Definitely agree re thinking about a succession plan, but when you say a "five year window," what does this mean? I just think especially in the modern NFL where teams seem to prefer hiring NFL coordinators to college HCs, successful coordinators become HC candidates after ~2 seasons.
Solid writeups! Thanks for taking the time.
- re McDaniels, I'm interested what outdated scheme means? His Raiders were 12th in the NFL in points/yards in 2022 with Carr missing 2 games. The team as a whole was obviously not good, but the offensive scheme seemed to be fairly successful (and yes, they had good personnel in Jacobs and Adams but most good offenses have good players).
- re AVP, reading the piece above that Maye basically glued himself to AVP's side between drives is the first thing that's given me pause about showing him the door. But ultimately I just can't shake the performance of this offense in November/December.
Another name I read in that 98.5 article that I want to resurface is Mike Lafleur, the non-play calling OC of the Rams.
He's still only 37, has run rooms/called plays as an OC (with the Saleh Jets, after which he got fired then hired by McVay), and he's spent two season overseeing the Rams offense as Nacua developed into a borderline All Pro and that team has put on an offensive clinic. And sure, McVay deserves a lot of credit for that, but I would want to bring Lafleur in and hear him talk about that and his ideas for Maye.
Not a stupid question! And I don't know the answer to this, although I agree with what
@Cellar-Door wrote.
My instinct is that often guys have their "system" -- like college professors or something, you need to be such an expert in your subject that you can fluently teach it and answer student questions, which takes years of study in that subject. That's not to say that Cover 3 is so completely different from base 3-4 that it's the equivalent of an English PhD vs. an Astronomy PhD, but I think it's got to be hard to feel confident you can radically change what you're coaching and training your players to run year-to-year or game-to-game.
Beyond that, if you're basing what you run based on a few personnel... what if those guys get hurt mid-season?
Belichick, as always, was an outlier here. And going back to an old press conference, he offered a MasterClass on this and seemed to indicate there was value to "zigging" while other teams "zagged" -- that they were able to sign Colvin and Vrabel (ironically) in 2000/01 because the Pats were one of the only teams running a 3-4 and didn't have much competition for nose tackles (Ted Washington?), and then 15 years later everything changed: