Those coaches under Belichick are doing/or did a great job while working under him but don't seem to be able to extend that vision to other teams they coach. McDaniels may or may not break that mold if given the opportunity to be the head coach of the Rams. I won't be upset if he is hired in that capacity but I will be cautiously optimistic.
http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/155702702/bill-belichick-coaching-tree-strange-fruit
BELICHICK COACHING TREE NOT FRUITFUL
By Andrea Hangst
October 28, 2015
Romeo Crennel, Bill O'Brien and Eric Mangini have struggled as NFL head coaches after leaving Bill Belichick and the Patriots. (Getty Images)
The concept of the coaching tree in football, particularly in the NFL, is one of those strange things fans can get entirely too worked up about. It's as if winning can somehow be genetic or transmitted by mere exposure. That's why Patriots coach Bill Belichick's coaching tree gets so much scrutiny.
Belichick, who himself is a branch of the Bill Parcells tree, has been the head coach in New England since 2000 and has a 181-65 regular-season record during his tenure. He's also led the Patriots to a 21-8 postseason record and has been to six Super Bowls, with four championships. So one might assume such a track record of success could be passed down to his assistants and position coaches who have gone onto coach elsewhere in the NFL.
But that's not the case. Let's take a look at the members of Belichick's tree who are still coaching in the professional ranks and see what they've been up to since coming out from their mentor's shadow.
Bill O'Brien, Texans head coach
O'Brien's connection to Belichick's Patriots dates back to 2007, when O'Brien was brought onboard to serve as an offensive assistant after more than a decade as a positional coach in the collegiate ranks. By 2008, he was promoted to wide receivers coach, then to quarterbacks coach in 2009 and 2010.
In 2011, he became the team's offensive coordinator, a year during which the Patriots went 13-3 and lost in the Super Bowl. After serving as Penn State's head coach in 2012-13, the Texans bought out his contract and hired him to serve as their head coach, beginning in 2014 and continuing through today.
O'Brien has presided over the team's selection of linebacker Jadeveon Clowney with the first pick of the 2014 NFL draft, the end of the Matt Schaub era at quarterback and the two-year -- and ongoing -- search for a long-term solution at the position. Through a season and a half, O'Brien's Texans are 11-12, with nine of those wins coming last year. Currently, they have just two victories in 2015, over the Jaguars and Buccaneers.
(The Texans are 7-6 this season)
Houston's struggles cannot all be pegged on O'Brien, though it was a curious decision (to say the least) to keep playing running back Arian Foster in a 44-26 loss to the Miami Dolphins Sunday. Foster tore his Achilles tendon in the fourth quarter of a game in which the Texans trailed the Dolphins, 41-0, at halftime. Suddenly, the Texans are down their top offensive asset, and they lost him in a game where he would have been better off being shut down for the day, given the score.
O'Brien's bluster, put so candidly on display for the HBO "Hard Knocks" cameras this summer, hasn't translated to on-field results. Part of the problem is the quarterback situation. O'Brien named Brian Hoyer the Week 1 starter, only to give the starting job to Ryan Mallett for the next four games. Mallett was then pulled in Week 5 in favor of Hoyer, who now at least doesn't have to look over his shoulder at the fellow former Patriots backup passer.
Mallett was released Tuesday, just days after he overslept and missed the team's charter to Miami. Oversleeping seems to be Mallett's preferred method of non-confrontational confrontation: He also overslept after being named Hoyer's backup. O'Brien was so fed up with Mallett's behavior Sunday that he was ready to cut him immediately, but realized
he wouldn't have a backup quarterback if he did so. So he waited till Tuesday.
View: https://twitter.com/taniaganguli/status/659043001759629313
O'Brien's reliance on former Tom Brady backups is an extension of the Belichick coaching tree mythology. Just as O'Brien has received numerous opportunities directly related to being part of a winning team he didn't quite help build in hopes that the Belichick magic had rubbed off on him, so did O'Brien think Brady's shine would be reflected in Hoyer and Mallett. This hubris could be enough to cost O'Brien his job at season's end if the Texans don't dramatically turn course.
Romeo Crennel, Texans defensive coordinator
Crennel's path never crossed O'Brien's in New England, but there's no doubt a glowing Belichick reference led him to his current job. Crennel's history with Belichick dates back to the 1980s, when he served as the Giants' special teams and defensive line coach when Belichick came aboard as the team's defensive coordinator in 1985.
He actually moved to the Pats before Belichick, serving as the team's defensive line coach from 1993-96, the final year being Belichick's first with New England (as assistant head coach and secondary coach). Crennel then accompanied Belichick to the Jets, serving as his defensive line coach, and after spending 2000 as the Browns defensive coordinator, he rejoined Belichick in New England as the defensive coordinator, a position he held from 2001-04.
Crennel has since served as a head coach in the NFL twice -- first with the Browns (2005-08), a team with which he went 24-40, and then with the Chiefs in 2011-12, when he was promoted from defensive coordinator when then-head coach Todd Haley was relieved of his duties. Crennel was fired after the Chiefs went 4-15.
Crennel has had an embarrassment of defensive riches to work with in Houston, including defensive end J.J. Watt and linebackers Clowney, Whitney Mercilus and Brian Cushing. And in 2014, the defense was certainly sharp. It ranked 16th in yards per game allowed (348.2) and seventh in points per game allowed (19.2). It totaled 39 sacks and tied for the third-most interceptions (20). Things seemed like they were looking up for Crennel's charmed-but-strange career.
But that impressive defense hasn't held up in its second year with Crennel at command. The Texans have just five interceptions and 13 sacks, rank 23rd in yards per game allowed and 28th in points per game allowed, at 28.6. With the offense faltering -- particularly when it comes to points scored -- the Texans need the defense to step up much as it did in 2014.
But instead, it's going backward. Watt alone cannot carry this team. The addition of Vince Wilfork (another former Patriot, it must be noted) to plug the front hasn't paid off. The pass rush has suffered, as has the Texans' ability to stop the run.
This is a common issue for Crennel's defenses of late. They show promise and feature a few key stars and encouraging aggression, but then … it just falls off. Crennel's teams have constantly struggled to sustain success.
If O'Brien loses his job at the end of the season, Crennel will probably also be given a pink slip. But that Patriots mystique should continue on, and both men would only be jobless by choice in 2016. Denial mixed with nostalgia is a common source of motivation for coaching hires in the NFL.
Josh McDaniels, Patriots offensive coordinator
McDaniels is practically a Patriots lifer at this point in his career. He began his NFL coaching career with the team, serving as a personnel and then defensive assistant 2001-03. He was promoted to quarterbacks coach in 2004 and served as QB coach and offensive coordinator 2006-08. He was hired to be the Broncos head coach in 2009, taking over for Mike Shanahan.
Controversy marred the near-two seasons McDaniels was in control in Denver, as he initially tried to engineer trading Broncos quarterback Jay Cutler to the Patriots to acquire quarterback Matt Cassel, a commodity McDaniels was more familiar and comfortable with.
But the trade fell through, Cutler's trust in McDaniels and the Broncos was shattered, and the QB was eventually traded to the Chicago Bears, with quarterback Kyle Orton and draft picks as compensation. This move irked star Broncos receiver Brandon Marshall, who was eventually benched for "disciplinary reasons" and traded to the Miami Dolphins in 2010.
All of this led Denver to an 8-8 season, but when the Broncos began their 2010 campaign with three wins to nine losses, the Broncos chose to sever ties with McDaniels despite only four games left to play.
Also a contributing factor: McDaniels and Broncos director of video operations Steve Scarnecchia were each fined $50,000 by the NFL for videotaping a 49ers walkthrough prior to the two teams meeting in London in Week 8. The bigger issue for the Broncos is that McDaniels did not alert the organization about Scarnecchia coming to him with the illegal tape.
McDaniels bounced back quickly, though, taking the Rams' vacant offensive coordinator job in January 2011, though his tenure was brief. While signed through 2012, McDaniels was let go along with then-head coach Steve Spagnuolo after the Rams won only two games, had the second-fewest total offensive yards in the league and averaged a dismal 12.1 points per game.
The Rams' failure, though, did not concern the Patriots -- McDaniels was brought back during the 2011-2012 playoffs to serve as an assistant head coach and then regained his offensive coordinator duties in 2012 when O'Brien left to coach Penn State.
This may have been McDaniels' most savvy move. There's no safer place to be on the Belichick coaching tree than directly under its shade. Brady and Belichick handle the daily machinations of the team, and McDaniels reaps the rewards.
This should ultimately lead him to another shot at being a head coach in the NFL, but history does not point to this being a successful venture. McDaniels knows what butters his bread for now, at least, and he rode that wave to a Super Bowl ring in February.
Eric Mangini, former 49ers defensive coordinator
There may be no one on the Belichick coaching tree still in the NFL more polarizing than Mangini, who came to the Pats in 2000 with Belichick, serving as defensive backs coach before being promoted to defensive coordinator in 2005. Armed with three Super Bowl rings, Mangini moved on to be head coach of the Jets (2006-08) and Browns (2009-10).
The latter endeavor did not go well -- the Browns went 10-22,
Sports Illustrated's Joe Posnanski
named the hire the "worst ever" in September of 2009 and Nate Jackson
detailed the numerous ways Mangini destroyed the morale of his players. It took until 2013 for an NFL team to seek out Mangini's services again.
That team? The 49ers, who first brought him aboard as an offensive consultant in 2013 and then made him tight ends coach a season later. Given Mangini's notoriety as a hot-headed control freak, it's likely things didn't go swimmingly between Mangini and then-head coach Jim Harbaugh (perhaps by design, given that the front office was clearly soured on Harbaugh by this time).
Mangini is now presiding over the 49ers' defense, a unit that suffered significant attrition during the offseason. San Francisco's defense ranks 31st in yards allowed and 22nd in points allowed so far this year.
Like Belichick, Mangini is not at all pleasant, sometimes comes off as impulsive and can turn off those tasked to work with him. Unlike Belichick, though, Mangini has no proven track record of winning, which makes his negative personality traits that much more insufferable.
Hiring Mangini is basically an admission of the desire to make things as hard as possible for the players and the rest of the coaching staff. The Niners are essentially punishing themselves.
NFL hires from the Belichick coaching tree serve to further highlight the level of superstition and paranoia that exists in the league. Teams would rather sign questionable coaches who at least spent some time with Belichick's winning ways in New England than go for the creative or out-of-the-box hire. Winning is not a contagion a coach can catch just from standing near Belichick.
Yet this phenomenon is likely to continue, because teams simply cannot help themselves. The stars in their eyes outshine any rational approach to hiring. If anything can be taken away from Belichick's coaching tree, it's to give college football a go -- if your name isn't Charlie Weis, it's likely to go better than dipping toes into an NFL head-coaching gig.
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