Let’s imagine Todd Bowles is fired at the end of the season. More surprising and quicker firings have occurred in the NFL. Bowles claim to his job right now is “the team isn’t as bad as everyone expected” and that may not be enough to keep the chair from falling out as a few Bryce Petty and Christian Hackenberg weeks await us. Which names pass a basic checklist that we can get hyped for, if he were replaced?
We’re going to assume for this exercise that coordinators are coordinating on all of their teams and not just understudies for the head coach, even if the head coach does call plays for their side of the team.
Let’s get this straight, head coaching is not coordinating. Your job as a head coach is noticeably different than as a coordinator. The head coach is macro-managing, like the General Manager does. They’re looking over the team and figuring out what the execution should be each week based on that. How to attack opposing teams as a whole, how to utilize their team as a whole. It isn’t their job to figure out the best way to use the quarterback specifically unless they decide to take over play-calling duties.
You will not know who a bad head coach is until they’ve been one. It’s a peter principle thing. The job is unique and there isn’t a way to evaluate a coach for it because no other coaching position has the same expectations. They might require coordinating a group of people, but it’s in a different set of tasks with a different goal. The head coaching job generally consists of having a hands-on approach to talent acquisition, making depth chart decisions along with regular self-scouting, and the ability to predict what your opponents will do against you in order to counter that, and then counter their counter to that; but in reference to game-planning rather than just individual plays and schemes.
So what would a potential checklist for finding a good head coach consist of if it’s a different role than being a good coordinator?
The Patented Edward Gorelik Checklist (First Draft)
- Have Run A Team That Had Multiple Top 12 DVOA (Defense-Adjusted Value Over Average) Finishes
- Have Experience Turning A Bad Unit Into A Good Unit
- Have Been Good With Different Casts
- Optional: Are They Young? Were They Ever A Young Head Coach? (Median coaching age right now is 53)
I can show you light. 