Why are so many head coaches so awful at their jobs?

[thebestever6]

I think the talent as a whole has gotten watered down tremendously.  Especially in the trenches. 

I mean I used to watch football and there'd be so many,mediocre head coaches that had success because they had good offensive and defensive lines. 

Now having a complete oline is just as rare as landing a franchise qb. When those 2 things become so rare you have more coaches showing  their true colors so they can't  hang around to be mediocre.

[Kiwibrown]

 are over stretched in responsibilities? many seem to be crucial in scouting, drafting and Free Agency are there workloads too high? 

[mission27]

Because its hard

[Iamcanadian]

On 12/6/2017 at 1:54 AM, lancerman said:

Because it's an incredibly hard job. Really think about it all but 9 of the current NFL head coaches were hired on their current team in the last 5 years. That means for whatever reason 23 of the current head coaches were either not head coaches or removed from a prior HC position at some point in the last 5 seasons. 

Bill Belichick, Sean Payton, Mike Tomlin, and Mike McCarthy are the only coaches in the league that can say they've been on their respective team for at least 10 years. 

All four of them have one thing in common. Elite QB and Super Bowls. 

A year ago Ben McAdoo took a 6-10 team and made them an 11-5 team that made the playoffs and everyone was excited about his team being Super Bowl contenders this year until the first game of the season. Consistency at the HC position is hard to find. Plain and simple. 

Excellent points and I agree 100% and it often seems unfair when a HC has one poor season and gets canned. Oh well, BB got canned by Cleveland, so it can happen to anybody.

[Warhorse]

20 hours ago, Kip Smithers said:

The truth is we don’t know what truly makes a great HC or a very good one because we base it on results. I think we over value their importance and just play the result. A few years ago we were praising Todd Bowles that dissipated. McAdoo was getting praise last year and now he is a laughing stock. I mean weren’t people saying Sean Payton should be fired? We honestly had people saying 2 years ago Coughlin should be fired now I am certain just recently some people say “they should’ve never fired Coughlin”. Very very few coaches we know are good. The rest lol we don’t know nearly as much as we think we know 

[TecmoSuperJoe]

20 hours ago, Kip Smithers said:

The truth is we don’t know what truly makes a great HC or a very good one because we base it on results. I think we over value their importance and just play the result. A few years ago we were praising Todd Bowles that dissipated. McAdoo was getting praise last year and now he is a laughing stock. I mean weren’t people saying Sean Payton should be fired? We honestly had people saying 2 years ago Coughlin should be fired now I am certain just recently some people say “they should’ve never fired Coughlin”. Very very few coaches we know are good. The rest lol we don’t know nearly as much as we think we know 

Well...just to be clear Mike Singletary was a complete clown and should never have been a head coach. 

[mission27]

21 hours ago, Kip Smithers said:

Oh my goodness stop it with this.

I mean tbf, regardless of whether McAdoo was a good coach, its undeniable that the Giants are a horrible team with no talented players left uninjured and Eli is seriously over the hill.  Vince Lombardi could've maybe gone 5-11 with that roster. 

[Teen Girl Squad]

5 hours ago, mission27 said:

Because its hard

 

I think it is a fair caveat to mention that between reduced practice time, rawer prospects and a much more schematically complex league, that coaching is indeed much harder than it was in the past.

[khaosoy]

It's the sort of profession that forgoes true talent over-familiarity, favoritism, and loyalty. Professional sports is rarely innovative. I think the same goes for all management positions. This is one of the reasons why a new system or coaching strategy can be so dominant for so long. It takes teams forever to come up with something better.

[LETSGOBROWNIES]

10 hours ago, mission27 said:

Because its hard

This.

Fans get the luxury of armchair quarterbacking decision after the results are know, etc., but many don't care to acknowledge that split second decisions under pressure isn't easy.  

For anyone who disagrees, go sign up and coach somewhere, there's a potentially lucrative career awaiting you where you have your inevitable success.

[ILoveTheVikings]

Because coaching is incredibly hard and these guys are already the best in the world.

[Malik]

On 12/7/2017 at 6:23 AM, khaosoy said:

It's the sort of profession that forgoes true talent over-familiarity, favoritism, and loyalty. Professional sports is rarely innovative. I think the same goes for all management positions. This is one of the reasons why a new system or coaching strategy can be so dominant for so long. It takes teams forever to come up with something better.

It's amazing how many people in front offices value things like "this guy has a strong handshake and looked me in the eye" when it comes to hiring people. Or simply coming from a football family. Rob Ryan was a defensive coordinator for over a decade while only having 2 seasons where his defenses landed in the top HALF in PPG.

[hudson3010]

• this holds true in a lot of other different subjects (politics, business companies, etc). Everywhere there is always a lot of incompetent people at very important positions making very stupid decisions.

• incompetence in hiring: promotions that make no sense (tomsula), nepotism, conservativeness that leads mediocre “experienced/respected” coaches (john fox, jeff fisher, marvin lewis) hanging around, failure to identify which OC/DCs can be good HCs

• arrogant coaches that want to push their own schemes and not design them to the specific talent of the roster

 

 

[Iamcanadian]

Remember, BB got fired by Cleveland, so retreads are not always not worth a look, especially if they had a winning record at least one season. Sometimes owners simply have no patience and fire decent HC's. Andy Reid, Pete Carroll, etc. etc.

[Jakuvious]

A lot of valid points have already been made in this thread. The job is difficult, nepotism in hiring doesn't help, neither does fear of innovation.

But honestly, one of the biggest things to remember is that it's all completely relative. Coaches are in direct competition with each other. In a results-based evaluation (because let's be honest, ours and the media's evaluation of coaches is almost entirely on statistical results like wins), when they compete against each other directly, someone has to suck. If you take the top 32 head coaches in NFL history, randomly assign them each a current NFL team, some of them are going to look like they suck just because of relativity mixed with luck mixed with the fine line between success and failure. So many head coaches fail, and are then labeled bad at their job as a result, because someone has to fail. For one team to go 13-3, 16 other teams had to go 3-13 against them. You can't have successful head coaches without failing head coaches.This isn't to excuse the entirely valid faults that some head coaches have. But I think to suggest that an oddly high number of head coaches are bad is misleading. A certain number of coaches have to fail. That's just how competition and results based evaluation combine to work. There aren't a lot or so many or whatever. There are exactly as many failing head coaches as there should be.