It’s that time of year in football when coaches are being fired and hired. Coaches typically get fired from one team and then hired by another. Some of these coaches achieve great success with the new team while others can leave a successful program and end up with a losing season with a new team. Why do we see such disparities in relation to coaching success?
The reason is simple. Fans and owners typically get caught up in the emotion of the game rather than being objective in evaluating coach and player performance. The latter is especially important. Typically when a team is losing the coach is always blamed. It is rare to see the players blamed for a loss even when it is obvious that they performed poorly in a game. For some reason it is believed that the coach is supposed to be the one who determines whether a team loses or wins.
What is typically overlooked is that coaches are only responsible for game strategy, not player performance. It is always assumed that the players play at their highest levels. It is believed that they are already at their highest levels of performance and that they cannot do any better. When players don’t perform up what is supposed to be their best, the athlete is usually forgiven by saying that he had a bad day. This I believe is where the crux of the problem really lies. It becomes obvious when you understand that how well the players perform on the field is what determines whether the team wins or loses. Players are the ones who determine how good the coach’s strategy is by being able to carry out – or fail to carry out – the game strategy.
Thus, who should be blamed for the losses: the coaches or the players? Instead of only the coaches being blamed it should be a shared responsibility between the players and the coaches. Even though the players must carry out the game strategy, coaches can also contribute to a loss by calling for inappropriate actions during the game which result in the other team scoring when they shouldn’t have.
Some argue that the coaches and especially the general managers, must be held responsible because they are instrumental in selecting the players. This is true. But it is necessary to understand that selection of players on the professional level (as well as on the collegiate level) is mainly a guessing game. If the general manager guesses correctly he is a genius, if he guesses incorrectly he usually gets fired. The tough decisions arise when it’s a fairly even split between good and poor players that have been selected. Does the team now keep him and hope he will guess better in the following season or should he be fired? This situation is not unique to any one team; it is par for the course for all teams. This is why it is usually not surprising to find other teams ready to hire a soon-to-be-fired general manager or coach.
My use of the term guessing is based on fact, not opinion. General managers typically look mainly at the player’s stats and his combine results. They may say that they also look at gameplay but it is only their impression of how well the player does. If the player does well against a poor team – or more accurately, against players who are inferior in relation to their game skills, the player may look great. If he plays against good players he may not look as good.
However, if the GM were capable of evaluating skill execution and how well the player performs his skills in game play against good as well as poor players, he would be able to make a much more objective evaluation and selection of the players. This however, is not done because the typical GM does not have the ability to evaluate player skills. By this I mean that they are not able to analyze how well the player runs, cuts, throws, blocks, tackles, etc. Nor do they have specialists on the team who are capable of doing this to assist the GM in his evaluations and selections. Understand that how well the player executes his skills is the key to how successful he is in a game. This is what is typically overlooked in player evaluation.
Two of the key reasons for this is that coaches and teams still believe that player performance is genetically determined and that it is impossible to improve player performance. This is why they must be very accurate in their selections. But without being able to evaluate performance – especially game skills – and knowing that play performance can be improved, it is impossible to have a general manager or coach capable of selecting all great players. This is why it becomes a guessing game. Flipping a coin may bring about the same results as what they typically do in the selection of a player. Just take a look at the stats over last 5-10 years to check the veracity of this statement.
Based on the information that is available to them, many GM’s do a commendable job. But changing coaches and/or general managers whenever they have one or two losing seasons is not always in the best interests of the team. Much more productive would be to bring in specialists who are capable of improving players’ performances (skills) as well as game strategy, so that they can do better in each game. Minor adjustments can be made from game to game and in preparation for an upcoming game. This is not science-fiction fantasy. It is based on reality!
You can ask any sophisticated strength and conditioning or performance coach and he will tell you the same thing. There is no such thing as an athlete on any level who cannot be made better! But it takes someone with the knowledge and expertise to be able to break through the BS. When this happens I can almost guarantee that the team will not only go to the playoffs, but they will win the Super Bowl.
Coaches and general managers should be able to think outside the box. However, it appears that they are locked into the same system and the same methods of and ways of doing things as has been standard for the last 20 or more years. But it is based on myths as we presently know. Until this myth and the strongly ingrained BS that surrounds it is dispelled, we should not expect any changes in the near future. Instead we will just keep reading about the need to get rid of a particular coach or general manager. And fans will keep crying for greatness when they have to deal with mediocrity.