Mike Vrabel Hired As Head Coach

[deeluxx3]

the thing about coordinators is that, more than anyone it seems like, if they suck in one place, they could just as easily thrive in another

 

Schwartz was an abysmal DC for us. Now he's the man. Even Haley did some good stuff in Pitt. It's a crapshoot in a lot of ways

[TitanLegend]

15 minutes ago, KingTitan said:

Fair enough about your issue with the rumored guys. 

But all the guys you mentioned have flaws, been fired for failures, or currently under contract with other teams. 

Not saying anything against you or your thoughts but couldn't it be said your choices are just as horrible. 

I'm sure you could point to reasons for each person being fired or for regression with their players but so could someone in defense of the rumored candidates. 

I just don't get how they are terrible, mainly because their not the guy you would have picked. 

 

The difference between the guys I listed and the rumored guys is the guys I listed all have significant success on their resume. Warinner is probably the only guy who has similar success to the guys I listed, and like I said while he's good at what he does, what he does has not translated to the NFL level at all over the years.

There's not a guy I love at OC honestly, but I think there's plenty who offer much more than Day.

I would be very happy with any of the guys I listed at DC. I also would not be opposed to an NFL position coach who has a strong resume(or a college DC with a strong resume). Perry does not fit that mold though. I would hire Lou Spanos as DC from our current staff(not saying I want Spanos, just saying I would take him over Perry) before I would even look at Perry. Spanos at least had success in improving an awful UCLA defense and has done decently overall I think in coaching our linebackers. Perry's biggest claim to fame seems to me to be that Charles Woodson was great under him..but Charles Woodson was great under every coach he played for. Hell, I would just keep LeBeau if our next best option is Perry.

As far as OL coach I've made it clear that if Grimm wants to come back and he's not retained that it's probably one of, if not the biggest mistake Vrabel will make in his coaching hires. Grimm is a top tier offensive line coach and you're not realistically finding anyone better than him, and you'll be EXTREMELY lucky if you find someone as good, because Mike Munchak ain't leaving Pittsburgh and Bill Callahan ain't leaving Washington.

I'll go a little more indepth with the OL coaches I listed outside of Grimm and why I like them since they're lesser known to most people:

Frye has experience coaching both spread and pro style offensive lines, and has a long line of success coaching pro style offensive lines. Currently is the run game coordinator and OL coach at Boston College so there's a connection there.

Grimes just became the offensive coordinator at BYU but prior to that coached very good pro style offensive lines at LSU, and has been coaching offensive lines since 1998, with a great amount of success at practically every stop. Like Frye he's also coached in option/spread offenses as well, but made his name for himself with physical, pro style lines.

Rick Dennison is another guy who made a name for himself by coaching offensive lines, his case being in Denver in the early 2000s where Mike Shanahan's zone blocking schemes thrived under Dennison's coaching of the o-line. He also has offensive coordinator experience, and was the QB coach under Kubiak in Baltimore in Flacco's best year of his career.

Neil Callaway is a guy I know pretty well because during his tenure at Georgia he produced some of the nastiest(in a good way) offensive lines I've seen at the college level. Georgia could line up on the ball and beat the absolute dog **** out of you play after play when he was coaching their o-lines. He's also a guy with experience in different systems as he's coached the USC offensive lines the past two years and was in Western Kentucky under Petrino and then Brohm after that.

So there's some really good candidates for o-line coach I think if Grimm does want to go back to retirement, but again I stress if he wants to come back, retaining him is pretty much a must. The development of Lewan and Conklin under him is nothing short of fantastic, and the work he's done with 2 guards that no one else wanted should be far more commended than what it has been.

O-line play is my favorite thing in football. Vrabel can honestly earn a lot of leeway and trust from me if he makes the right call on an o-line coach, because trenches(on both sides) are the most important aspect of football(short of maybe QB). We've got two incredible tackles thanks in large part to the teaching of Grimm, and if we could get him some talent to work with at guard our offensive line can be orgasmic. It kind of already is in pass blocking, but we can reach that level in run blocking as well with Grimm at the helm, and if he does decide to retire, there's some guys who could replace him and still do a good job IMO. Warinner(and I feel like I'm honestly harping on Warinner too much because the reporting seems to have been wrong) is not one of those guys, IMO.

I will say that of these hires, Warinner would probably be the guy I give most leeway too because he's been undeniably successful at coaching spread offensive lines. I'd just have to hope that he can adapt to the NFL style of offensive line play.

[VY]

1 hour ago, TitanLegend said:

If we hire Perry as DC along with these other staff rumors I might already be on the fire Vrabel train.

What a disaster.

We need a timeout button in this new forum. 

DUDE. Come on. 

[TitanLegend]

Just now, VY said:

We need a timeout button in this new forum. 

DUDE. Come on. 

No, I won't "come on". I'm not going to sit back and be accepting of firing a coach because he refused to make improvements to his staff just so we can hire a head coach who hires an even worse staff. And no one else should be, either. I hope and pray these reports are inaccurate.

This forum damn near had a heart attack when we hired Mike Mularkey because of his past failures(which I found to be completely justifiable, for the record), yet we hired a defensive coordinator whose defense just finished worst in the NFL as our head coach because he's supposed to be a great leader and is going to build a great staff around him, and each report of a potential staff member has been awful so far.

I've never wished more than now that the "sources" reporters have on our team are awful so that this can all turn out to be just wrong reporting.

[ShupacTakur]

6 minutes ago, VY said:

We need a timeout button in this new forum. 

DUDE. Come on. 

He's not wrong. None of these rumored hires are anything close to inspiring. 

[TitanLegend]

Reports are Haley is seemingly a done deal to be Browns OC, so one potential coaching staff candidate off the list.

[-Hope-]

1 hour ago, TitanLegend said:

Day apparently isn't to blame for Ohio State's bad offense, and it's JT Barrett's own fault that he sucks, not his QB coach apparently, but no one can tell me what exactly he did well there.

OC: DeFilipo, Haley, McAdoo, Clements, LaFleur, Chudzinski, Morton, Kubiak, Roman

people laid it out pretty plainly, you just didn't feel like listening. go back a few pages and read again.

also, if you'd honestly prefer haley, mcadoo, or roman over some new blood then maybe i should be glad you're upset with these options lol

[VY]

17 minutes ago, ShupacTakur said:

He's not wrong. None of these rumored hires are anything close to inspiring. 

So starting the "Fire Vrabel" train on the day he's formally announced, before he's assembled the staff, and before his team has played a single down makes sense? 

Sorry, no. That's very very wrong. It's irrational and unreasonable. 

[TitanLegend]

Just now, -Hope- said:

people laid it out pretty plainly, you just didn't feel like listening. go back a few pages and read again.

also, if you'd honestly prefer haley, mcadoo, or roman over some new blood then maybe i should be glad you're upset with these options lol

Laid what out? All I saw was he apparently isn't the reason for anything bad but is apparently the reason for everything good with the offense, which I don't quite understand, but I mean hey, if that's the case, guess he'll be incredible. It's Urban Meyer's offense in large part anyway. It's cool if he brought in some new changes to the scheme that Urban Meyer liked, but as far as I'm concerned that's not exactly enough to be a successful OC. And in his NFL experience, the SF QBs were largely awful(everyone points out how "good" Kaepernick was in 16, and while he undoubtedly should have a job in the NFL, he wasn't anything worth noting in 16. a lot of that is just garbage/BS numbers. Kaep did take care of the ball well that year, but that was just about it). In 2015 Bradford and Sanchez were just mediocre. If the best thing about Day is he gave Urban Meyer some concepts that he liked it's pretty damn hard to get me excited over it.

Haley, McAdoo and Roman, while having their fair share of faults, have all run successful NFL offenses, on their own.

[-Hope-]

17 minutes ago, TitanLegend said:

Laid what out? All I saw was he apparently isn't the reason for anything bad but is apparently the reason for everything good with the offense, which I don't quite understand, but I mean hey, if that's the case, guess he'll be incredible. It's Urban Meyer's offense in large part anyway. It's cool if he brought in some new changes to the scheme that Urban Meyer liked, but as far as I'm concerned that's not exactly enough to be a successful OC. And in his NFL experience, the SF QBs were largely awful(everyone points out how "good" Kaepernick was in 16, and while he undoubtedly should have a job in the NFL, he wasn't anything worth noting in 16. a lot of that is just garbage/BS numbers. Kaep did take care of the ball well that year, but that was just about it). In 2015 Bradford and Sanchez were just mediocre. If the best thing about Day is he gave Urban Meyer some concepts that he liked it's pretty damn hard to get me excited over it.

Haley, McAdoo and Roman, while having their fair share of faults, have all run successful NFL offenses, on their own.

of course that's all you saw, because your mind is made up and you didn't bother to actually engage with what people were saying. as the QB coach and passing game coordinator, he helped a clearly limited quarterback have far and away his best season since tom herman left OSU.

it's honestly incredible to me that you're acting like guys who: 

1. have two total years running an offense: one leading a talent-laden USC to the 39th-ranked offense in college football and then later running the 28th-ranked offense in the NFL

2. led the bills to the 24th and 28th ranked offenses in the nfl, and was given one shot to call plays with aaron goddamn rogers and blew it so bad that mike mccarthy took over 12 games into the season

3. has killed the passing game basically wherever he's gone

are obviously better candidates for this job simply because they've been NFL offensive coordinators before. that sort of resistance to change and new ideas is why NFL execs keep hiring these garbage retreads over and over again instead of looking somewhere new. josh mcdaniels and sean mcvay, and that's just off the absolute top of my head right now, both had even lighter resumes than ryan day before they were hired as offensive coordinators. at some point you have to try something new.

and listen, i don't have extremely strong feelings about ryan day or know any better whether he'll work out than you do. but the same old formula of hiring these middle-aged retreads who have had their shot and still not done anything is tiring. out of your list, kubiak, defilippo and lafleur are clearly superior candidates. the rest? meh.

[dtait93]

To have player/coaching experience under Belichick, Cowher, Meyer, and O'brien (bringing PSU back to relevancy after the Paterno situation shouldn't be minimalized) is pretty remarkable. Hopefully he can instill that greatness here.

[Dr.Doom52]

I remember a time when we(not all but defiantly a majority) thought we won the off season...WE GOT WHIZ!!!!!

I also remember a time that I personally thought we would be a laughing stock because in the draft not one WR had been taken...we had our choice of any WR in the draft...we took a RB from basically a mid major....we already had Lendale White, couldn't believe it!!! I may be alone on this one, but I recall a ton of people pissed over taking CJ over a WR. 

You don't know until the games are played...until then it's all discussion and no one should get overly emotional either way, this offseason will be judged after the '19 season. 

[SerenityNow]

Anytime you're coming in with fresh ideas and out of the box thinking you're going to be met with your fair share of doubters.  A Ryan Day hire would be against the norm of what most teams usually do, and that's exactly why I love it. Of course there's a risk there, but I'd personally rather take that risk than be saddled with another NFL lifer that is tied to his system even if it's not working here, because he's had success elsewhere with it.  All these types of coaches end up coming undone because of their own egos and inability to adjust to their personnel. I think Day has shown that ability to adjust his offense based on what he was able to do with Boston College from his year with Andre Williams to his year without him.  A coach that plays to his team's strengths and builds an offense that fits them as opposed to the other way around sounds pretty great to me. Will it work? I have no idea, but I'd rather swing for the fences than play it safe just because a guy has called plays in the NFL before.

[TitanLegend]

3 minutes ago, -Hope- said:

of course that's all you saw, because your mind is made up and you didn't bother to actually engage with what people were saying. as the QB coach and passing game coordinator, he helped a clearly limited quarterback have far and away his best season since tom herman left OSU.

it's honestly incredible to me that you're acting like guys who: 

1. have two total years running an offense: one leading a talent-laden USC to the 39th-ranked offense in college football and then later running the 28th-ranked offense in the NFL

2. led the bills to the 24th and 28th ranked offenses in the nfl, and was given one shot to call plays with aaron goddamn rogers and blew it so bad that mike mccarthy took over 12 games into the season

3. has killed the passing game basically wherever he's gone

are obviously better candidates for this job simply because they've been NFL offensive coordinators before. that sort of resistance to change and new ideas is why NFL execs keep hiring these garbage retreads over and over again instead of looking somewhere new. josh mcdaniels and sean mcvay, and that's just off the absolute top of my head right now, both had even lighter resumes than ryan day before they were hired as offensive coordinators. at some point you have to try something new.

1. Scored 22.1 PPG with an offense that was starting Josh McCown at QB, Robby Anderson and Jermaine Kearse as his starting WRs, Seferian-Jenkins at TE and an o-line of Beachum-Carpenter-Johnson-Winter-Shell. The only player on the Jets offense that anyone has ever heard of is Matt Forte who had the worst season of his career and was 31/32 years old. 2. You mean he blew it so hard the Packers finished 5th, 3rd, 6th in scoring offense when he was OC? Mike McCarthy takes over play calling from all of his OCs at some point. He's a control freak and Aaron Rodgers hates him but loves Clements. 3. Not sure who this is supposed to be.

New blood that has significant success as a position coach is cool. When their only real success comes from a Boston College stint where they had a really nice run game doesn't do much for me. The guy we hire as offensive coordinator is going to have practically 100% control of the offense. This isn't a hire we can afford to mess up.

The McDaniels and McVay comparisons are incredibly inaccurate. McDaniels took over an offense with a HoF QB in place and an offensive system that had been in place for several years(and a system he coached in as QB coach for a couple seasons).

Sean McVay took over an offense that had been in place for a couple years under Jay Gruden(an offensive coach/it was his system) that he'd been coaching in as tight end coach for a couple years.

If Mike Vrabel were an offensive guy bringing his own offensive scheme or whatever hiring an inexperienced offensive mind would be one thing. When he's a defensive guy with 0 experience coaching offense it's an extremely high risk hire.

Inexperience over the entire coaching staff sounds like a surefire way to fail. McVay is lauded for doing so well with such little experience but he had Wade Phillips as DC, John Fassel as ST coach, Joe Barry as LB coach and Aarom Kromer as OL coach among others. All guys with coordinating and or head coaching experience. He may have been inexperienced but he had one of the most experienced coaching staffs in football to help him.

[TitanSS]

Ed Warriner has consistently produced NFL linemen with Ohio State that have translated well into the pros. That statement is just false.