Its no secret that every NFL team wants to make a revolutionary hire at head coach, but something has gone terribly wrong in the NFL offseason 2019. Teams are failing by ignoring any and all experience.
NFL coaching hires are coming in fast and furious during this second round of the postseason and the early stages of the NFL offseason 2019. Every team is on the hunt for their own personal Sean McVay.
The Green Bay Packers chose former Tennessee Titans’ offensive coordinator Matt LaFleur. The Arizona Cardinals went off-board entirely by naming Kliff Kingsbury head coach. Tampa Bay signed the McVay before McVay in offensive guru Bruce Arians. The Browns went the route of young offensive genius as well, by naming Freddie Kitchens as head coach.
Denver jumped on the youth bandwagon, hiring former Bears defensive coordinator Vic Fangio. New York decided to do the opposite and give Adam Gase a second chance. His former team, the Dolphins, still are searching, along with the Cincinnati Bengals.
The final coaching vacancies won’t last long, but which side of the aisle will they fall. Several teams are going in more standard (outdated?) directions. But these hopefully revolutionary hires seem outlandish. Whatever happened to learning how to coach and moving up the ladder? Have these teams failed with revolutionary coaching hires? We won’t know until the NFL Offseason 2019 gives way to real football, so instead we debate.
Two brothers from New York, Dan Salem and Todd Salem, debate the NFL Offseason 2019 in today’s NFL Sports Debate.
Todd Salem:
Let’s start in Green Bay. Their new coach Matt LaFleur is 39 years old. He has been an NFL coordinator for two seasons and has never been a head coach of any team at any level. Kingsbury is also 39 years old. He, at least, has head coaching experience, though it was only at Texas Tech, where he went 35-40 over six seasons. Kitchens is 44 and was never even a coordinator before being installed midway through last season.
Arians isn’t a young guy like these others. He was the league’s guru before McVay and then retired in 2017 for health reasons. Apparently one season away was enough to bring him back to full strength. You can’t argue with his past success at Arizona or his decision to bring Todd Bowles in as defensive coordinator.
(Not to interrupt myself, but the Bowles hire is the best thing a team can do: downgrade a head coach into the position that gained him enough notoriety in the first place to be promoted to head coach.)
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I’d argue that the team Arians chose to return to leaves much to be desired; namely a useful franchise quarterback. But the Buccaneers may be onto something. When the rest of the league zigs, you zag.
Shouldn’t Green Bay, Arizona, and Cleveland be learning from the likes of Steve Wilks? The issue with Wilks wasn’t that he’s a defensive guy. The issue was he reportedly was completely out of his element as head coach, probably because he had no such experience and skipped too many steps up the learning ladder. McVay isn’t a formula; he’s an outlier.
I much prefer the route of giving a youngish former head coach a second chance or just go all-in on a former star like Arians. It may not work out for Arians because he chose the wrong franchise to join, but the plan from Tampa’s side of things seems sound.
Dan Salem:
I’m torn on which side of this argument to fall, because the only way veterans like Arians gain such experience is by getting a chance to coach in the first place. Giving a young coordinator or college coach who has proven something, no matter the sample size, a shot at the head coaching job is a great idea in principle.
Wilks proves it can fail. McVay proves it can work. To no ones surprise, both outcomes are true, with failure happening more often. Most successful people failed at first. That’s how they learned.
My personal preference is what the New York Jets did, and why I’m in the minority of people who are actually excited about them hiring Adam Gase. He is a young head coach who needed a change of environment and deserves a second chance. He’s already proven he can coach, but has yet to find the success of a veteran like Arians.
Gase can have longevity, while I seriously question how many years Arians will last after already retiring a season ago. Yet Tampa Bay also hired his replacement in Bowles, or at least a potential replacement. He too has experience and will soon deserve a second chance.
It scares me to promote a coordinator or college coach to head coach so quickly. The results are usually rocky, because the individual is learning on the job. Sometimes they are given enough time to figure things out. Other times they get axed immediately.
I like how the Browns kept things in house, but its a risk handing so much responsibility to someone with zero experience. The risk did not need to be taken by so many teams this offseason, because coaches like Gase, Bowles, Arians, and McCarthy were available. Yet the pickings were fairly slim, considering eight teams needed a new coach. If your risk is well calculated, then take it.