2014-15 NFL Coaching Carousel Thread

A national columnist once told me that a title buys you five years in the NFL and 10 in college. There are a couple exceptions (Chizik), but I think that's typically about right.

The only football coaches who are 100 percent safe after this season are Belichick and Carroll. Sean Payton might be close.

Both Harbaughs could lose their jobs (or leave on their own) for reasons that don't have much to do with coaching.

I think the only way Coughlin gets fired is if the Giants finish in last and he pushes for an extension, which I don't think will ever happen.

 

Bill James wrote in his managers book years ago that if you are at a place for ~10 years and things go bad, then -you- are the problem. I believe that is the case with Marvin Lewis, who can win nine or 10 games a season and become an object at rest.

 

I think lasting 10 years with the same team in the NFL is extremely difficult to do these days. You basically have to have prolonged success like Belichick. To have prolonged success, you have to have a franchise QB and by most standards there are 5-8 of those out there and some of those guys are getting up there in age.

Lewis is in his 12th season.
Coughlin is in his 11th season.
McCarthy and Payton are in their ninth, unless you don't count Payton's suspended year.
I might be forgetting somebody.

Given how bad the Bengals were before Lewis arrived, I don't see them making a move on him. Isn't his contract up after this season? Maybe he'd leave on his own, but he doesn't really seem the type to do that.

 

I suspect Lewis will have a job with the Bengals as long as he wants it. The Bengals could have easily fired him after they went 4-11-1 in 2008 and missed the playoffs for the third straight year, but he kept his job.

After doing that, firing Lewis now simply because he can't win a playoff game would be a head scratcher.

 

Right. It's not like he's in a city where they consider Lombardi Trophies to be their birthright. I think for Lewis to get fired, he would have to go 4-12 in the same year that his contract expired. The Bengals are far too cheap to pay him if he's not coaching them.

 

Because he won't get fired doesn't mean he isn't a big part of the problem.
Look at Gardenhire recently in Minnesota. You see how a change-averse organization- two managers in 30 years- finally was forced to react.
He had the same kind of ultimately meaningless success as Lewis.

 

Nobody is suggesting Lewis is a great coach, just that the Bengals aren't likely to fire him for lack of a playoff win.... especially when other teams would have fired a coach who went 4-11-1 with two prior seasons at 15-17, and the Bengals did not.

 

Lewis was lucky his playoff drought never lasted for more than three seasons.
If you're losing in the first round every year you're going nowhere.
Same result as missing the playoffs.

 

Right. But doing that in Pittsburgh or Green Bay or some other places, gets you fired. Making the playoffs with any sense of regularity with the Bengals will get him a statue.

 

Depends on what you mean by a very good coach. That's a defense built mostly around retreads and afterthoughts and I think he deserves a lot of credit for it being as good as it is. Now he is way too conservative of an in-game coach and the Bengals should hire a coach whose sole job it is to throw the challenge flag, because he's awful at it. He shouldn't ever be allowed to touch the challenge flag.
There are a couple coaches who I feel could have gotten more out of that roster than Lewis has, but it's a very short list.

 

"Meaningless success" is an interesting concept. There are a lot of fans, players, coaches, GMs, owners who view everything short of winning a Super Bowl as a failure.

Was Andy Reid a failure in Philadelphia? I'm sure some would say yes.

If you don't have a franchise QB and you make the playoffs more often than not, I think that coach is doing pretty well.

It takes a lot of balls to fire a successful coach who, for whatever reason, can't quite get the Super Bowl win. For every Jon Gruden (and they had to mortgage their future to get him) there are a dozen instances where the team winds up hiring someone who doesn't last the length of their first contract.

 

I'm sure the Bengals are profitable, if that's how you want to measure success.
But consistent 9-7ish seasons- the very peak of mediocrity- is a sure ticket to rot, with middling draft compensation.