into Leftwich.

[/pathetic Steeler fan rant]

18

I meant to second this in my other post. Their defense definitely improved this year.

19

Soccer: Alex Ferguson. He’s still a decent manager, but for the last couple of years it seems he’s past his best.

20

I always thought it was the offensive coach Cowher hired that year that ruined Kordell. He wanted a west coast offense. He tried to make Kordell stop running and make the Bus run to the outside. Neither were suited to do the same. But Cowher did the right thing and replaced him the following year. Kordell suffered from it, but The Bus did not.