The Case For The Right Retread Coach

Sometimes the new shiny thing is the most attractive option. Sometimes it just seems that way.

In the Eagles head coaching search, most people are firmly against hiring a retread coach, someone who's been around the block once already. Sure, there are Jon Gruden supporters and Bill Cowher supporters, but most people would rather get Chip Kelly or Mike McCoy or some other new name. I think the Eagles probably agree with this philosophy as well. They've been strongly linked to college coaches and other coordinators, but Mike Nolan is the only retread they've interviewed so far.

Nolan is a poor candidate, if you use history as any judge. As I detailed on Thursday, Bill Belichick is the only example of a recently hired coach who went on to have great success at his second job after posting a losing record in his first. Trying to find the one diamond in the rough is a losing proposition.

But that doesn't mean that all second-chance coaches are bad. 32 have been hired since 1999 (not including KC's hiring of Andy Reid today). Many of those hires were predicated on the idea that the coach learned something from their previous failure. But I wanted to look at only the ones who earned their second shot with solid performance the first time around. I isolated 16 who had winning records and won at least one playoff game at their previous job. That list looks much more promising. Here's how they did (or are doing) in their second chance:

Let me break it down by color. Five coaches marked in blue are clear success stories. Dungy, Coughlin, and Gruden all won Super Bowls with their second team. Holmgren came close. I suppose Parcells in Dallas is more debatable, but he reversed three straight 5-11 seasons, posted a winning record, and formed the foundation of the reasonably successful Wade Phillips era. Then you have the four green coaches, who are current and relatively new hires. Three of the four — Carroll, Shanahan, and Fox — are currently in the playoffs and look to have bright futures. Too early to tell with Jeff Fisher in St. Louis.

I marked another three coaches in orange as special cases. Gibbs and Shell each came back to coaching after over a decade sitting on the couch. Hiring coaches who have been away from the game for that long is unlikely to ever work, and I doubt the Eagles are interested in any such candidates. Schottenheimer is also in this special category because Dan Snyder unwisely fired him after a single season in Washington. He won 8 of his last 11 games that year, and went on immediately to the Chargers, where he posted a solid .588 winning percentage over five seasons (although no playoff victories).

That leaves only four hires, marked in red, who really turned out poorly: Green, Seifert, Mariucci, and Mora Jr. Any coach could end up just as bad. But I look at the success rate, including three Super Bowl-winning coaches and three current up-and-comers and wonder if the Eagles could find a similarly successful retread candidate. If they avoided the Nolans of the world in favor of coaches with a winning background, they might have a greater chance of a favorable outcome. You would be looking at people who have already proven they can run an organization, win games, and get to the playoffs — even if they may not have reached the promised land yet.

Who might that be? Well, Jon Gruden is an obvious example. He did this once already, and is widely hailed as one of the smartest football minds around. Lovie Smith is another potential candidate. I've heard few rumors about where he might end up, which is surprising considering he had only three losing seasons in nine years in Chicago, and has built top defenses everywhere he's been. Both have weaknesses as candidates, but as cool as it would be to snag a hotshot like Kelly, history suggests a retread like one of them could be just what the Eagles need.

Photo from Getty.

Time for Andy Reid to Move On?

One of my favorite stories about Andy Reid is the one about his coaching binder. It goes something like this:

As an up and coming assistant coach on Mike Holmgren’s staff, Reid saw that his mentor kept a notebook with everything from basic football philosophy to detailed notes on training camps schedules. At some point Holmgren’s notes outgrew his notebook, so he copied it into a new form and threw away the old one. Reid plucked it out of the trash.

By the time he was interviewing for the head coaching job in Philadelphia, Reid’s binder had ballooned to six inches thick. All that detail, all that preparation before he ever had a top job. It was impressive to say the least. And, like the Reid we know today who still hasn’t lost a game after the bye, he didn’t let that preparation go to waste.

Reid took over a moribund team and transformed it, improving it each year for six straight years. He found the right quarterback, hired the right assistants, drafted well, and made smart free agent acquisitions. 5-11, 11-5, 11-5, 12-4, 12-4, 13-3. Four straight NFC Championship games, one Super Bowl appearance. It was masterful, if ultimately incomplete.

The binder full of notes worked almost to perfection during those first six seasons. But six seasons later, I wonder how much of that binder is left. It’s doubtful that Reid ever had a plan for what to do after the climax of 2004. Since then, he’s mostly been spinning his wheels.

Keeping an NFL team competitive this long is very difficult, but Reid and company have managed. They’ve kept the team at or above .500 every year after 2005 and reached the playoffs four times. But the team also hasn’t improved during that span. Some of the same problems remain, some have changed, but at the end of the day Reid hasn’t lived up to the standard of constant improvement he set in his first six seasons.

When the Eagles have brought in top free agents over the last few years, one of the things they almost invariably mention is continuity. Reid’s long tenure and the relative stability of the front office is comforting. The Eagles “are always competitive” and “always have a shot to win it all.”

That’s certainly better than never having a shot, but continuity also implies a certain complacency and stagnation. The Eagles of the first half of Reid’s tenure marched forward relentlessly, like a man who pushes himself a mile further each day, intent on completing a marathon. Those Eagles didn’t have continuity, they were aggressively ascending.

Those Eagles were like an army growing in strength and resolve as it approached its target. Today’s team seems to have set up camp outside the enemy’s capital, in the sixth year of a siege that shows no sign of ending. Sometimes they launch an attack, sometimes they just sit and wait. They’re always close to taking the city, but the progress and the urgency is gone.

I’ve long been a supporter of Reid, and I still believe he can win the Super Bowl. But the road doesn’t get easier as you stay in the job longer and that urgency slips away. He may have missed his window in Philadelphia.

Look at the list of Super Bowl coaches over the last 20 years. They average just 4.3 seasons of tenure as the head coach of their team. Only Bill Cowher and Joe Gibbs have managed to win it all after their 6th season.

To some degree there’s a bias here, because coaches don’t often last much beyond their 6th season, if they make it that far. But list the longest tenured coaches and you don’t see many Cowhers. Andy Reid, Jeff Fisher, Brian Billick, John Fox. They last and they last and ultimately never find that elusive second chance. Whether that’s because they lose their edge, because their can’t find the right personnel, or because they can’t replace coaching talent, I don’t know.

The Eagles front office has bungled the 2011 season in multiple ways. With better coaching and one or two different acquisitions, maybe they’re off to a 4-0 start. But perhaps those mistakes aren’t one-off blunders. Perhaps they are indicative of a franchise that’s been running in place for six years. And if that’s the case, it’s probably time to clean house and start over.

Photo from Getty.

Thoughts on Quarterback Moves Around the NFL

So the big quarterback news of the past couple days in the NFL (alright, other than Tim Tebow’s new throwing motion) was the trade of 3rd-string Chargers QB Charlie Whitehurst to the Seattle Seahawks. According to ESPN, the Seahawks:

agreed to move down 20 spots in the second round and part with a 2011 third-rounder to acquire Whitehurst from San Diego.

According to the NFL Draft Value Chart, that package was worth about the last pick the in second round. In addition to that high compensation, Peter Carroll and Company promptly awarded their new acquisition with a 2 year, $10 million contract.

Second round pick, large contract. Sounds like an investment in the future starting quarterback. So what’s the catch?

Oh yeah: Whitehurst has never attempted a single regular season pass!

It’s obviously very surprising that Whitehurst could command such value. Sure, any quarterback drafted by Seattle would also be an unproven commodity, but that seems like a lot to give up for a guy who’s been in the league for 4 years and hasn’t shown anything.

I have mixed feelings about what this move means for the Eagles’ QB trade hopes.

• First, Seattle has pretty much taken themselves out of the quarterback market with this move. Whitehurst seems like he’ll be the quarterback of the present and future, with Matt Hasselbeck probably looking to the exit. Seattle was a hot possibility for one of the Eagles QBs, and this move makes some sense since they were rumored to be more interested in Kevin Kolb than Donovan McNabb. Whitehurst is basically a less talented, less accomplished version of Kolb.
• And while Seattle is no longer calling the Eagles front office, they are also probably not looking to spend more money on another unproven quarterback early in next month’s draft. That means one less suitor for the Eagles and one more prospect who might fall to another team (the Bills?), eliminating them from trade contention as well.
• However, the high price Seattle was willing to pay for an unproven commodity (and supposedly hot market for Whitehurst) shows that the Eagles aren’t necessarily overvaluing their quarterbacks. If Whitehurst is worth a #2 and $10 million, anyone interested in McNabb, a proven Pro Bowl QB, has to start talking about giving up at least a 1st rounder.

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The Cleveland Browns were another team interested in the Eagles QBs. Over the last week, though, they’ve completely retooled that position. Mostly they kicked out two bad quarterbacks (Brady Quinn and Derek Anderson) and replaced them with two who don’t look a lot better (Jake Delhomme and Seneca Wallace).

It seems like Mike Holmgren, Tom Heckert, and Eric Mangini are willing to let those two veterans battle it out for the starting role next year, although they haven’t really endorsed either one as a long-term solution. Holmgren said about Delhomme:

“My own belief is this team needs an aging veteran. They need a guy that is going to grab everybody by the throat and say, ‘Follow me through that door.’ I don’t look at him as an aging veteran, I look at him as the leader I wanted.”

That reads to me as though Cleveland still really wants to take a quarterback in the draft. And with two mediocre quarterbacks to take snaps during the rebuilding process, maybe the team could take a chance on a project like Tebow.

I’m not sure Cleveland was ever really a great spot for McNabb or Kolb. When two teams make a deal for a player, you need a certain amount of imperfect information. In other words, the two teams have to value the players differently, and therefore both think they’re getting a good deal. In theory, Heckert and Andy Reid know the Eagles QBs so well, they won’t be able to make a deal they’re both happy with.

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The Browns’ moves have other, reverberating effects throughout the NFL.

• Derek Anderson signed with the Cardinals to back-up and/or challenge Matt Lienart, eliminating Arizona from any McNabb discussion.
• Brady Quinn to the Broncos means Josh McDaniels has found his long-term quarterback. Doubt Denver will be looking at guys like Jimmy Clausen with their 1st round pick.