Three Year Plan

It seems that in today's NFL a coach has three years to put up results or else he's shown the door. Occasionally, if a coach's second season is disastrous, like Bill Callahan in 2003, the damage is deemed irreparable and they get fired.
In fact, since 1995, only Dennis Erickson with Seattle and Bruce Coslet with Cincy, have been allowed to coach for 4 seasons without making the playoffs.
As an exception to the three year rule, starting with Mike Shanahan in 1989, the Raiders have dismissed six of their previous eight coaches after two seasons or less.


To see how often team's actually have a successful coaching hire let's analyze the tenure length of NFL coaches of ten years ago, in 1997.

Gone after 1 season:
Joe Bugel- Raiders

Gone after 1.5 seasons:
Kevin Gilbride- Chargers

Gone after 2 seasons:
Lindy Infante- Colts

Gone after 3 seasons:
Ted Marchibroda- Ravens

Pete Carroll- Patriots

Mike Ditka- Saints

Bill Parcells- Jets

Dick Vermeil- Rams (Won Super Bowl)

Gone after 4 seasons:
Vince Tobin- Cardinals

Dom Capers- Panthers

Bruce Coslet- Bengals

Barry Switzer- Cowboys (Won Super Bowl)

Bobby Ross- Lions

Jimmy Johnson- Dolphins

Ray Rhodes- Eagles

Dennis Erickson- Seahawks (coached 6 years total- never made playoffs)


Gone after 6 seasons:
Dave Wannstedt- Bears

Steve Mariucci- 49ers

Tony Dungy- Bucs


Gone after 7 seasons:
Dan Reeves- Falcons (reached Super Bowl)

Mike Holmgren- Packers (Won Super Bowl)

Norv Turner- Redskins


Gone after 8 seasons:
Tom Coughlin- Jaguars


Gone after 10 years:
Marty Schotteheimer- Chiefs

Dennis Green- Vikings


Stepped down after 12 years:
Marv Levy- Bills (made 4 Super Bowls)


Stepped down after 15 years:
Bill Cowher- (Won Super Bowl)


Still with their team:
Jeff Fisher- Titans (14th season- Made a Super Bowl)

Mike Shanahan- Broncos (13th Season- Won 2 Super Bowls)


None of the seven coaches who failed to make the playoffs lasted more than four seasons, one coach who won the Super Bowl last only four, and another who made the playoffs twice lasted only three.

Knowing this, let's see who is on the hot seat after this season?

Brian Billick is in his 9th season with the Ravens but a late-season swoon might cost him his job.

Prediction: One more year

John Fox is in his 6th season with Carolina and made a Super Bowl in 2003, but his team is falling apart, and the only thing that might save him is that he has a built in excuse with the worst QB situation in perhaps the history of the league.

Prediction: Fired, though he will be swooped up quickly

Mike Nolan is in his third year with the 49ers and hasn't smelled the postseason, so keeping him would break the 3-year rule. Plus, he has bickered with his (possibly inept) young QB. His only defense is that he might have the least talented offense in the league.

Prediction: Either Alex Smith goes, or (more likely) he does

Joe Gibbs is in his 4th year, finds himself in a brutal division with a soft team.

Prediction: Gibbs is allowed to "retire" gracefully.

Who's # 3?

To note the midseason point of the NFL, and the inaugural post of this blog, I asked three of my friends to rank the Top 12 QB's in the league as part of a small experiment I will conduct.
(Note: Friends were chosen in direct relation to how much free time they have at work and therefore will remain pseudonymous.
Note-within-a-note: I am writing this at 8 PM because I have no free time at work.
Note-within-a-note-within-a-note: There must be a correlation between having a good job and having plenty of free time because they all make more money than I do. At least the two of them who are employed do.)

I also ranked the top 12 and we will pool their rankings to make the definitive midseason rankings, since four people doing 5 minutes of research each are known to constitute a representative sample.

The rankings
(A first place vote is worth 12 points, 2nd-11, etc.) :

1. Brady 48
2. P. Manning 44
3. Favre 35
4. Roethlisberger 32
5. Romo 30
6. Palmer 24
7. Brees 22
8. D. Anderson 21
9. Garcia 16
10. E. Manning 15
11. Kitna 12
12. Hasselbeck 6
13. McNabb 5
14. Griese 1
14. Rivers 1

There a few interesting revelations from this list.
Firstly, all four people put Brady ahead of Peyton. What was probably about a 70-30 in Manning's favor a year ago, has probably turned into a majority for Brady, despite the fact that Peyton got the monkey off his back.

The fact that only fifteen QB's got named shows how weak the current quarterback crop is ( I'm not sure what Brian Griese being on the list shows other than that Friend # 3 needs to be reacquainted with Donovam McNabb.)
In fact, the lists are pretty consistent; the only real anomaly is Friend #1 picking Kitna 4th, and leaving off Carson Palmer.

For purposes of comparison, here are the top 12 QB's of the list I compiled before the season began:
1. P. Manning
2. Brady
3. Palmer
4. Brees
5. McNabb
6. Romo
7. Hasselbeck
8. Rivers
9. Leinart
10. Roethlisberger
11. Delhomme
12. Garcia

Leinart and Delhomme's seasons ended quickly, though Leinart still had time to play himself out of a job. The other ten have acquited themselves respectably- indeed all 10 got votes in the midseason survey.

Amazingly, the only players to get 20 points whom I didn't include preseason were Derek Anderson, who couldn't even beat out Charlie Frye for the Browns job, and Brett Favre who was not even in consideration for my preseason list.

Looking at the Survey Rankings you get the feeling that this is not exactly the Golden Age for quarterbacks, past the Big 2, plus Favre as a legacy.
The top 4 all have rings but Romo and Palmer, 5 and 6 respectively have yet to win a playoff game, and #7 Drew Brees has won just one. Anderson, Eli, Kitna, Rivers and Griese have all yet to win in the playoffs as well. That's 7 out of the presumed Top 15 in the league who have yet to win a playoff game.
That seems awfully low, and next week we will look back at the QB crops that existed in 1967, 1977, 1987 and 1997 to see if this is a particularly weak group.