Let the off season begin.

I was trying to show him that all these coaches getting hired, and lumped into a certain HCs tree is ridiculous. Example: Matt LaFleur is being said as a McVay coaching tree, yet he started with the Browns, and then the Falcons. So if Matt LaFleur is from the McVay coaching tree. Then Arians is from the Tomlin coaching tree. It's the same many of the coaches that people like to put into a certain coaching tree. They didn't start with them.

 

This.

There is no definition for what counts as being in a coaching tree. Usually it's "if you were ever associated with a coach who has a rep for having a coaching tree, you are in their coaching tree".

Also, the Steelers seem to have a philosophy of hiring older coaches / coordinators. Our best coach since the 70s (LeBeau) was a failed HC who got promoted too far. I personally like this strategy because these guys were usually good coordinator which is why they got HC jobs. I think Haley was Ben's best OC (although he seems to be hard to get along with). It's also why I liked the Smith hire when it happened...although it wasn't as good as I'd hoped (thought certainly an improvement from the very low bar with Canada).

 

It's odd to praise the two cases here that missed the playoffs and penalize the one that made them.

Tomlin clearly had faults. But some people try way too hard to try to make it so everything he ever did was terrible. There's more than one "TDS" IMO.

 

??

Teller wasn't that good. A poor man's McCormick and I do mean poor.

 

I would have like to see Smith once with a good Qb that wasn't over the hill, but that is not in the cards, and he is gone. I just hope we move forward, and do it correctly.

 

I'm also not a fan of the coaching tree talk. But here's a question. Whose coaching tree is worse: Tomlin who never had anyone branch off to interview, or Bellicheck whose coordinators were snapped up everywhere to almost zero success?

I was looking up a list of names and accomplishments (or lack of) to post, and saw an SI article titled The Sad History of the Bill Belichick Coaching Tree. I don't know if I can post links so I'll just say that it pretty much sums up my point.

 

It's a good question.

And I think it's also a reflection of the hiring strategies.

BB hired younger guys. And since he was pretty clearly the best coach and gm in the league, there was a lot of hype around getting young coaches who they hoped learned something.

We hired old guys who'd been around. So there was less hype around them. I'm sure Butler could have failed as a HC as well as guys from BBs tree did. But it didn't make sense to hire an end of career guy who was good at scheming up pressure.

Same reason Wiz was attractive to the Cards as a HC, but no one wanted Grimm for more than a line coach. He retired a year or two later IIRC.

But even if someone believes that these trees exist, why does it matter? The job of a HC is to get his team to win. That's why BB was a better HC than MT.

Not because he was hypothetically seeding the rest of the league with good HCs (I agree with you that it's not clear that was the case).

 

Disagree BB was a good GM. He couldn't draft a WR worth a spit (Brady is probably still cursing him). And his drafts in the last five years were pathetic. ( he did draft a few good OL though).

 

He was a great HC, and not so great GM when it came to drafting.

 

It's funny, because I think he was a better GM than he was a coach (and I think he's the best coach of the UFA+Cap era).

Because he was "the king" of not paying guys for what they had done in the past. And seemed to always let guys walk at just about the right time. I think he was ruthless with contracts and focused on "what am I going to get out of you this contract".

Re: WRs, I think he was correct not to cave to the pressure of paying for a great WR when he had the GOAT QB. Particularly since "throw it to Gronk every play" seemed to be kind of a cheat code. I think he specifically wanted a whole bunch of WR2s and WR3s to force Brady to throw to who was actually open vs. having an elite security blanket like AB.

He also had the advantage of having a QB that was willing to play well below what his true market value was. Which is certainly a big advantage when constructing a roster.

I tend to believe that drafting good players is at least as much about chance as it is a repeatable a skill...but maybe I'm in the minority here.

 

The only guy from Belichick's tree that had a winning record in the NFL was Bill O'Brien.

 

bill had brady that made him look like a genius. bill sucked in cleveland. he wasn't good after brady. he did know how to cheat though.

 

Tomlin and Belichick had one thing in common, they are not "system" guys. They were culture and tone setting first. BB kind of ran different crap every week, especially on defense. Tomlin shifted his defense to align with the skills of the roster. Same on offense.

So you pluck a guy from either organization and unless they have the same force of personality that allowed them to connect with players and motivate them to perform at a high level....there's nothing else there.

Where, in contrast, look at the broad Shanahan-McVay trees or Fangio on defense. Those guys are all a lot of really good things in terms of coaches...but they run a "system" that, in theory, can be taught and learned. So, if you hire the chief coffee runner for McVay, in theory, you have now brought that playbook and that teaching style into your organization.

I'm not explaining this well. But I think many coaches that do not have a good coaching tree, despite success as a coach, it is about the fact that what they are doing is unique to them and can not be replicated.