I tend to agree with the dissenters here (this year seems to blow a big hole in the idea that only a proven winner can lead a team to success), but I was more struck by the title of the thread, since I came to the conclusion long ago that Wallace Matthews is usually wrong. That's what makes horce races, I guess.
Exactly. The track record that people have put up is probably the most important determinant as to whether or not they will be successful in the the future. When you have no good candidates available with a proven ability to win then by necessity you should start sifting through unproven candidates to find the best one. However when you have a few candidates with a proven ability to take a NFL team and prosper with it then it's just stupid to revert to the next level down for a head coach unless you have no other choice. The Jets should have done whatever it took to get Cowher. Failing that they should have gone prospecting among the best NCAA coaches, starting with Pete Carroll, and then finally they should have reduced themselves to hunting among the unproven candidates that they apparently considered their main talent options. Mike Tomlin is in the Super Bowl because he coaches the most successful organization in football and one that has been successful forever. It's EASY to coach in Pittsburgh unless you totally screw things up. Ken Whisenhunt is in the Super Bowl because he has the best receiver of the last five years matched up with a truly unflappable veteran QB who is headed for the hall of fame. The Cardinals actually wouldn't be anywhere near the Super Bowl without either of those things going for them. Whisenhunt, of course, is an ex-offensive coordinator, the semi-successful branch of the assistant staff in moving teams to Super Bowls.
Except that all the greatest coaches of all time were once assistants so it will always be the chicken and the egg thing. Until at least one of them wins a SB in two different cities then it makes no sense to hire them just based on what they have done in the past. Besides, I thing the HC position is somewhat overrated. It's just as or more important who their assistants are and who the players are.
"Mike Tomlin is in the Super Bowl because he coaches the most successful organization in football and one that has been successful forever. It's EASY to coach in Pittsburgh unless you totally screw things up." haha you argue your own points! if its so easy to coach in Pitt, why do you want Cowher?
It's because they no longer have the players they had. When you've gotten use to Phil Simms quick release it's hard to adjust to Drew Bledsoe's powerful setup. When you've had the Chicago Bears 46 and Walter Payton its hard to adjust to the New Orleans Saints 43 and Ricky Williams. It's also partly an accident of history. Bill Parcells has been knocking on the door several times since he left the Giants but something always held the door on him. It would be just as easy for the Jets to have held the lead in Denver in January of 1999 and won a Super Bowl two weeks later, or for Drew Bledsoe to have a great game in 1996 and the win to have come there. Mike Holmgren could easily have won a Super Bowl a couple of times over the last decade with just a few bounces going his way instead of to the other guy. Most coaches good enough to win a Super Bowl have not come free subsequently until they were too old to be really effective in building the porganization required to win it all. The few that have been a lot younger than that have had other flaws that lead them to come free. Joe Gibbs is not committed to football at all. He gave it up entirely for a decade. John Madden really would rather hear himself talk than coach in the NFL. There have been others also who just weren't interested enough in coaching to repeat their successes elsewhere.
I agree with the players angle and mentioned it somewhere else and I agree that Parcells is most definitely the exception. Nobody else has come close to having success after winning a SB and then moving on.
Because he has the experience of coaching successfuly at a high level for a decade plus and he has had a chance to see what it takes to keep a dynasty rolling. We need to build a dynasty here and become one of the most successful teams in the NFL, not the perennial also-ran that we have been. To do that we're going to need to bring in people who know how to gather and assemble talent and to coach that talent for effect when it is assembled. Currently we have none of that in place. Bringing Cowher in would have been a strong step in the direction of moving the team to a higher level of existence. At least we would have had a coach in house who knew how to maintain the gears of excellence. BTW, it wasn't easy to coach the Steelers for the first few years that Cowher was on the job. The franchise had stumbled badly at the end of the 80's and needed to regain it's footing. He managed to do that in a very timely manner.
So, using your own logic: It will be hard for Cowher to win because instead of Polamalu, Joey Porter and Casey Hampton, he has Kerry Rhodes, Jenkins and Calvin Pace. And Shanahan will find it difficult because he has to substitute Clemens/Ratliff/?, Keller and Thomas Jones for Elway, Shannon Sharpe and Terrell Davis. I think your point is well taken. It's just more evidence that you really have no better chance to win with a successful retread.
Cowher is different, because he has the experience already of replacing a fading 4-3 in Pittsburgh with a new 3-4 of his own design. He's already gone through the process of sorting through the trash, some of it beloved by the fans, and coming out the other end with a fresh product that works. It took him as long as it did to win a Super Bowl finally because he was an ex-defensive coordinator and it took him FOREVER to find his QB. Neil O'Donnell, Kordell Stewart, Mike Tomczak, Tommy Maddox, BEN ROETHLISBERGER, bang. Shanahan was handed a great talent assortment, but it was finding Terrell Davis (which he did) that made the Broncos a Super Bowl winner.
I think I'd much rather have an NFL coordinator than a college head coach, as I think we've learned from Lou Holtz and Steve Spurrier. College is largely about recruiting, which is why guys like Pete Carroll are more suited for it than the NFL. It's a matter of getting superior talent on the field and not screwing it up. Quite frankly the slew of available retreads hadn't done anything remotely positive of late. Shanahan specifically comes to mind as a guy who has engineered collapse after collapse despite playing 4 games each season against the Chiefs and Raiders and having a high powered offense. I see Cowher as a guy who has very little to prove. I don't see that being much of a recipe for success. -X-
there are far more coordinators or position coaches who have become successful head coaches than successful head coaches who have repeated that success with multiple teams, so the route of going for the coordinator or position coach is the more logical way to go. granted, there are more coordinators and position coaches who have failed as head coaches than succeeded, but that isn't what is being argued. what's being argued is that going for an established head coach over a coordinator is the better way to go, and that just isn't so. all great coaches started as a coordinator or position coach, so you can't simply dismiss that route. hiring the wrong coordinator as coach is the problem, not hiring a coordinator. one of the last times we went for a experienced head coach, we suffered through the worst two years in Jets history, so that practice ain't the cats meow either.
over rating the guy a bit here, me thinks!! although ryan may be a good defensive coordinator, i doubt genius applies to him. baltimore had a great defense long before ryan showed up to take over the defense...
I was thinking, I have a good feeling about this move that I did not have the last three HC signings. Fwiw!
Yea a dumb Idea. I mean look at the two teams int he superbowl. Its a good thing that Pittsburgh and Arizona went with proven coaches instead of coordinators that had no proven track record. Wait? Your telling me they hired assistants? They still had success? That this article and the thread along with it is a huge steaming pile of dog shit? Wow, I'm extremely supprised at that. :grin:
Compared to Herm and Mangini the guy is in the Genius camp... No not technically a genius but, when you talk Defense and DC's He's at or near the top and respected by players... Mangini and Herm were not at this level at all.. And back to the articlke - Mr Mathew tries to compare Mangini coaching the Pats with Rex coaching the Ravens... Mangini did it for 1 year, players questioned him and the Pats did make some coaching tweaks that year.... FAR FAR cry here... I'm not exaggerating anything one way that Wallace Mathews didn't do the other.... Then again, I don't get paid like this Idiot.
To those berating me (jackass?) and disagreeing with Matthews, I think his point is, and what I agree with, is that this template has not worked with the JETS, and the only time they were successful were with 2 proven coaches that had control - Weeb and Parcells. The comparisons to what coaches did or didn't do with other teams are inconsequential - he is talking about what the JETS have done over their history and how it has worked out (or, more correctly, has not worked out) for them. As someone else pointed out, Johnson and company has not let any coaches pick their own staff, and how has that worked out? It seems the Ryan hire is falling into the same pattern, and that was what Matthews was driving at.
Kotite was 7-2 to start the '94 season, then there was some controversy about him leaving the next year and the team fell apart. That's bad, but he wasn't really a 'failure' yet... well, he was probably a failure, but it's not something that was readily apparent.
When you pick anyone without a proven track record as a HC it amounts to a crapshoot. You hope that the pieces fall into place and communication is high. Among the last 4 teams we have watched: Head Coaching experience is non-existent, and only 1/2 had any or limited OC/DC experience, (With 3/4 of the teams below, the QB pos is solid and QB/HC/OC are on same page). The common thread is that they were mentored within successful and winning organizations that dominated the league with innovation and talent. Usually on both sides of the ball, like Reid, Harbaugh and Whisenhut. Ravens = Harbaugh = No Coordinator experience. Comes from the Eagles organization. [Argument: The Defense carried Ravens in 2008]. Steelers = Tomlin = Limited (1 yr) DC experience. Most experience was coaching LBs/DBs with M Kiffin in Tampa after Herm Edwards left. Cardinals = Whisenhut = 2 yrs OC experience. Most of his experience is with the very successfull organization that is the Pittsburgh Steelers Eagles = Reid = No OC Experience. A QBs coach and Most Important Assistant to Holmgren at Green Bay. SB winners per listed usually are fat, over-contented, burned-out, overpaid men who are seeking one more shot at the limelight or cannot get the coaching bug out of their system. Parcells, Holmgren and Vermiel (who actually won in St Louis on his return- if you count his SB appearance in Philadelphia after a long absence) possibly are exceptions. Has Ryan come from such an organization, on the defensive side the answer is an unqualified YES. On the O-side, he probably needs an inside (Callahan)/outside influence. Again a prior offensive coordinator/coach/student with experience inside a masterful organizations is, IMO, the key. Whether that is an OC, although logical and important, is irrelevant. Maybe the writer/muck raker would be happy with the following: Ditka for Offensive Coordinator! The Ryan-Ditka express is back in business!
There is no template or pattern - Rex Ryan is Worlds different than Herm... Comparing Mangini's rise from Ball boy to 1 year of mixed review DC does not equal Rex Ryan either... Just stupid to try to draw these parallels... We don't even know how much input in to the staff Ryan has yet we go off the wall drwing comparisons???????? Besides the fact that there really were no - No Doubt All World Bill Parcells options out there- Shanny has hasn't won in forever and hasn't succeded buying the Groceries - Billick and Fassel aren't in the same league And Cowher wasn't coaching... I don't even think Gruden is near the league Mathews assums is easily out there to pluck... Besides the fact he came to the table late and the Jets Loved and probably commited to Ryan already. Is that all about Cowher????? JEZUS!!!!!
