Running "Half the coaches in the league are all but fired" commentary

I know the Bills just brought him back for the front office, but isn't Marv Levy a little old to be stalking the sidelines? He was my dad's HS basketball coach, and my dad just turned 71!

(Of course, with Paterno and Bowden still coaching college, who's to say?)

 

I like Haslett, to a point. I don't think he's a true winner, though. Most aren't, so it's not as if that's new. While I like a lot of coaches and feel that most hired are qualified, obviously not all are winners. Very few are.


I do see a trend I can't stand, and that's the firing of guys after either one crappy year or after just two full years in total. Apparently, if you don't make the playoffs, you might get fired - half of the teams out there that didn't make it in, killed coaches. And of the other half? 3 were in their first year, and 3 had taken their teams to a Super Bowl within the last five years.

So the Dennis Erickson trend continues.

 

I've heard too many reports about him, or his staff, letting mistakes go in practice. Not a details guy. So the Saints indicipline may and wild play not be all related to Bourbon street.

 

I never said the guy was great, I just felt like he wasn't worth shitting on. I said he was qualified and fit what they were looking for.

As I noted before, Sherman wasn't terribly well qualified either, and yet he was 57-39 and went to the playoffs 4 times in a row coming into this year.
Doesn't mean that Sherman's great, but winning is the end result of what everyone wants (I noted that I didn't feel it particularly fair for them to can him, but then again they probably felt like getting Childress was a foregone conclusion).
Doesn't mean that McCarthy is Sherman.
But I don't think it's particularly fair to just shit on the guy for a hopeless season in San Francisco with a rapid succession of shit QBs.

It's not about the one year wonder who makes things look good and never has a chance to be figured out. It's not about being the hot flash in the pan. And I'd certainly find him a whole fuckload more competent and capable to lead a team than guys like Ted Cottrell, Tim Lewis, or Gregg Williams, the first two of which get mentioned thanks to the Sherm Lewis rule but can't keep jobs as DCs half the time.

 

Sherman wasn't qualified to be GM, but he had a lot more experience and pedigree than McCarthy to be head coach. Let's not forget that McCarthy was pretty much a disaster in New Orleans too, so it's not as if we're judging him solely on one season with a rookie QB.

 

Sherman was a coordinator for one year, and had the dual title of TEs coach, honestly the least useful coach in the offensive staff. Seattle's OC, as well as Sherm Lewis in GB, has no offensive calling responsibility, so basically he was a caretaker.

He had three years as an assistant in the NFL. No, that's not more qualified than being in the league since 93.

Doesn't make him a better coach than Sherman, nor Sherman great. But Sherman was a nobody when hired on.


And I know you don't like McCarthy. I personally don't have tons and tons of love for the guy myself, especially as a head coach, but let's stop pretending about the "disaster" ideal. Only 2 rankings outside the top 10 in NO, an 18 and a 16, and got a fair amount worse with his departure. You can use the firing as a scapegoat like they did, to save their own jobs, but that doesn't work here anymore than it did against Sean Payton.

 

I don't care about McCarthy one way or the other, I'm just going by what I'm hearing, and I keep referring to how Peter King was shocked by the hire. I've never heard him say he was shocked that someone got a head coaching job before, so I think that's pretty significant. Given that the only things I've ever heard about the guy were bad, I don't see this being a move that should escape skepticism if not outright criticism. And I don't see the point in going strictly by rankings when it comes to New Orleans. We all know there was plenty of criticism regarding the scheme there and the lack of direction regarding the instruction of offensive playmakers and the overall offensive philosophy.

 

McCarthy's Brett's old QB coach in 99. Didn't last long, only with the org one year, and not one of Brett's better ones. That was whole Ray Rhodes experiment which went terribly wrong. Brett threw more picks than TDs that year.

 

Hold on. Go back and address that Sherman was obviously not pedigreed when he was hired, and certainly has less experience than McCarthy, since that was your issue with what I said.

And why not use offensive rankings? You don't think that comes up? It's the only useful statistic available. It's not invalidated "just 'cause."

Listen. I don't think the guy's God. I just think that calling him awful is absurd considering that there have been some notably bad, callable disasters like Dennis Erickson in the last few years.

 

You're right about McCarthy having more overall experience than Sherman did when he was hired, but all of Sherman's experience came within the Green Bay family. He was a known quantity to them and was obviously familiar with the system. The same obviously cannot be said of McCarthy.

Because a mediocre or even bad OC can end up with average rankings when you have enough talent, and we all know that New Orleans was blessed with an abundance of offensive talent when McCarthy was there. You certainly know also that there was a great deal of criticism regarding the offense in New Orleans and the perceived lack of progress or improvement.

The fact that there have been awful coaches in the league doesn't change the fact that this is a very questionable hire. Furthermore, I don't think anyone is guaranteeing that it means Green Bay will lose. I for one have been very careful to avoid stating that he will fail with the Packers, I'm just pointing out the fact that McCarthy doesn't have the background or reputation you normally see from people who are even interviewed for head coaching positions, much less hired. Note also that you haven't given even a single reason why the McCarthy hire might be legitimate. Yet you command us not to criticize it "just 'cause."