Coach firings show lack of accountability
Jarrett Bell: NFL GMs keep jobs while their fall guys search for new work
Here’s what really stinks about another round of NFL coaches walking the plank:
Steve Wilks is gone. Steve Keim stays.
Vance Joseph is gone. John Elway stays.
Todd Bowles is gone. Mike Maccagnan stays.
Dirk Koetter is gone. Jason Licht stays.
See the pattern?
As fired coaches head into 2019 as symbols of failed opportunities — and please, let’s not forget about the tremendous ripple effect that includes assistant coaches and their families — it is more than merely striking that so many general managers and other power brokers with highbrow titles will keep collecting their paychecks while their fall guys search for new work.
Sure, it’s a results-driven business. Coaches, as they say, are hired to be fired. But the devil is dancing in the details.
“I’m just as responsible, if not more responsible,” Elway, the Broncos’ president of football operations and GM, said Monday as he explained the move with Joseph.
Yeah, right. For years, Joseph dutifully climbed the ladder of the coaching ranks. After a few years of establishing himself as an up-and-coming candidate, he finally got his big shot — and lasted just two seasons before Elway pulled the plug.
Simply put, Joseph wasn’t the only reason the Broncos went 11-21 during his tenure.
Now Elway begins the search for what will be his fourth coach in six years. His recruitment of Peyton Manning a few years ago netted a Super Bowl crown. But his miscalculations on other quarterback matters cannot be ignored: He drafted the bust Paxton Lynch in the first round. He gave a job to troubled Chad Kelly, who was waived after his arrest on a trespassing charge. He refused to take a second look at Colin Kaepernick, who was attractive enough of an option for Elway before he sparked the protest movement in the NFL but not afterward.
Elway deserves only so much credit for publicly stating the obvious during a news conference, then pledging to do better. Being responsible sounds good, but apparently it doesn’t mean being accountable to the point where it costs you your job without ample time to get it right or wrong.
That’s on NFL ownership to change. Given the league calendar, teams often wait to make moves on GMs, personnel directors and scouts until after the NFL draft. What a bad look. Coaches are traditionally booted after Week 17, while others can buy time and improve perception by picking some hot new prospects in the spring who may or may not pan out. It’s an inherently weird residual of the NFL’s culture.
Still, at least Elway didn’t have the worst optics on the so-called “Black Monday,” which had a double meaning when considering that five of the eight minority coaches who began the season at the helm are gone.
With Ozzie Newsome stepping down from his role with the Ravens following the playoffs, the league that has gone to great lengths to promote a level playing field for minority candidates in key leadership positions will have just one African-American GM.
Chris Grier was promoted by the Dolphins to oversee football operations in a move that bucked multiple trends on Monday as coach Adam Gase was fired and executive vice president Mike Tannenbaum was reassigned. Yes, it proves that despite the NFL calendar, it’s possible to make front office decisions, too, when the season ends and still proceed with the draft process.
But back to Wilks. Go ahead, have some empathy for a man canned after one year on the job in Arizona — which would be sad whether he was AfricanAmerican (which he is), white, purple or green. One-and-done, even with the 313 record now attached to Wilks’ resume, is ruthless.
When you fire a coach after one year — which in recent years was also the fate of Jim Tomsula, Hue Jackson, Mike Mularkey, Chip Kelly and Rob Chudzin- ski — it means you really didn’t believe in your hire when you made it in the first place.
Clearly, coaches are expected to change the culture and get results quickly. The second-year Los Angeles coaches, Sean McVay and Anthony Lynn, get points for that. But not every coach brings the presence that, say, Bill Parcells did.
I’m certainly not calling for last-place finishers Jon Gruden (4-12) and Matt Patricia (6-10) to get axed after one season with the Raiders and Lions, respectively — although it was reasonable to expect some quick, Parcells-like magic from Coach Chucky, given that 10-year, $100 million contract. Both coaches need more time with their rebuilding jobs. But their cases, in comparison, makes the Cardinals’ handling of Wilks that much more tragic.
Even worse, when Cardinals President Michael Bidwill sat there Monday, Keim was at his side. It wasn’t Wilks who signed quarterback Sam Bradford to a $20 million deal while they sought to develop a long-term prospect (which turned out to be Josh Rosen). And it was Keim who had the five-game suspension this year after his guilty plea for extreme DUI.
It just looks like a twisted double standard that Bidwill would stick it out with Keim yet have such short patience with Wilks. Bidwill, though, read the same type of script that Elway used. He declared that the fired coach was “a good man.” Lamented the wins and losses. Pledged to do better with the next coaching search.
What, do they pass along these boilerplate statements on the dark NFLntranet?
When Bidwill mentioned that the Cardinals lacked the competitiveness under Wilks that he’s looking for, he sounded so silly. The Cardinals lost on Sunday, but the Seahawks won on a field goal as time expired. That’s competitiveness. Wilks’ team never quit on him.
And it’s ironic that the Cardinals are considering ousted Packers coach Mike McCarthy for the job, according to reports. McCarthy would be good for Rosen. At the moment, though, it doesn’t appear that the No. 10 overall selection was a better pick by Keim than Lamar Jackson, who was taken 32nd overall by the Ravens and won the AFC North crown.
Maybe the Cardinals didn’t rank Jackson so high because, with all of that running he did at Louisville, the Heisman Trophy winner didn’t look like the prototypical NFL quarterback, even as the game has increasingly evolved to feature mobile passers. Newsome seems to know better. Quarterbacks come in different sizes, shapes and hues. The bottom line is winning.
Wilks, by the way, took his team to Green Bay and beat McCarthy’s team. Apparently, that didn’t count much on Bidwill’s scale of competitiveness. Now McCarthy might wind up with Wilks’ old job.
The coach is gone. The GM stays. That’s not the case everywhere. The Vikings and Jaguars are keeping their coach/GM combinations, although it’s expected there will be other staff changes, as is the case with the Falcons, who fired all three of their coordinators on offense, defense and special teams.
But the next time you hear representatives from some NFL team spout that they’ve made some “organizational decision” while explaining a key decision, just remember all of the coaches who walked the plank without their GMs at their side on Black Monday.