Black Monday and the Coaching Carousel

[Prime Time]

https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.c...choosing-between-vic-fangio-and-mike-munchak/

John Elway is choosing between Vic Fangio and Mike Munchak
Posted by Mike Florio on January 8, 2019

As the head-coaching dominoes begin to fall, the Denver domino apparently will land in one of two directions.

Mike Klis of 9News.com reports that Broncos G.M. John Elway “appears to be deciding between” Bears defensive coordinator Vic Fangio and Steelers offensive line coach Mike Munchak.

Klis adds that Fangio may have a slight edge, making him the rare defensive coach who could get a head-coaching job in the current hiring cycle. But Fangio has a couple of things going for him. First, he’s a great defensive coach.

Second, with Gary Kubiak expected to be re-involved with the team’s offense (possibly as offensive coordinator), the Broncos could hire a defensive coach without having to worry about the offensive coordinator quickly being pilfered as a head coach elsewhere, since Kubiak claims to have stepped away from being a head coach, for good.

As Klis notes, Elway may have tipped his plans last week, when explaining John Elway that he wants the next head coach “to be great on one side of the ball,” and “I look for greatness on that side.”

Fangio is great on defense, Munchak is great, as far as the offensive line is concerned. And the Broncos need to do great things soon, or great big changes could be coming at levels above the coaching function.

https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.c...s-the-door-on-leaving-the-patriots-this-year/

Josh McDaniels closes the door on leaving the Patriots, this year
Posted by Mike Florio on January 8, 2019

On Monday, the potential door to Green Bay closed on Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels. On Tuesday, McDaniels closed the door on leaving the Patriots, at least for this year.

After a conference call with reporters during which McDaniels said he won’t interview with any other teams during the 2019 cycle, McDaniels confirmed to Phil Perry of NBCSportsBoston.com that McDaniels will indeed stay put.

This year, McDaniels interviewed only with the Packers. The Browns reportedly were interested in McDaniels, and the interest reportedly was mutual. However, it appears that any interest will be going nowhere. (In theory, McDaniels presumably could have taken the Browns job without a formal interview; he previously interviewed for the job in 2014.)

PFT reported over the weekend, when McDaniels was still a viable candidate for the Green Bay job, that the Patriots were preparing for McDaniels to leave, either for Green Bay or Cleveland. The Patriots can now stop those preparations and focus exclusively on winning one or more (ideally, three) postseason games.

McDaniels wouldn’t have interviewed for the Packers job (or any other job) unless he had real interest in taking the job. McDaniels declined an opportunity to interview with the Bengals. None of the other teams with vacancies formally pursued him.

 

[12intheBox]

View: https://twitter.com/bleacherreport/status/1082729870009004032?s=21

 

[LesBaker]

He interviewed with the team on Saturday in Tampa. The Bucs need a quarterback whisperer for Jameis Winston and someone who can work with general manager Jason Licht.

Arians checks both boxes and them some. He also could hire a great coaching staff, including the coaching staff he could assemble which may include former Jets coach Todd Bowles.

Arians record without Palmer as his QB in AZ was under .500 FYI.

What I find humorous is that I love these coaches that walk away from the game for health reasons and return one year later. I guess it wasn't that much of a concern.

I don't recall exactly what but he was having some issues. Evidently he's better since a contract is in his future.

No he doesn't. I'm not saying it's not a good hire because he is a quality HC/offensive mind...but he didn't develop squat in AZ, and i'm not sure why he gets credit for Luck or Roethlesberger either.

Yup, he's got a rep that is a little better than what he deserves.

 

[den-the-coach]

Arians record without Palmer as his QB in AZ was under .500 FYI.

I agree, nobody else was good. He likes Winston, so IMO, that's a good match. I'm sure without Andrew Luck, his record in Indy would have been under .500 too.

 

[DVontel]

Arians record without Palmer as his QB in AZ was under .500 FYI.

I’m pretty sure a lot of coaches’ records would be under .500 without their starting QB unless you’re name is Bill Belichick.

What does this exactly prove?

 

[DVontel]

No he doesn't. I'm not saying it's not a good hire because he is a quality HC/offensive mind...but he didn't develop squat in AZ, and i'm not sure why he gets credit for Luck or Roethlesberger either.

Palmer under Arians by far had his best season in his career. Dude would’ve won MVP had it not been for Cam being awesome. Ben nor Luck exactly didn’t falter under him either.

Just because he can’t do the miracle & turn Ryan’s Lindley or Blaine Gabbert into Aaron Rodgers or Drew Brees doesn’t make him any type of fraud, if that’s what you’re implying. C’mon my man.

 

[12intheBox]

View: https://twitter.com/adamschefter/status/1082807054270640128?s=21

 

[LesBaker]

I agree, nobody else was good. He likes Winston, so IMO, that's a good match. I'm sure without Andrew Luck, his record in Indy would have been under .500 too.

My greater point was he isn't a QB guru.

He's a guy who has had a couple of good QB's around him.

I’m pretty sure a lot of coaches’ records would be under .500 without their starting QB unless you’re name is Bill Belichick.

What does this exactly prove?

It proves that he isn't a QB Whisperer. He isn't what the sports media says.

He's just another fat ass with a big mouth that happens to be in the NFL's Good Ole Boys Club.

 

[Karate61]

View: https://twitter.com/adamschefter/status/1082807054270640128?s=21

I wonder what the Rams will get if Fisher is hired?

 

[kurtfaulk]

I wonder what the Rams will get if Fisher is hired?

Nothing. They sacked him.

.

 

[Prime Time]

I wonder what the Rams will get if Fisher is hired?

Probably this and a bag of potato chips.

 

[den-the-coach]

The Rest could fall this way with the Bronco job down to two.

1. Denver Broncos...Vic Fangio/Mike Munchak...Fangio leader in the clubhouse because Broncos want to go defense because Gary Kubiak coming back as Offensive Coordinator, plus I would love to see Fangio leave the Bears.
2. Cincinnati Bengals...Todd Monken/Eric Bieniemy...Monken has play calling experience and is a former Head Coach in College at Southern Mississippi, however, you would think that Bieniemy would have the upper hand, but Bieniemy's background might getting a Head Coaching gig.
3. Miami Dolphins....Brian Flores/Kris Richard...Seems that the Dolphins will go defense here with Bieniemy still having an outside shot, but not likely. Not sure why everyone is so high on Flores, but he seems to check all the boxes that owner Stephen Ross and new GM Chris Grier want in their next Head Coach.
4. Cleveland Browns...Freddie Kitchens...They feel Kitchens has a great rapport with Mayfield and this announcement could come sooner rather than later, in fact, maybe today.
5. New York Jets...Mike McCarthy...By default Jets could end up with the best hire of them all, proven Head Coach with a Super Bowl ring and someone to work with Sam Darnold. The Jets mike overthink this and look to a dark horse candidate like Matt Rhule of Baylor, but McCarthy makes the most sense and in the end will be changing his shades of green from Dark Green to Kelly Green.

 

[Mojo Ram]

Palmer under Arians by far had his best season in his career. Dude would’ve won MVP had it not been for Cam being awesome. Ben nor Luck exactly didn’t falter under him either.

Just because he can’t do the miracle & turn Ryan’s Lindley or Blaine Gabbert into Aaron Rodgers or Drew Brees doesn’t make him any type of fraud, if that’s what you’re implying. C’mon my man.

You reference future HOF's, come on man...just identify and develop a young QB who can start and win games.
Palmer learned a pretty good offense in AZ , not how to play QB.

Why not Lindley or Gabbert or Stanton or Thomas? Am i missing anyone who came through undr his watch? A QB whisperer should have gotten more out of these guys. Okay maybe not Stanton, lol.

The whisperer is coaching in LA. Goff looked more lost than all of those guys ever did his rookie year.

 

[Selassie I]

That fat clown Arians... "I will only come back to coach the Browns."

The Browns... "Yeah,,, no thanks."

Tampon... "We'll hire you Bruce, please help us."

Fat bastard... "This is the job I REALLY wanted. I'll take it!"

 

[12intheBox]

Gregg Williams out on the streets.

 

[Prime Time]

The Sean McVay effect in full....effect.

https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2019/...sel-kliff-kingsbury-matt-lafleur-bruce-arians

The NFL Coaching Carousel Has a Type
From Kliff Kingsbury to Matt LaFleur, the head-coaching hires this offseason have been united by a common philosophy: Find the next Sean McVay. The approach isn’t surprising. The ubiquity of it is.
By Robert Mays

Anyone reading the tea leaves over the past few months should have been able to sense the direction this NFL coaching carousel was heading. A year after Sean McVay transformed the Rams from the most hapless offense in football into the highest-scoring team in the league, Matt Nagy lifted the Bears from a last-place finish to an NFC North title, Frank Reich led the Colts to an unlikely wild-card berth, and Andy Reid helped mold Patrick Mahomes II into a defense-destroying cyborg.

All signs pointed to a flurry of hires designed to mirror the league’s most successful power structures. It was easy to predict that front offices would seek out offensive-minded head coaches who could double as play-callers. Still, I’m not sure anyone predicted that would bear out to this extent.

On Tuesday, the Cardinals announced they’d hired former Texas Tech head coach (and short-lived USC offensive coordinator) Kliff Kingsbury. To some college football fans, the move was mystifying. In six seasons with the Red Raiders, Kingsbury compiled a 35-40 record. He never finished a season with a scoring defense better than 88th nationally and never managed a conference record better than 4-5.

Somehow, a guy who couldn’t assemble a legitimate college contender had stumbled into a top NFL job. And that hire came a day after the Packers announced they’d tabbed former Titans offensive coordinator Matt LaFleur as their next head coach.

Like Kingsbury, LaFleur’s résumé didn’t exactly make him an obvious target for this type of opportunity. The 2018 season marked his first as an NFL play-caller, and the Titans finished 22nd in offensive DVOA and 27th in points scored. LaFleur was brought in to pull quarterback Marcus Mariota out of a tailspin, but that didn’t happen. Mariota made 11 starts, and his production was only a slight improvement over his numbers from the previous two seasons under former coach Mike Mularkey.

Looking at Kingsbury and LaFleur, it’s easy to see that NFL decision-makers are developing a type. They want Sean McVay facsimiles, in virtually every way imaginable. In LaFleur’s case, the connection is easy to draw. He spent 2017 serving as McVay’s offensive coordinator with the Rams and before that worked with both McVay and Kyle Shanahan in Washington (and with Shanahan in Atlanta).

Kingsbury’s ties to McVay are less direct, but the Cardinals felt they were worth mentioning all the same. Arizona’s press release noted that Kingsbury is a friend of McVay’s and entertained taking a job as a Rams consultant after being fired by Texas Tech in November. It’s probably no coincidence that beyond knowing the Los Angeles head coach personally, both Kingsbury and LaFleur give off decidedly McVayesque vibes.

Gone are the days when NFL head-coaching vacancies were filled by gruff, grizzled football lifers. Now, teams seem to be looking for Ryan Gosling with a play sheet. Thick mustaches and chewing tobacco have given way to beard trimmers and hair pomade. And for coaches with defensive backgrounds, well, good luck even getting a phone call.

It’s hard to blame anyone who’s skeptical of what the Cardinals and Packers are doing. Chicago defensive coordinator Vic Fangio just spent a season turning the Bears into a waking nightmare for opposing offenses, and he managed only a single head-coaching interview. (That interview led to a hiring, with the Broncos.) Kingsbury couldn’t beat a bad Ole Miss team a few months ago, and he reportedly got double that number.

Still, it’s understandable why NFL teams seem to be pivoting so hard toward this approach. Kingsbury’s record in Lubbock leaves plenty to be desired, but success in college football involves plenty of factors he’ll never have to deal with at the pro level.

Recruiting isn’t an issue; he won’t have to compete against Texas, Texas A&M, and Oklahoma for talented players. If Kingsbury can establish a strong staff (one that should include an established offensive line coach and defensive coordinator) and focus his energy primarily on devising and running the offense, there’s a good chance the Cardinals will be fun as hell in 2019.

Meanwhile, LaFleur spent much of this season with Mariota either banged up or on sideline and with tight end Delanie Walker on injured reserve. Tennessee’s offense still showed flashes down the stretch, and it’s tough to blame Packers fans for getting excited about the prospect of what Aaron Rodgers can do in an offense born of the same DNA as the ones McVay and Shanahan have used to great success.

At their core, both the Cardinals’ and Packers’ choices were about finding the right person to get everything they can from their quarterbacks. In Green Bay, that means trying to maximize the final seasons of Rodgers’s prime with a coach who can challenge him, both interpersonally and schematically. For Arizona, the goal was bringing in an offensive guru who can revive Josh Rosen’s career on the heels of a disastrous rookie season.

Firing former coach Steve Wilks after a single year may have seemed like a panic move at first glance, but that isn’t necessarily true. After watching Rosen over the second half of the season, Arizona’s brass had to know that keeping Rosen within that infrastructure could have done irreparable damage to the organization’s most prized asset.

As owners look around the league and see the same types of head coaches (McVay, Reid, Nagy, Reich, Shanahan, Asshole Face, and Doug Pederson among them) fielding potent offenses, their desires to create a similar structures makes sense. In some instances, that means trying to clone McVay. But not always.

In terms of aesthetics, Bruce Arians is about as far away from Sean McVay as you can get. Arians is 66. He never had a reputation as an offensive wunderkind, and his first job as an NFL coordinator came in 2001, when he was 49. I don’t think we’ll ever see McVay rocking a Kangol. Dig deeper, though, and it’s clear that the Buccaneers’ choice to hire Arians follows a blueprint not altogether different from the one used by the Packers and Cardinals.

As Jameis Winston enters the fifth-year option of his rookie contract, Tampa Bay’s top priority as an organization is to do all it can to right the trajectory of the former no. 1 overall pick. Arians is a proven QB whisperer whose vertical scheme has consistently featured the deepest throws in the NFL. His system is designed to push the ball down the field while minimizing the risks involved with that style. Arians will also have no trouble tearing into Winston the first time his quarterback decides it’s OK to throw into triple coverage during a tie game in the second quarter.

The Browns’ organizational mind-set aligns with this trend too. Before heading to Cleveland to become the team’s running backs coach, Freddie Kitchens spent four years on Arians’s staff with the Cardinals. Kitchens is 44 and had never worked as an NFL coordinator until he was elevated to that role midway though this season after Todd Haley was fired in late October.

Yet that lack of experience apparently isn’t going to stop the Browns from making Kitchens their head coach. Cleveland’s motivation for keeping Kitchens is straightforward: It’s seen what he can do with Baker Mayfield. Rather than risk making an outside hire who might not mesh with one of the league’s most promising young quarterbacks, the franchise will go with what it knows.

Neither Kitchens nor Arians have the McVaylike mystique of Kingsbury or LaFleur, but both check many of the same boxes that the league wants in this moment. While it may seem shocking that established coordinators like Baltimore’s Wink Martindale can barely get a sniff in this market, the reality is the league was always moving this way. The surprise is how quickly this approach became ubiquitous.

The NFL’s offensive revolution is the driving force behind the coaching carousel. Front offices are betting it all on keeping pace, and there’s no telling which unproven options will succeed or fail.

 

[OldSchool]

Lol the sheer number of McVay references is amazing.

 

[tklongball]

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000001009178/article/browns-promote-freddie-kitchens-to-head-coach

Interesting.

 

[tklongball]

https://bleacherreport.com/articles...wns-dc-after-freddie-kitchens-made-head-coach

And Greg Williams Fired

 

[Jacobarch]

what a dumpster fire. I would have kept Williams the guy can coach, he got the most out of their team when he filled in as HC