Breaking down NFL coaching trends
When the Houston Texans reached an agreement Wednesday night to make David Culley their next head coach, that filled the NFL’s final remaining coaching vacancy and ended this winter’s hiring cycle.
The league welcomes into the fold seven new head coaches – Urban Meyer (Jacksonville), Robert Saleh (New York Jets), Arthur Smith (Atlanta), Brandon
Staley (Los Angeles Chargers), Dan Campbell (Detroit), Nick Sirianni (Philadelphia) and Culley – and seven new general managers – Nick Caserio (Houston), George Paton (Denver), Brad Holmes (Detroit), Scott Fitterer (Carolina), Terry Fontenot (Atlanta), Martin Mayhew (Washington) and Trent Baalke (Jacksonville).
Now, these men get to work on resuscitating the franchises they inherited. They must round out coaching and front office staffs and begin roster assessments and draft and free agency evaluations.
It will take time to truly learn whether these moves were good or bad, but here’s a look at the initial takeaways from this latest hiring cycle and what they could mean for the teams and NFL as a whole.
New faces: Breaking from the familiar practice of hiring retreads, teams opted for new blood this offseason.
None of the seven coaches hired has full-time NFL head coaching experience. Meyer has prior head coaching experience from 20 seasons in the college ranks. And Campbell served as interim coach of the Dolphins for 12 games in 2015. But otherwise, this is the first goround for this year’s crop of new head coaches.
Mayhew and Baalke previously held general manager positions in Detroit and San Francisco, respectively. But Caserio, Paton, Holmes, Fontenot and Fitterer also are all rookies.
Teams seemingly approached the market with a desire for fresh voices and outlooks, hoping the new voices and minds can steer their franchises toward respectability.
Outside the box: Not only did owners and team presidents not place a premium on prior head coaching experience this cycle, they also didn’t care as much about extensive coordinator track records.
Many times, team officials make hires with two elements high on their list of criteria: extensive work as either a head coach or as a coordinator and play-caller. But they bucked the trend this year.
Saleh served as San Francisco’s defensive coordinator for four years, and he was the most seasoned coordinator of this year’s crop. Sirianni directed the Colts’ offense for three seasons, but head coach Frank Reich called his own plays. Smith did call plays for the Titans, but he had only two seasons of experience as a coordinator. Staley had only one season’s worth of experience as the Rams’ defensive coordinator, and the 38-year-old has only four years of total NFL coaching experience on his resume.
Campbell, a former tight end, has never served as a coordinator. He was the Saints’ tight ends coach/assistant head coach. Culley is the longest-tenured coach of the lot, with 27 NFL seasons and 15 college seasons to his resume. But Baltimore’s former wide receivers coach/passing game coordinator has never called plays or directed an entire unit either.
For years, position coaches and special teams coordinators have lamented owners’ lack of willingness to consider them for head coaching positions because they didn’t fit that longtime coordinator/play-caller mold. Those same men, other veteran coaches and even the players have long declared that successful head coaching has more to do with identifying talent (both players and assistant coaches), communicating, teaching and motivating more than play-calling.
John Harbaugh has more than proved himself capable of coaching a team despite having been a special teams coordinator prior to coming to Baltimore. And Joe Judge had a promising first season as he went from Patriots special teams coach to Giants head coach in 2020.
It seems like owners and team presidents finally are becoming more receptive to breaking the mold.
Diversity: From a front office standpoint, the NFL saw some improvement. The league went from having only two Black general managers (Cleveland’s Andrew Berry and Miami’s Chris Grier) to seeing three more join their ranks.
After years of being passed over for jobs because they didn’t fit an image, largely because of the color of their skin, Fontenot, Holmes and Mayhew finally get the chance to further prove that people of color are just as capable of running a team.
The fight for equality did not feature advancement on the head coaching front, however.
Saleh and Culley were the only coaches of color hired despite a deep talent pool.
Despite top-level NFL officials’ efforts to right past wrongs and create more opportunities for people of color with head coaching aspirations, the owners and team decision-makers didn’t share the same conviction. They voted to approve the expansion of the Rooney Rule, the incentive program that rewards teams for developing and promoting coaches and talent evaluators of color.
But as owners again passed over highly qualified coaching candidates of color for far less-proven men, they simply winked, smiled and nodded at the well-intentioned league officials and kept right on with the same hiring practices.
The NFL, whose player body is more than 70% Black, has just three Black head coaches.
Diversity matters, and it only strengthens a team. The Browns, Dolphins and Buccaneers, who boast diversity in their front offices and coaching staffs, all demonstrated that this year.
Major challenges, decisions: Many of these new coaches and general managers have their work cut out for them. The majority have pressing decisions to make to determine the direction of their franchises.
The Texans, Jets, Eagles and Lions all have decisions to make on their quarterback positions. Deshaun Watson requested a trade from Houston, and the Jets must make a decision on Sam Darnold. New York also could wind up in pursuit of Watson. The Eagles must decide between Carson Wentz and Jalen Hurts.
From there, the new coaches and GMs must figure out the best possible way to build their teams to best complement those decisions at quarterback.