It is a silly season in the NFL, that strange time of year when some teams are making runs at the Super Bowl, some are spending all their time in the training room trying desperately to get healthy and some are having fun trying to hire new coaches, having fired their own for various reasons.
If you are the Philadelphia Eagles, you let go of Chip Kelly because he had the temerity to wrest control over personnel decisions from the front office, build a team around what he valued and then proceed to miss the playoffs entirely. Ouch.
If you are the Tennessee Titans, you axed Ken Whisenhunt midseason because … well, he was 3-20 as coach and despite his reputation as a quarterback whisperer, the front office in Tennessee worried about how Whisenhunt, notorious for falling in love with statuesque pocket passers, would work to develop QB-of-the-future Marcus Mariota.
If you are the Cleveland Browns, you axed Mike Pettine and embattled GM Ray Farmar because you needed to clean house. Despite moderate talent on both offense and defense, the Browns never managed to gel from ownership downwards, and the shenanigans of Johnny Manziel certainly didn’t help ease any tension emanating from the Dawg Pound. Pettine was just 10-22 as Cleveland’s coach, and Farmar got into trouble with the NFL for illegally texting down to the sidelines from his booth.
If you are the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, no one knows why you fired Lovie Smith this season as opposed to last. Jameis Winston dragged a crappy Bucs squad to a 6-10 record, and Smith’s defense made significant strides compared to the abysmal 2-14 season that netted them Winston last year. But the Glazers are in a bit of a sporting rut, with their ownership of Manchester United coming under increasing fire as Louis van Gaal pads his passing and possession stats without ever threatening an opposing goal. Methinks the Glazers signed the wrong coach termination order, having actually intended to sack van Gaal.
If you are the New York Giants, you didn’t even have to fire anyone, because Tom Coughlin, potentially seeing the writing on the wall and adding his own age into the equation, decided to resign. The two-time Super Bowl champion (I shudder to type those words) coach had not made the playoffs in four straight seasons.
And if you are the San Francisco 49ers, no one really knows why you hired Jim Tomsula, and no one really cares that you fired him either. For that matter, no one really knows why Jim Harbaugh got fired (sorry, “mutually agreed to part ways with the team”) in the first place, other than rumblings of a three-way power struggle between Jed York, Harbaugh and GM Trent Baalke. The situation in Santa Clara is dire, with a team just a few years removed from a Super Bowl appearance in dire need of a talent and coaching infusion.
The exciting part is how cyclical the silly season gets. The same hot-commodity coaches will shuttle around the country, playing teams against each other and hoping that they walk away with both riches and control over personnel decisions. Some teams will strike quickly and nail down their first-choice targets in a jiffy, while others will hem and haw and watch as the pool of potential candidates dries up around them before making an impulse purchase at the second-hand coaching market.
And in the end, if one pays attention long enough, one will notice that the teams that are hunting for coaches are almost always the same. The Browns, the Bucs, the Titans, the Jets, the Bears, the Dolphins — these teams have nuked coaches and started fresh twice each over the last four years. Twenty-two teams have changed head coaches over the last four years, nearly 70 percent of the entire league.
Continuity and coherence are long been undervalued in the “win now” NFL, but today they are particularly forgotten, and the results are fairly conclusive. Giving a coach too much job security or power is never a good thing, but at least giving him a chance to figure out what works for himself usually pays dividends, if he isn’t a total incompetent.
Lest we forget, the great Bill Belichick was fired by the Browns, and the Giants were inches away from firing Coughlin before he bailed himself out with timely Super Bowl victories. And while few to none of the coaches currently looking for work deserve the kind of respect accorded to Belichick and Coughlin, the fact remains that most NFL owners have very itchy trigger fingers. Axe a coach if he deserves it, not because you get impatient.
Speaking of coaches, ask Viggy Venkataraman for his theories on how the head coach of his beloved New England Patriots got a black eye at viggy ‘at’ stanford.edu.