The Coaching Carousel

The Music Stops

For anyone who has been to a fair or park and ridden a carousel, there’s a sinking feeling as the music stops and the carousel slowly comes to a halt -- another great ride ending.  I had that feeling late last week watching the press conference announcing Todd Haley as the head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs.  I knew the ride was coming to an end, and for a carnival that began in October when Tennessee unceremoniously parted ways with Phillip Fulmer, what a great, strange trip it’s been. 

Record Turnover

We’ve clearly been on bonus time as 11 NFL teams (34 percent) head into 2009 with new head coaches, including interim appointments who were retained.  This was as big an NFL offseason turnover as has ever taken place.  It would be akin to having 170 of the Fortune 500 switch CEOs in a year.  If that were to happen, global financial markets would recoil in shock, but since global financial markets seemingly have done that already, the NFL’s banner turnover year has been somewhat overshadowed. 

It’s the Economy

However, the economy -- and the possibility that owners will have their already narrow margins squeezed even more -- did appear to influence the hiring and retention of coaches around the league.  Teams that were looking looked at cheaper alternatives as all but two of the new coaches were first-time hires.  The two who were hired with prior experience, Jim Mora Jr. and Eric Mangini, weren’t exactly in the strongest bargaining positions.  And owners like Jerry Jones and Daniel Snyder, who never seem to mind spending money and making coaching changes, made none, in part to avoid dead money going to coaches who won’t coach their teams.

Haley, Pioli and History

Watching new Kansas City director of football operations Scott Pioli at the Todd Haley news conference, it was easy to understand that Pioli is a student of the sport and its managerial history.  He has learned so much at the feet of the game’s masters, and it’s obvious he cherishes that knowledge.  Those masters include his greatest mentor, Bill Belichick, who befriended Pioli, letting him sleep on the floor of his dorm room at training camp with the Giants; Pioli’s own father-in-law,  Bill Parcells; and, based on the press conference, Todd Haley’s father, Dick, whom Pioli met when the elder Haley was Parcells’ player personnel director with the Jets.  But perhaps even more notable than helping Parcells turn around the 1-15 Jets team he inherited from Rich Kotite was Dick Haley’s role in helping the Pittsburgh Steelers draft a run of players whose busts line the walls of the Hall of Fame in Canton.  Pioli’s comments in hiring Todd Haley indicate how much he has learned from Dick Haley and how much that knowledge has shaped his own personnel strategy. 

Dick Haley told the Kansas City Star that the first player he scouted after becoming Steelers personnel director – Hall of Fame linebacker Jack Ham -- was still the best player he ever scouted, and the Steelers were able to take him with a second-round pick.  Not quite Pioli finding Tom Brady in the sixth round, but 33 guys were taken ahead of Ham.  Dick Haley was also the architect of the 1974 Steelers draft that yielded the motherlode of four Hall of Famers: Lynn Swan, Jack Lambert, John Stallworth and the late Mike Webster.

But the hiring of Todd Haley seems, in many ways, a risky move. He has largely been a wide receivers coach in the NFL, not usually considered a strategic position.  Haley’s only coordinator experience comes as an offensive coordinator under a talented, offensive-minded head coach, Ken Whisenhunt, the past two years in Arizona.  He only surfaced on the head coaching carousel after an on-field meltdown with discontented WR Anquan Boldin in the playoffs.  But it’s clear Pioli valued pedigree more than prior accomplishment in selecting Haley.  And it’s a pedigree that Haley shares with both Belichick, the son of a coach who mostly scouted, and Pioli, who married a coach’s daughter and who is another’s finest pupil.  We will see if the apple falls far from the tree; Pioli has bet his reputation that it won’t.

Cable Checks into the Hotel California

Not to be outdone by his one time arch-rivals, the Chiefs, Al Davis -- after hiring offensive and defensive coordinators -- finally announced the worst-kept secret in the world, that interim head coach Tom Cable will be the head coach next season.  Surprisingly, it was not immediately denied by spokesman John Herrera.  Warren Sapp’s past criticism of Cable aside, it is clear that Cable is a likeable enough guy in a difficult, if not impossible, situation that almost can’t help but end badly. 

Still, the NFL needs the Raiders’ situation to stabilize (and for them to build a stadium jointly with the 49ers) so that the third largest market in the league can produce profit in lean times.  Hopefully, Cable can get this team back even with the rest of the pack.  The AFC West was so weak in 2008 that the bar isn’t high.  With three new coaches and typical offseason turmoil in San Diego, one hopes that Cable does well enough to get the same kind of next gig that Lane Kiffin got.

Vacancies Under the Sun

The NFC champion Cardinals, after getting the stability equation right the last couple years, now have openings at offensive and defensive coordinator. Clancy Pendergast did a credible job as defensive coordinator, but he was clearly a square peg in a round hole on Whisenhunt’s staff and won’t return in 2009.  Whisenhunt is a talented offensive coach and will be more than all right without Haley, but one wonders how dangerous Arizona could be in the long term if it finds a superior defensive coordinator.  Still, vacancies in Arizona always come under extra scrutiny given the franchise’s history of bad decisions. 

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