NFL Coaching Hires: Experience vs. Talent

Greg Easterbrook writes in his Tuesday Morning Quarterback column about the lack of experience for today’s NFL coaches since Mike Singletary took the reigns of the San Francisco 49ers. He says that only 10 of the 32 current NFL Head Coaches were NFL Head Coaches before their current job. However, at some point, every Head Coach has to be a first-time Head Coach. You cannot manufacture that experience.

When I worked for Special Olympics in my first job out of college, several managers went to dinner after one of our meetings. They asked if I was married. I said no. They asked my age. I said 23. They told me that I should get married quickly so I could get the divorce out of the way when I was still young. Every other manager at dinner was in their thirties and divorced.

When the media writes about the need to hire someone with head coaching ability, it makes me think about the managers: get your first job and get fired so that you have “experience” on your resume. The 49ers could have turned to Lane Kiffin, since he has experience. Is he a better choice than Singletary?

Easterbrook never really makes an argument, since he points out that most college coaches flop as NFL coaches even though they have head coaching experience (Spurrier, Saban, etc). So, in a sense, he argues against NFL coordinators because they do not have head coaching eperience and college coaches because they do not have NFL experience. So, the answer is always a recently fired NFL Head Coach. However, in the case of Kiffin, if he was fired in Oakland, will he have better success in San Francisco?

Coaching, especially at the professional levels, is overrated. Oakland did not lose because of Kiffin – Oakland isn’t a great team. San Francisco did not lose because of Nolan – it lost because the organization drafted Alex Smith and annointed him its starting quarterback of the future and he did not produce. Wasting a #1 pick in the draft sets a franchise back. Sure, Nolan and Kiffin likely made some mistakes, but what coach does not make mistakes?

Rather than hire for experience, hire for talent. A great coach can learn the intricacies of a different level or the different skills of a head coach vs. a coordinator. However, talents cannot be taught. The problem is that we as critics, and those who hire coaches (General Managers, Athletic Directors) and those who study coaching have done a poor job identifying the talents which produce the most effective coaches. We tend to vastly overrate the importance of X’s & O’s because we see those skills most noticably during games, and we underestimate communication skills because as outsiders we do not see day to day interaction between players and coaches.

However, think about your favorite coach or the best coach that you played for. Was he your favorite coach because of his X’s & O’s? Do you appreciate that coach because of his great timeout usage? Coaching, first and foremost, is a people-business. It’s not an X’s &O’s business. As a legendary coach said, “You win games with the Jmmy’s and the Joe’s, not the X’s and the O’s.”

Talent wins. Some coaches inhibit the talent, which was the argument against Nolan in San Francisco. This happens in basketball, too. Some coaches enhance the talent through their system; Mike D’Antoni brought a system that fit Steve Nash’s, Shawn Marion’s and Amare Stoudemire’s skills perfectly. However, at the end of the day, the way that a coach interacts with the team means more than they way he utilizes their skills on the field or court.

In a Men’s Journal article titled “The Smartest Man in the NBA” about Mike D’Antoni, Steve Nash said, “If I throw one into the stands…he knows I’m trying for something special, not just screwing around and being careless. Guys play hard for coaches who believe in them, and his greatest strength is giving that to his players.” The article chronicles his coaching talents – former NBA Head Coach Alvin Gentry says: “Outside of Phil Jackson or Greg Popovich, you show me a coach who’s brighter than Mike, or more brilliant at making teams adjust to him” – yet Nash calls his belief in the players D’Antoni’s greatest strength.

Singletary may be a little wet behind the ears. However, it was outgoing Head Coach Mike Nolan who told the 49ers management than Singletary was the man for the job. Obviously, in the day-to-day interactions with players, he saw something (talent) which led him to believe in Singletary’s ability to right the ship. Coaching experience will not get players to play harder, compete or perform better. But, if Singletary has a talent for relating to and motivating players, the 49ers may be able to salvage the rest of the season, regardless of whether he runs a 3-4 or a 4-3 or plays Shaun Hill or J.T. O’Sullivan at QB.

~ by Brian McCormick on November 1, 2008.