(01-17-2021, 06:53 AM)The Real Marty Wrote:

(01-16-2021, 09:54 PM)TheDuke007 Wrote: If you look at the teams that made the playoffs this year, 13 out of 14 had head coaches with NFL coaching experience prior to getting their current job.  If you also count playing in the NFL, all 14 had NFL experience.  Meyer doesn't.  NFL experience matters.

Promoting NFL coordinators was the most common method of having a playoff coach with 9 falling into that category.  3 were former NFL head coaches who were also previously either NFL coordinators or NFL assistant head coaches.  1 came directly from being a college head coach but had also previously been both an NFL head coach and an NFL coordinator for more than one team. 1 was a college coach with no NFL coaching experience.  The bottom line is that there's not one way to find a winning coach, but the numbers say promoting an NFL coordinator is the best option.

If you think this is just some one year fluke, it's not.  Let's look at history.  You have to go back 25 years to find the last time a team went to the Super Bowl with a head coach that had no NFL experience prior to getting that job.  

I'm hoping for the best and I plan to get fully behind our new head coach.  However, based upon the track record, I can understand why some fans have concern.

That's a misuse of statistics.  The question is, what percentage of NFL head coaches who had NFL experience succeeded, vs what percentage of NFL head coaches with no NFL experience succeeded.  What percentage of head coaches who had prior NFL experience failed vs what percentage of NFL head coaches who had no prior NFL experience failed.  Not raw numbers.  Percentages.  

What you are doing is like saying, since most great software engineers have brown hair, we should only hire software engineers who have brown hair.   

Suppose (hypothetically) there are 100 new NFL head coaches over a period of years.  95 of them had prior NFL experience as coordinators.  85 of them failed.  There is another group of 5 former college head coaches who had no prior NFL experience, and 3 of those failed at being an NFL head coach.  Since we have 10 NFL coordinators that were successful vs 2 college head coaches without NFL experience that were successful, you would say NFL experience is the best indicator of success.  But you could also say, the success rate of those coordinators is 10%, while the success rate of those college head coaches without NFL experience is 40%, and therefore head coaching experience, even if it is only in college, is best.  < I don't know what the actual statistics are.  I'm just asking the question.  

What we have in the case of Urban Meyer is an ultra-successful college coach with no NFL experience but loads of head coaching experience.  The other candidates had NFL experience, but no head coaching experience.  Which one is better?  The experience of being in the NFL, or the experience of being the head man and running a whole program?  

I'm looking for a new CEO. Do I promote the guy who did a great job running the finance department, or do I hire the guy who absolutely kicked [BLEEP] as a very successful CEO of a smaller company?  

Conclusion:  The reason most successful NFL head coaches have prior NFL experience might be because more coordinators without head coaching experience are hired in the first place.  But if you have the same failure rate as college head coaches without NFL experience, then I don't think you can draw any conclusion.

I don't feel that I'm misusing statistics at all.  You fail to question why NFL teams don't hire coaches without NFL experience.  It's because they know it typically doesn't work.  If hiring coaches with no experience was successful 3 out of 5 times like in your hypothetical example, then NFL teams would routinely be hiring them.  There wouldn't only be 5 college coaches in the sample.  Being successful as a college coach is largely about recruiting and to the extent it is about x's and o's, they are different from the NFL.  NFL executives know that and it is why most of them shy away from selecting college coaches.

In regards to your CEO analogy, I would use the example of a hotel owner looking to hire a hotel manager.  He has three choices:

1.  Look at every single hotel and hire the best assistant hotel manager who has a wonderful reputation.
2.  Hire a former hotel manager that has been fired.
3.  Hire the manager of a successful flower shop.

I would go with the best assistant hotel manager.  While certain skills of the flower shop manager may transfer well, his current success may also be due to his vast knowledge of flowers and their customers.  There's likely important elements to running a hotel that he isn't aware.  It is not to say that the flower shop manager would 100% fail, but I think few wouldn't consider the assistant hotel manager to be the much safer option.

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