2020 Coaching Carousel: #AnyoneButMcDaniels

Time to Mo Vaughn

RIP Dernell
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If the Pats lose Josh and Judge, man that is a lot of brain drain in a 3 year period
Judge was one of the coaches that had agreed to join Indy with McDaniels and stayed with the Patriots after Josh did the same, so with Josh making a move this year, it's certainly seems extremely likely that Judge is either going with him or doing his own thing unless he's in line for a big promotion with the Patriots. Given what we've seen out of the WR this year with him taking on WR Coach duties in addition to special teams coordinator, it's hard to see him getting promoted within the offensive coaching positions.
 

InstaFace

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Noted in the Cowboys thread, but the Rooney Rule appears to be even more of a farce than usual. This despite the fact that the 1 minority coaching hire last year (Flores) seems to have been the best or second-best hire of the 8 made.

CLE / Kitchens: Fired like a dog
NYJ / Gase: Ridiculed, siege mentality, probably won't survive past 2020
DEN / Vic Fangio: Last place but decent first-year effort without a ton of room for upside / optimism
TB / Arians: 7-9, improved from last to 2nd, with a positive PD. But he's 67 years old and saddled with one of the worst QBs in the league
ARI / Klinsbury: Got rolled in a brutal division, underperformed the pythag, QB can't stop taking sacks
GB / LaFleur: Won a lot, given great injury luck, but impressed nobody tactically
CIN / Zac Taylor: the 35yo former Rams QB coach continues to prove that just hiring youth for its own sake is a stupid idea
MIA / Flores: Traded away everything of value on the roster, had a historically-bad first half of the season, and then showed week-over-week improvement to the point of toppling his former bosses and sending them to an early offseason

But yeah, what the hell could a minority coach get us except a bunch of grumbling about "affirmative action" from our fan base?
 

Oil Can Dan

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I don't disagree with your overall point. I do disagree with most of your assessments of the coaching hires from last year. But in any event judging any coach after one season seems unwise, especially as it relates to demonstrating why more minority coaches should be hired.
 

InstaFace

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Based on what we've seen even in just one season, if you were doing a re-draft of the 2019 coaching hires, I think you'd take Flores over LaFleur, and maybe over Arians, just based on what he did with what he had to work with. Those judgments may of course change as we get more data next year.

Regardless, if you're looking for assets undervalued by the market, I think "30-somethings with a hotshot rep" is the flavor of the month and "minorities without a huge old-boy network" would be where I'd look (and I think many of us agree on that). But I'm not an NFL owner, and few NFL owners are brave enough to be contrarian on that count.
 

luckiestman

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Ron Rivera was the first coach hired so this seems like a weird year to talk about the lack of minority candidates being hired.
 

Bosoxen

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Ron Rivera was the first coach hired so this seems like a weird year to talk about the lack of minority candidates being hired.
His overall point isn't wrong, though. Raise your hand if you thought Marvin Lewis was a legitimate candidate in Dallas. Though that interview satisfied the letter of the rule, it completely ignored the spirit of it. They could have at least given Kris Richard a shot at the job to give it even the slightest whiff of sincerity.

I'm as opposed to letting the perfect be the enemy of the good as anyone but time has revealed that rule to not even be a half-assed attempt at addressing the issue. It's a farce and everyone knows it.
 

Super Nomario

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His overall point isn't wrong, though. Raise your hand if you thought Marvin Lewis was a legitimate candidate in Dallas. Though that interview satisfied the letter of the rule, it completely ignored the spirit of it. They could have at least given Kris Richard a shot at the job to give it even the slightest whiff of sincerity.

I'm as opposed to letting the perfect be the enemy of the good as anyone but time has revealed that rule to not even be a half-assed attempt at addressing the issue. It's a farce and everyone knows it.
It's a farce when teams make it a farce. Some teams do take it seriously, even teams that wind up hiring white men. I think it has generally been good for the league, but it could be better. And I think calling out teams that make it a farce is part of making it better (not, like, us, here calling out teams. But people that matter, calling out teams in public).

Ron Rivera was the first coach hired so this seems like a weird year to talk about the lack of minority candidates being hired.
Lazy, shallow, short-sighted hiring processes can and do benefit individual minority candidates in some instances. But on the whole, lazy, shallow, short-sighted hiring processes will lead to hires that generally look like the hires that have existed to date; i.e., disproportionately white. More thorough hiring processes will be good for the league and good for minorities generally, even if they were to result in Rivera not getting this particular job. They'll also likely lead to better hires and thus better football. So to be clear: we should still definitely make fun of Dan Snyder.

More about GM searches than head coaches, but I did a bunch of research and wrote a long article on this stuff last offseason: http://insidethepylon.com/nfl/2019/03/25/towards-a-level-playing-field-the-hiring-and-firing-of-minority-gms/
 

Bosoxen

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It's a farce when teams make it a farce. Some teams do take it seriously, even teams that wind up hiring white men. I think it has generally been good for the league, but it could be better. And I think calling out teams that make it a farce is part of making it better (not, like, us, here calling out teams. But people that matter, calling out teams in public).
I don't necessarily disagree but it sure is walking and quacking like a duck. Just because a handful of teams do take it seriously doesn't make it any less of a farce since the majority of the teams are able to expose it as one so openly and willingly.

The problem is, as Insta noted, that no owner is going to be willing to step out of line and be the one to call out the inequity of the situation.
 

Super Nomario

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I don't necessarily disagree but it sure is walking and quacking like a duck. Just because a handful of teams do take it seriously doesn't make it any less of a farce since the majority of the teams are able to expose it as one so openly and willingly.
I don't know if it's a majority; it's probably more like 50/50. The last couple years have been frustrating in this regard but if you look back 25 years ago, there's been tremendous progress. And I think Goodell does care about this issue (the optics around it, at least).

I think it was underreported, but the Rooney Rule has actually been tinkered with a little after the Gruden and Dorsey debacles. Teams now need to interview an external minority candidate to satisfy the rule (which is why Jones didn't just interview Kris Richard), or someone on the Fritz Pollard recommended list. They've also strongly recommended teams interview multiple minority candidates; business research shows adding a second minority candidate to the pool makes a huge difference. Maybe we see that strong recommendation become a requirement if we get more half-assed HC/GM searches like Dallas'.
 

Ralphwiggum

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When you are seeking to address an underrepresented minority in certain positions in an organization one of the easiest places to start is to require your hiring managers to interview diverse slates of candidates. Bias in the hiring process is a problem pretty much everywhere, requiring people to interview diverse slates seeks to mitigate against some of the inherent bias that everyone has that causes people to tend to hire people like them, or people who fit a stereotypical profile for the role in question. The NFL (and NFL owners and GMs) have a massive, massive problem with this, which is why mediocre (or worse) head coaches end up getting multiple bites at the apple (Adam Gase, come on down). For that reason, I have a hard time criticizing the existence of the rule itself.

The reason the rule is treated as a farce by certain teams is that despite the fact that it is a League rule, the teams are essentially 32 separate organizations with a different person/people in charge of the operation. If management in an individual organization doesn't see any actual value in interviewing diverse slates, then yes what you end up with is a farcical check the box exercise. Something tells me Jerruh has not spent a lot of time thinking about inherent bias.
 

boca

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Cross the Panthers off the McDaniels list. They've hired Matt Rhule .
 

Red Averages

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I would have lost significant amounts of money betting McDaniels got hired before Judge.
 

Ed Hillel

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Joe Judge LOL!

Well, he sure did wonders with the receiving corp this year...
 

jsinger121

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Stunning set of circumstances with Carolina and NY Giants. Giants certainly went out on a limb to hire Judge. This could be a disaster.
It will either be an underrated really good hire or an unmitigated disaster. I see no in between.
 

Harry Hooper

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He's got a set of stones, that's for sure

One note on the #Giants: Matt Rhule called them before signing his 6-year deal with the #Panthers and gave them the opportunity to match and lure him to get on the plane. They declined and hired Joe Judge instead.

Carolina might be tempted to fire the guy within 24 hours of getting hired. It will make for some great questions at the intro press conference if the media do their jobs.
 

Willie Clay's Big Play

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He's got a set of stones, that's for sure

One note on the #Giants: Matt Rhule called them before signing his 6-year deal with the #Panthers and gave them the opportunity to match and lure him to get on the plane. They declined and hired Joe Judge instead.
Everyone loves Rhule, but a six year deal is crazy. I think they made the right call declining to match. Their alternative choice can be debated.
 

Shaky Walton

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I don't think I've ever been less concerned about the Pats losing someone who was being made a HC of another team. Not to say that Judge wasn't a good special teams coach and member of the staff. But would anyone list Judge ahead of Josh and Dante in order of importance? And from the Giants' perspective, Judge must have a lot of gravitas or something along those lines to choose someone who had never coordinated an NFL offense or defense, much less been a HC.