Dear NFL GMs: Leave NFL coaching to NFL coaches
12/18/2007
Stalter Home / Sports Channel / Bullz-Eye Home
Just over 11 months ago, Bobby Petrino sat at a podium with Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank and general manager Rick McKay.
After Blank and McKay introduced Petrino, the former Louisville head coach gave a speech about how excited he was to be in Atlanta and how the Falcons’ job was “the best in the league.” Among other things, he also spoke about commitment and always finishing the task at hand.
On Tuesday of last week, Petrino resigned as coach of the Falcons and, in less than 24 hours, agreed to become the new head coach at the University of Arkansas. In essence, Petrino broke his commitment with the Falcons and certainly didn’t finish the task at hand (or the season for that matter, as the Falcons still had three games to play).
In the days since his departure, there has been a lot of talk about how Petrino is a rat for quitting on the Falcons during the season and how Arkansas should be extremely leery about what kind of man they just hired. However, after this situation in Atlanta, the people who should be most leery are the NFL GMs who will need to fill head coaching vacancies in the near future.
Every year, there’s a hot name in the college ranks that is thrown around as a possible fit for an NFL head coach position. Last year it was Petrino and before him, it was Nick Saban, Steve Spurrier, Dennis Erickson, Butch Davis, Rich Brooks and Mike Riley.
Pete Carroll, Frank Beamer and Mack Brown are also commonly mentioned, although all three have spurned jobs in the NFL to stay at their respective college programs. Good thing they did, because it appears that college coaches simply aren’t cut out to coach in the pros.
People love to talk about how Jimmy Johnson won multiple Super Bowls with the Dallas Cowboys after coaching at Oklahoma State and the University of Miami. Hey, he succeeded at the pro level after coaching college, why can’t others do the same thing?
They can’t succeed because they don’t have what Johnson had.
Johnson had a ton of talent when he coached the Cowboys, but players also bought into his vision. They had fun, they played inspired and rarely did Johnson mess with the team’s chemistry if things were working. If he had to make adjustments, he made them. If he had to tweak the game plan, he tweaked it. If he had to make a big decision, he made it. All the players had to do was execute and play.
While talent usually wins out in college, it can only take a team so far in the NFL. In fact, with how much parity there is in the NFL today, the difference in talent level from team to team isn’t as significant as some might think. Game planning, execution, motivation and avoiding injuries are arguably more important than talent. And a head coach can control three of those four keys.
Petrino didn’t fail in Atlanta because he lost Michael Vick. He failed in Atlanta because he couldn’t get through to the players. Upstanding men like Warrick Dunn, Alge Crumpler and Lawyer Milloy – three guys that rarely (if ever) publicly complained about their coaches – spoke at length about how Petrino never held an open door policy with his team and how many players had to go through their position head coaches just to get their questions answered.
Saban didn’t fail in Miami because he didn’t know the X’s and O’s of the pro game. He failed because he couldn’t handle that some of his players turned a deaf ear when he talked down to them. In college, a coach can get away with screaming at his players for motivational purposes. In the NFL, a screaming coach can work, but he better have the respect of his players first.
The same can be said for Spurrier when he coached the Washington Redskins in 2002. The guy is an offensive genius, but he couldn’t deal with everything else associated with the pro game – including getting his players to play for him.
A good scheme goes a long way in college. In the NFL, it only gets you an interview. Spurrier had the plays, scheme and creativity to win in the NFL, but he didn’t have the foresight to realize that he had to relate to the players he was coaching. Furthermore, he didn’t realize that what worked for him in college might not work for him the NFL.
Just like Petrino in Atlanta, Spurrier didn’t understand that you couldn’t just rotate your quarterbacks on every offensive possession like some coaches do in college. In college, that motivates players to try a little harder so that they don’t lose their positions. In the NFL, it just pisses everybody off and it messes with the team’s chemistry.
In the NFL, players and coaches game plan for countless hours during the week and the quarterback has a dictionary-thick playbook that he has to know for game day. When a team is comfortable and used to Patrick Ramsey or Joey Harrington all week in practice, and then the head coach subs in Shane Matthews or Byron Leftwich in the second quarter, the players are going to start losing faith in what the coach is trying to accomplish. They start to think, “Wow, this guy panics after one bad quarter or mistake. Do we really want to buy into what he’s preaching?”
College coaches like Petrino, Saban and Spurrier fail to realize that players have a different mindset in the pros. College players are motivated by winning and possibly making a career out of the game. They’ll sacrifice more for a head coach who could possibly take their game to the next level or make them millions of dollars (or both).
NFL players, on the other hand, are still motivated by winning, but football is also their job and therefore, they’re more willing to follow their own past experiences before they follow a man who makes half their salary and is screaming in their face.
The Petrino incident in Atlanta was just one more example of why NFL teams should pass on college coaches. They don’t understand what it takes to communicate with professional athletes because they haven’t spent much time around professional athletes.
Many of the current and former NFL head coaches who have found success, were able to observe the nuances of the pro game first as a coordinator. Bill Belichick and Sean Payton served under Bill Parcells. Jon Gruden, Steve Mariucci and Andy Reid served under Mike Holmgren. Bill Cowher served under Marty Schottenheimer. Herm Edwards and Lovie Smith served under Tony Dungy. Before being handed the keys to a franchise, these coaches had an opportunity to learn what kind of communication it took to get a professional athlete to play hard for them. Some of them - like Sean Payton - might have gotten their start in the collegiate ranks as an assistant , but grew into good NFL head coaches after they had spent time as coordinators.
Another key ingredient to the aforementioned coaches’ success is that they were able to see what it took to become a head coach in the NFL. They saw how many hours they had to sacrifice to build a winning team. They saw how to handle the media and what the repercussions were when they made drastic changes to personnel. College coaches aren’t fortunate enough to see how to handle those situations, because they’re busy dealing with athletic departments and boosters, and trying to stay on top of their players’ academic responsibilities.
Petrino, Saban and Spurrier couldn’t hack it in the NFL. Neither could Davis, Brooks, Erickson and Riley. It’s unfair to say that all college coaches aren’t able to succeed in the NFL, but the past has shown that it takes a different mindset to make it as a head coach in the pros.
Questions or comments? Send them to astalter@bullz-eye.com.