Steve Sailer writes: The article is of course about why there are only 5 black NFL head coaches instead of why there is only 1 Hispanic coach. There are now far more Latinos than blacks in the U.S., but nobody seems to be able to pay them more than just cursory attention.
It’s interesting whether in the future we will see more hoopla about underrepresentation of Latinos or Asians, or if blacks will continue to hog all the diversity attention. I could see it going either way. I’m sure irate Asian overachievers will continue to beaver away on their standardized op-eds complaining about the Media Myth of the Model Minority, but probably nobody except me will bother to read them. But will the Hispanic Sleeping Giant awake? Or will nobody much care?
Comments:
* First of all, NFL football is a business and to make money you have to remain competitive. Teams with consistent losing records cannot fill their stadiums and this costs the owner/s money. To date, only two black NFL coaches have brought their teams to the Super Bowl and that was in 2007 when Tony Dungy’s Colts beat Lovie Smith’s Bears. Both coaches were black.
The point is that black NFL coaches are held to the same standard as whites ( with perhaps a small racial bonus in that they, ceteris paribus, are more likely to get a head coaching job. Dungy quit coaching to become a network TV analyst, a decision a number of other successful NFL coaches have also made. Smith was fired this year after a horrible ( 6-10 season) at Tampa. It wasn’t just the losing record though. It was how Tampa lost many games. The team wasn’t just bad it was also poorly prepared as it often killed its own chances with stupid penalties and poor execution. The kind of stuff head coaches are supposed to manage.
* If Belichick had realized in 2000 that he was TOM BRADY he wouldn’t have let him linger until the 6th round.
But Belichick later picked up Matt Cassel, who had been stuck on the bench for 4 years at USC behind a couple of Heisman Trophy winners, never starting a game in college, in the 7th round, so he’s good at noticing quarterbacks who didn’t get a fair shake in college. Pete Carroll, who isn’t quite Belichick in career achievement but has won NCAA and NFL championships, didn’t think Cassel was as good as Carson Palmer or Matt Leinart. In 2016, we realize Carson Palmer really has been awfully good.
It’s enough to make you sympathize with Malcolm Gladwell saying nobody can tell anything about which college quarterback will be any good.
* If you haven’t seen it yet, watch NFL Films’ short documentary about the Patriots’ 2014-2015 season, Do Your Job. Most of the Patriots’ assistants seem like they’d be out of place in corporate management. The burly guy with the beard, d-coach Matt Patricia, has an aeronautical engineering degree from Rensselaer. Football research director Ernie Adams is a Northwestern grad.
The scene at the end of the film, the closing moments of the Super Bowl, shows that clock management is never cut and dried. When Seattle was second and goal at the one to take the lead with time running down, Patricia was asking Belichick if he wanted to call time out to save some seconds for the offense in case Seattle scored. The assistants in the press box were asking the same thing. Belichick just stared across the field at the Seattle sideline, saw some confusion, and decided he was not going to give Seattle time to get more organized. The personnel package the Patriots had on the field for the defining play of the season hadn’t been used all year.
The documentary’s coverage of that 30 seconds gives an idea of the frenetic back and forth that goes on on both sidelines. Assistants yelling in the headsets, players shuffling in and out; like Steve says, sitting on the couch at home is a great vantage point from which to say the coach is an idiot.
* How dominant have the Patriots been? Tom Brady is going to his 10th conference championship game. There are 27 NFL teams that haven’t gone to 10 conference championship games.
* The Buffalo Bills have not made the playoffs in 16 years and ticket sales fell off. They even tried to field one game per season in Toronto and that was a dismal attendance failure. Last year, the new owners hired Rex Ryan, recently released by the NY Jets. Rex’s flamboyant personality and “guarantee” of making the playoffs led to record season ticket sales. The fans started calling for Rex’s head after the first two back to back losses and didn’t stop until the end of this year’s 8-8 season. Last week Rex hired his twin brother, Rob (fired mid season from New Orleans) to be his assistant head coach ( a position that appears no where else in the league) Today the Bills announced the hiring of a woman ( former administrative assistant) to be quality control coach-special teams. First woman ever to be an NFL coach, at any position. So now blacks have to worry about being beaten out for coaching jobs by “white wimin!” Good to middling coaches seem be a common commodity, great coaches a rarity. Belichick finds players who will fit his schemes and commit to the team, one fuck up and you are gone. Jonah Gray scored 4 TDs and gained 200+ yards in a game against Indy (I think) missed a team meeting and adios. Belichick also game plans for specific opponents, giving offensive and defensive looks they have not seen before, and then makes adjustments on the fly. I remember a playoff game (against the Ravens?) where on the first play he split Gronk out wide, had Welker in the slot, Hernandez at RB and the other TE, whose name I can’t spell or pronounce, at FB. The defense took one look and called a time out. No snaps yet and you are down a time out. Hernandez lined up often at RB in that game and gained 100+ rushing yards. Against another team he had a tackle line up at the TE spot and then covered him with an split end, making him ineligible, but the defense still covered him. The opposing coach, one of the Harbaughs, was apoplectic, demanding a flag. The ref explained that he player never left the line of scrimmage, and dropped back to block, so no foul. A couple of plays latter New England used the same formation, the ref announced over his mic that the player was ineligible and Harbough still covered him with a linebacker. Brady made a pass behind the linebacker for a big gain. Rex Ryan also had the team with the most penalties, which shows poor coaching. Fans want wins, they don’t care if the coach is white, black or brown. NFL fans willing accept convicted miscreants onto the team as long as they can block or run or catch. The bar for coaching is already low, Tom Coughlin, at about 50% wins, resigns from the Giants and interviews days later….but he has two Rings. The NYT should take their diversity quest to the NCAA, where there are 100s of teams and not too many black head coaches. Problem is, not too many college coaches transition successfully to the NFL. Chip Kelly, has two winning season then Philly tanks this year and he is gone. One last thing about Belichick, according to a documentary on TV that I saw about Julian Edelman, Edelman stated that the Pats only watch Low-lights films, that is the mistakes they made in their previous game. High-lights are just the expected results of doing their job.
* What Daniel Jeremiah and Bucky Brooks on the “Move the Sticks” podcast say about the Patriots as a coaching staff is they go out and get players who do one thing VERY well, and then develop schemes that allows those players to be successful in doing what they do best. The two (they are scouts for NFL teams and Brooks played in the NFL, Jeremiah at QB in College) note that the highest ranked players do everything well, but are hard to draft and expensive to sign. That the Patriots, who they directly attribute this to Belichick, find undervalued players who can only do that one thing but don’t try and mold them as other teams do to existing schemes and make them do things they are not very good at compared to the superstars.
I don’t know what I would have done — Belichick is smarter than me in assessing football talent that’s for sure. I love how contempt just drips off him during press conferences — his dismissal of “Cry Brady” working the refs in the NY Post as “hot air” and “we’re focused on the Broncos” was pure gold. According to Brooks and Jeremiah, who both worked for a while at the Patriots, that office complex is very quiet and focused. Apparently everyone works very hard there, not much fooling around like in other franchises.
Look at Stan Kroenke. He’s borrowing a billion to finance the stadium in Inglewood. Will he retain Fischer? My guess is no, but it won’t be Jim Caldwell replacing him. Right now the Rams are basking in being the first team to move back to LA. But a few 6-10, or even 8-8 seasons and all of a sudden those corporate luxury boxes may be empty. Local ratings down. Lesser interest in a Rams cable network, with lesser money.
* Has Matthew Stafford progressed as a QB? How have the Lions done overall? Both the Detroit Lions and the New England Patriots got hit by the injury bug, but the Patriots are in Championship Weekend and the Lions did not make the playoffs after exiting in the first round last year.
You could argue the principal reason that Peyton Manning has only one Superbowl ring and his brother two, is that Caldwell and Dungy were inferior coaches to cagy old Tom Coughlin.
By contrast, look at Andy Reid with Alex Smith. Smith went from not being good enough to beat out Kaepernick, to getting his team fairly deep in the playoffs. While Smith is a “game manager,” i.e. takes the check down, etc. and doesn’t put balls in “mailboxes” down the field, he won’t give up too many stupid plays, and gives his players chances to make plays and win. As Brian Billick said, there are not 32 men on the earth with the ability to play starting QB in the NFL.
I haven’t seen much of Caldwell improving Stafford, rather the reverse — wild plays, pushing it, not knowing when to be aggressive and when to back off and take the checkdown or throw the ball out of bounds.
* Matthew Stafford did indeed improve mightily – in the second half of the season, after Caldwell was forced to fire his OC, Joe Lombardi (grandson of Vince) and hired the infamous Jim Bob Cooter as his OC.
That’s right, the Lion’s OC is a guy with a Dukes of Hazard name. And guess what? He was great!
Stafford’s second half stats?
17 TD’s and only 2 int’s.
2,500 yards and a QBR of 115.
Unreal, and it nothing to do with Caldwell. Everything to do with getting the right (unappreciated and pale-skinned) guy who could actually recognize Stafford’s innate ability, which is astronomical.
