Stacked and Pissed

[Corey]

Shit you're right, but the point still remains in giving too much leash to the OC and not stepping in.

He then replaced the OC with Roman. So, he held him accountable.

[G54377]

He then replaced the OC with Roman. So, he held him accountable.

It was a playoff game. Good decision, still doesn't change the issue in-game.

[JimZipCode]

Sean Payton, Andy Reid, Kyle Shanahan, Sean McVay. All call the plays on the offensive side. Bill Belichick has his hands all over the defensive calls frequently too. You'd probably list these all these guys in the top ten coaches in the league.

The only guy that has had success with a similar style to Harbaugh would probably be...

Most of the other successful head coaches have more direct in-game input on one side of the ball or the other.

I wonder if that's true.

Here's a smattering of HOF coaches:

Marv Levy
Tom Landry (seemed like a "CEO coach" in my youth; though I later learned he had been a very able DC in the 50s)
Chuck Noll (Bud Grant and later others coordinated that D)
Jimmy Johnson in Dallas (Remember Norv Turner & Dave Wannstedt?)

I wonder even about Bill Parcells. We think of Tuna as a guy in "total control". But how much tactical, Xs-&-Os type input did he give on gameplanning etc? Back in NY, his original OC was Ron Erhardt, known today for co-creating a whole system of play-calling. In New England, his OC was Ray Perkins, the OTHER co-creator of that system. Parcells also had a halfway-decent coach helping him on defense.

I think Tuna's version of "total control" had more to do with personnel, than with Xs-&-Os. He would coach all his players – tell Phil Simms to kill the clock, for example – but he had Erhardt-Perkins (or Belichick) call the plays.

The "CEO coach" seems to be well-represented. Hell: Brian Billick was a "successful" HC. Not to the level of the guys above, but successful. He had a lot of input on the offensive side in Baltimore; and that was the side that sucked. His only success was in the "CEO" sphere.

You also have your Bill Walsh / Joe Gibbs types, who made their bones as offensive whizzes and kept that involvement in the head role. Sean Payton represents that type in the last dozen years, Kid Shanahan more recently. And the defensive gurus, reaching their apotheosis in Bill Belichick.

But I don't know how much more common that type is, among successful coaches, than the "CEO type".

Being a HC is about leadership as much if not more then play calling Xs and Os.

I've heard Jimmy Johnson advocate that HCs give up their playcalling role because leading the organization as a whole is more important.

Yeah. That happens a lot, doesn't it? Andy Reid gave up play-calling to Doug Pederson in the 2015 season. Then in 2017 Reid did it again, to Matt Nagy.

Jimmy Johnson's an interesting cat. He's not known for a specific "scheme". Here's two other things I've heard about his coaching philosophy, over the years:

▪ He was a big proponent of needing to win the "sudden change" scenarios: fumble, INT, muffed punt etc. These situations where field position can suddenly change, dramatically. He felt mastering those was a big key to winning games.

▪ He believed in rotating D-linemen, so you always had a fresh pass rush.

Of course JJ was a full-fledged Program Runner by the time he arrived in the NFL. Not an X-&-O details man (though I'm sure he knew his stuff).



The thing it seems people don't want to talk about, is that there are "CEO" details to the HC job; and HCs need to get that shit HANDLED. Or they fail. Buddy & Rexy Ryan's failures were in the "CEO" sphere; their defenses were great. Sean Payton lost a season over "CEO" failures. By contrast, Belichick has that "CEO" stuff buttoned up tight.

A HC who isn't performing those "CEO" tasks, flat-out isn't doing his job, period.