Are NFL teams more interested in coaches with experience or new faces with fresh ideas? Len Pasquarelli National Football PostJanuary 05, 2014, 07:00 AM EST..
Less than a week into the NFL’s annual firing-and-hiring cycle (forget that the Houston Texans got a jump on things, canning Gary Kubiak nearly a month ago, since the real purge-and-splurge doesn’t begin in earnest until the season ends), and the momentum may be swinging back, ever so slightly, toward the old days. With two of the half-dozen vacancies filled, the hiring scoreboard shows a 1-1 tie between the new guys (Bill O’Brien of Houston) and the old ones (Tampa Bay and Lovie Smith). On face, that’s not as insignificant as it might seem. The league has skewed dramatically toward fresh faces and new ideas, as owners try to attract a younger demographic, and the result has been a divergence from the long-held practice of bringing back “retreads” for second and even third chances. Case in point: At the outset of the 2013 season, only seven of the league’s 32 sideline bosses had the entry “previous NFL head coach” on their resumes. One of them, the vastly overrated (at least without John Elway around) Mike Shanahan, was fired. Of the other six, half of them have their teams as No. 1 or No. 2 playoffs seeds. John Fox, in his second incarnation, owns the top seed in the AFC. The best record in the NFC belongs to Seattle, coached by Pete Carroll, in his third go-round. Bill Belichick’s New England Patriots are second-seeded in the AFC. It hasn’t exactly gone ignored that, after winning only two games a year ago, Kansas City rattled off a 9-0 start and finished with an 11-5 mark under Andy Reid, in his first season after a14-year tenure in Philadelphia. “Retreads” are still more popular in tire stores than with league owners, and recycling remains the domain of tree-huggers and not the guys who sign NFL paychecks, but the successes of former coaches who were brought back for encores isn’t unnoticed, either. Said one veteran Chiefs’ defender: “We’ve mostly had veteran guys here and it seemed to work better than when we had (Todd) Haley. I don’t know why. They just sort of know their way around, you know. There’s no breaking in period. There isn’t a big adjustment. They may be new (to the franchise) but they know the landscape. Andy came in here and it was like he just picked up where he left off in Philly.” And so, it seems, experience counts for something. Even if owners the last few years could have included “experienced need not apply” on the want-ads when seeking to make a coaching change. Certainly the quick successes and speed turnarounds the last several seasons by first-timers helped to fuel a “fresher is better” mindset. It didn’t hurt that four of the past six Super Bowl champions were led by first-time coaches, with Tom Coughlin the lone interloper. But with the quick hiring of Smith in Tampa Bay – and the sense that the Glazer family desperately placed a premium on experience (the only other “candidate” is said to have been Jon Gruden, who was not interested) after the failed experiments with Raheem Morris and Greg Schiano), momentum may be changing just a little. Owners tend to be inveterate copycats and, if the new-coach approach remains the prevailing trend, they aren’t just going to ignore, either, the turnarounds enacted by experienced coaches like Reid. Nor will some players. Peyton Manning, poised to win a fifth most valuable player award after his record-setting season, allowed last season that Fox’s presence was “a factor” in his decision to sign with the Broncos when he was a free agent. Former Arizona coach Ken Whisenhunt, currently San Diego offensive coordinator, seems to be in demand. In fact, some feel that “Wiz” is the top candidate in Detroit, where general manager Martin Mayhew is a onetime NFL teammate. Jim Caldwell, who had the unenviable task of following Tony Dungy in Indianapolis, is also on the “short lists” of a team or two. New England offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels, who was head coach in Denver for two seasons (2009-2010) before Fox, is one of the favorites for the Cleveland vacancy. There were even whispers to NFP from one franchise executive that, on the heels of a report that Jim Mora of UCLA could be a candidate in Texas, his owner asked about the onetime Atlanta and Seattle coach. There are, as well, several longtime coordinators who will merit interviews. Almost as many as candidates with no prior league experience. OK, so it’s not quite a groundswell for returning to the “good ol’ boys” network once so prevalent in the league. But just the return alone of Smith, who also interviewed for the Houston opening, suggests at least a small dent in the recent mindset that saw owners become infatuated with newcomers. Over the past three hiring cycles, just four of 20 head coach openings went to men with previous NFL experience. Not since the 2010 cycle – when Carroll, Shanahan and Chan Gailey in Buffalo filled all of the vacant slots – have there been more than two experienced coaches hired. In the last 10 seasons, only about one-third (18 of 53) jobs were filled by experienced coaches. There certainly seems a chance this year that Smith won’t be the only experienced coach to find a job. That doesn’t represent a wholesale change in the thinking – and, it seems, supply will outdistance demand for a while longer – but the pendulum may at least have been nudged a bit.
