Is coaching overrated?

[Bonehead]

I think it's important that a coach - any coach, in any sport at any level, have the following thought in mind always:

"The players deserve a chance to win, and it's your responsibility to give it to them."

Even in the Pre-season/Spring Training/Exhibition games?

 

[ZooCougar]

Even in the Pre-season/Spring Training/Exhibition games?

Yes, even the ones that take place from Sept-January.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Most coaching occurs in practice. Once the game starts, I think the coaches ability to positively impact the outcome is reduced, although not eliminated. I think Rick Barnes is one of the smartest play callers in college basketball but I don't think he is a great coach. In the last 2 minutes of the game, he is as good as anyone, and has outcoached both Calhoun and Ollie on occasions to win games. I would never trade Barnes for either of those two. Barnes "over coaches" players during games rather than letting them dictate the game, and he is not half the player development coach that either Calhoun or it appears Ollie are. That is why Barnes has 1 Final Four, 12 years ago, in all that time at major programs.

I don't think Calhoun was a great game coach, but he may be the best player development coach in college history. I don't think Izzo is even a good recruiter, but he manages a game and coaches his players up as well as anyone in the last 20 years. Dixon, JT III and Few are as good at X's and O's as anyone (I love all 3 offenses), but they are three of the biggest chokers in big games that I have ever seen.

Coaches have all kinds of styles, and a lot of them seem to work. I loved Temple's matchup zone defense, but I thought Cheney's teams played too conservative on offense which is why a team with McKie and Eddie Jones didn't make the Final Four. For 20 years, Gene Keady somehow taught the slowest, least athletic team in the Big 10 how to press and won a slew of Big 10 titles along the way despite his complete inability to recruit anyone with talent other than Glenn Robinson.

 

[gioff23]

Every coach mentioned in this thread was not so great at every stage of his career. Jimmy Johnson with Dolphins or Okie State? Belichek w/Browns? Lombardi with Redskins? Petrino with Celtics? Joe Gibbs 2.0? Coaching is not overrated, but even the very best of them need to be surrounded with the pieces to succeed.

 

[Carl Spackler]

Belichick did actually take the Browns to the playoffs, his failure there was in PR and ownership relations - not football related. Jimmy Johnson in Miami was successful - had to look it up just to make sure, but three straight seasons going to the playoffs 36-28 overall. He was also 29-25 at Ok State with a 1-1 record in bowl games. Joe Gibbs took the Skins back tot eh playoffs in 2 of 4 years after his return to the game. If you're measuring success by super bowl championships, that's a pretty high standard. Lombardi was 7-5 in one season in Washington. Winning record.

I'm not disagreeing with the concept that you need players - I've written that. You need players that are physically capable of playing with the level of competition on your schedule. That's a given. After that - it most definitely is coaching.

 

[Sky ball]

I'm a Redskin fan and obviously biased but I always thought that Joe Gibbs was the greatest coach of my lifetime. Won 3 Super Bowls with 3 different QB's (none of whom are HOF'ers).

Joe Theismann
Doug Williams
Mark Rypien

That is unheard of.

He had the HOGS...Timmy Smith (who?) was super Bowl MVP..Hogs. Skins fan here too

 

[gioff23]

Belichick did actually take the Browns to the playoffs, his failure there was in PR and ownership relations - not football related. Jimmy Johnson in Miami was successful - had to look it up just to make sure, but three straight seasons going to the playoffs 36-28 overall. He was also 29-25 at Ok State with a 1-1 record in bowl games. Joe Gibbs took the Skins back tot eh playoffs in 2 of 4 years after his return to the game. If you're measuring success by super bowl championships, that's a pretty high standard. Lombardi was 7-5 in one season in Washington. Winning record.

I'm not disagreeing with the concept that you need players - I've written that. You need players that are physically capable of playing with the level of competition on your schedule. That's a given. After that - it most definitely is coaching.

Those are GOOD records, not great. 1/3 of teams make playoffs, so getting in to top third is good, not great.

 

[The Funster]

Football always comes down to coaching. Other sports, much less so.

 

[RedStickHusky]

Jim Lee Howell coached the Giants from '54-'60; Tom Landry had his defense and Vince Lombardi ran his offense. He was a great coach... used to read the papers during practice

 

[RedStickHusky]

Specifically to Carl's point, when a coach says we're breaking it down and starting over, I would assume that to mean a heavy emphasis on position coaching and technique. No point in learning assignments for a 3000 play playbook when your athletes haven't mastered the skills required to execute. I totally agree with Carl that that is often what we've looked like over the last couple of years -- a team that knew what was supposed to happen but couldn't quite make it so, especially on the o-line.

 

[CL82]

Is coaching overrated?

No.

 

[Dogged]

Great coaches recognize unseen talent.

Great coaches build a vision for their team.

Great coaches recognize their own shortcomings and bring in people to compensate for their own weaknesses.

Great coaches adjust to poor performance and elicit improved effort from their players who have underperformed.

Great coaches recognize great coaching from their peers.

None of this happens overnight. But it does happen. The jury is out.

 

[FDNY99]

Medic I think you can use DeLeone's job as OL coach/OC as a complete opposite of this...especially after he was gone and Foley tried to reconstruct the pieces.

Was going to add this to Whaler's comment that "play calling is over rated" in the New OC Frank Verducci thread but didn't want too spin that thread to far off track...

I remember reading this a few years ago ...http://smartfootball.com/grab-bag/is-coaching-overrated#sthash.bQC7fRlb.zZE2xWtV.dpbs

>>In the cult of football, surely few things are more overrated than play calling. Much football commentary, from high school stands to the NFL in prime time, boils down to: “If they ran they should have passed, and if they passed they should have run.” Other commentary boils down to: “If it worked, it was a good call, if it failed, it was a bad call,” though the call is only one of many factors in a football play. Good calls are better than bad calls — this column exerts considerable effort documenting the difference. But it’s nonsensical to think that replacing a guy who calls a lot of runs to the left with a guy who calls a lot of runs to the right will transform a team.<<

>>One factor here is the Illusion of Coaching. We want to believe that coaches are super-ultra-masterminds in control of events, and coaches do not mind encouraging that belief. But coaching is a secondary force in sports; the athletes themselves are always more important. TMQ’s immutable Law of 10 Percent holds that good coaching can improve a team by 10 percent, bad coaching can subtract from performance by 10 percent — but the rest will always be on the players themselves, their athletic ability and level of devotion, plus luck. If the players are no good or out of sync, it won’t matter what plays are called; if the players are talented and dedicated, they will succeed no matter what the sideline signals in. Unless they have bad luck, which no one can control<<

I also subscribe to the fact that as a program - we have surely had some bad luck of late.