The Qualifications of a NFL Head Coach

This post will help set up two later posts. First, who deserves to be Coach of the Year? Secondly, which coaches deserve to get fired, specifically, Lovie Smith.

Football more than any other sport, requires specific and careful game planning and coaching. In baseball, all a manager has to do to decide at the beginning of the year decide what order to place his healthy players in a line up and decide when to pull pitchers and who to replace them with. A very easy job. How a team does doesn't really matter on a baseball manager but which players a baseball GM chooses. Basketball, hockey, and soccer. Well those sports are even easier. Very little game planning by the head coach. All they have to do is decide which players to replace and have the players on the court/field/rink etc run around and have them make plays.

But football. Oh no. You can't just throw out players. You need to design specific schemes. Very meticulous game planning. But really, how much does the head coach do?

The game calling is done by the offensive coordinators (for the most part). Most of the heavy lifting is not done by the head coach himself. So what exactly does a head coach do or need to do? What makes a great head coach? Is a teams record an accurate judge of how well a head coach does?

Simple answer: Yes. But life is not so simple is it? The first person a team should blame on their success or failures is the GM. They are responsible for the players that are on the field. They draft and make trades to determine who starts.

Things an NFL coach IS responsible for:
1) The overall game plan
2) Second half adjustments
3) Ability to keep a cohesive locker room
4) Random game time decisions (like whether to go for it on 4th and X and when to challenge, etc)

And that's it. That's all they have to do.

The biggest thing you can blame a coach for is can they play to their strengths and expose another teams weaknesses. Now a coach is not responsible for the talent on the field but he can control what he does with that talent. You may inherent a team that has sub-par talent but if you're a good coach you still have professional athletes on your team and they still have some strengths. Is your offensive line kind of crappy? Use a lot of dink and dumps. Is your defensive line kind of crappy? Help design smart blitz schemes. Great coaches can do more with less. Any casual fan can notice that if your team is playing an offense that can run the ball well but not pass, then pull your safeties up to the line of scrimmage and force the team to pass (Maybe not THAT specific, but you get the idea). Not necessarily how your team does on one or two plays but how does your team play throughout the game. And if the GM has blessed your team with talent, as a head coach, you need to make sure that talent performs on the field.

After a head coach has seen what their opponent has done for two quarters, they need to adjust. Especially if your team is losing. A smart coach can analyze what their team and their opponent has done well and done poorly. Then you need to make adjustments. Even if you are winning, your opponent is making adjustments. You need to make some changes to win football games

You also need to have 53 players believe in you and each other (or most importantly the 22 starters). If a head coach does not have a cohesive locker room, then he can not effectively do what else he needs to do. If people don't listen or respect what the coach has to say, then the head coach can not initiate his game plan effectively. The vast majority of what a coach has to do is manage the personalities of his players. Like Wade Phillips. His players don't really listen to him. Therefore they don't really play the way Philips wants them to play and thus he can not initiate his will on the field. Basically, head coached need to be high paid babysitters.

Lastly, the coach needs to make quick, smart decisions on what to do in random situations on the field. He is the ultimate decider on whether to challenge a play. He is the ultimate decider on whether to do something like squib kick with 15 seconds of the game when only up by one and allow the opponent lots of yardage to kick a last minute winning field goal. He is the ultimate decider on whether or not to do a prevent defense on the last drive of the game to allow your opponents to score a game winning touchdown. He is the ultimate decider on whether or not to go for it on fourth downs. It's these multiple game time decisions that weed out the good coaches from the bad ones.

A head coach also has a big say in determining which coordinators the team has. So while coordinators do a lot of the heavy lifting, it is not unfair to blame a head coach for the follies of his coordinators. The head coach does have the ability to override what the coordinators do and have to continually agree with coordinators decisions, but individual game calling is not on the head coaches shoulders.

If a coach can effectively do all four things well, he is a coach worthy of Coach of the Year votes. If he fails to do all four things, especially year after year, he deserves to get the axe.

A part of what a head coach realistically HAS to do is play the expectations game. If his team is expected to win a super bowl and misses the playoffs, he will get fired. If he isn't expected to win many games and wins his division, he'll get a 3 year extension. If a team is expected to do well, then the team NEEDS to do well in order for a head coach to keep his job. But if the team isn't really expected to do anything, then the head coach is kinda safe. (However, a head coach can not be bad year after year. He can keep his job like one or two years if the team is expected to do bad but not for long. a team needs to show improvement.) It sucks, but that's what a head coach needs to do.

Blowing the owner also helps a head coach keep his job.