Pro Football History.com Blog

By Stephen Juza

July 4th, 2022

Read 2023's Coaching Tree Update

Each January and February, the coaching carousel rotates as several head coaches are fired, and new coaches hired to replace them. Coaching trees expand with these changes, adding new branches, or forming their own tree altogether. While coaching trees are often open to interpretation, let’s take a look at the current NFL coaching landscape.

Andy Reid:

The largest coaching tree for the 2022 season belongs to Andy Reid. Five different active head coaches spent time on Reid’s staff, led by Sean McDermott's 12 years as an assistant. A few things stand out about Reid’s tree beyond the breadth. Among them, it is also the only active tree in which a child coach has won a Super Bowl.

I’ve written about Reid’s coaching tree before ( Success of Modern Coaching Trees, Top Trees in History), and for another year it ranks as the top in the league. This offseason saw turnover from his former assistants: Matt Nagy was fired by the Chicago Bears (and he subsequently re-joined Reid in Kansas City), while former assistant Todd Bowles was promoted to the top job in Tampa following Bruce Arians’ retirement.

His coaching tree seems primed to continue its top ranking in the league with the emerging success of the Buffalo Bills, led by former assistant McDermott. In his five seasons as a head coach, the Bills have made the playoffs four times. You have to go back all the way to the early 1990s to find a stretch of three consecutive playoff berths for the team.

Orange coaches not active head coaches

Sean McVay:

Coming off his first Super Bowl victory, Sean McVay has a burgeoning coaching tree. Three of the last four offseasons have seen one of his top assistants hired away to head coaching positions. Through these coaches, his coaching tree has also had an early burst of success.

His opponent in the Super Bowl was led by his former quarterbacks coach, Zac Taylor. His former offensive coordinator Matt LaFleur has led the Packers to three consecutive 13-win seasons. Kevin O'Connell and Brandon Staley hope they can bring that level of success, or more, to their own teams.

With the Rams primed for continued success, his coaching staff will continue to get looks at head coaching opportunities, but the continued turnover may put a pause on his tree expanding for a few years. Key offensive coaches are entering the 2022 with limited coaching experience, which will likely give teams pause before handing over the reins of their franchise.

Bill Belichick:

While Bill Belichick may be one of the best coaches in league history, his coaching tree continues to leave a lot to be desired. While this offseason saw two more coaches hired from his tree (Brian Daboll and Josh McDaniels), it will take a lot of individual success for them to balance out the disappointment from the other coaches.

Across the ten coaches in his entire coaching tree, they have combined for only two wins in the playoffs, or one fewer than Zac Taylor had individually by his third season as head coach. Not only that, but only one of the ten coaches lasted longer than four seasons with their first head coaching job.

Daboll could be the coach to break the trend. He’s spent almost as much time with Belichick in the NFL as without, coaching under several other head coaches. This is a significant break from other coaches in Belichick’s tree - few other coaches spent significant time away from New England. The additional perspectives could serve Daboll well as he hopes to rebuild the Giants into a consistent playoff contender.

Orange coaches not active head coaches

Kyle Shanahan/Frank Reich/Mike Vrabel:

These three coaches have two coaches each that have been tapped to lead their own team, although their relatively short tenures as a head coach in their own right have led these assistant coaches to spend most of their careers on other head coaching staffs. That said, both Kyle Shanahan and Frank Reich have lost a coordinator in each of the last two seasons, with Vrabel losing two coordinators in the two seasons prior to that.

However, if their individual success continues, there will be ample opportunity for these head coaches to continue and make a mark on the coaching ranks for years to come. Shannahan, Reich, and Vrabel have combined for nine winning seasons and three conference championship appearances over the last four seasons, giving assistants plenty of opportunity to coach in big games. While there is little relationship between a coach’s success and the success of their assistant coaches, teams generally hire coaches coming from successful teams.

Remaining Coaches:

Not every coach in the league can tie their assistant coaching career to a current head coach. In some instances, like Matt Rhule or Kliff Kingsbury, they have spent their years prior to their NFL head coaching role in the college ranks. As I wrote last year, college coaches have a far more boom-or-bust nature to their coaching careers compared to a head coach from the NFL ranks. While Rhule has struggled in his NFL career thus far, Kingsbury has managed to improve the Cardinals record each of his three seasons with the team.

Other coaches, such as Mike McCarthy and Mike Tomlin, have simply been coaches long enough that their parent coaches have long since retired from the NFL. Despite their long, successful careers, they have no active head coaches that have spent time on their coaching staffs.

Methodology:

Coaching trees are often open to interpretation, but throughout the website we automatically place any coach in the tree of a head coach up to their first head coaching opportunity. This allows coaches to be in multiple trees, without limiting them to only one coach that they spent the most time with.

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By Stephen Juza

January 31st, 2021

Each offseason, struggling franchises replace their head coach in hopes of a fast turnaround. Teams can try to frame the reasons for optimism around new coaching hires from numerous different angles--they helped develop the best offense or defense, they have championship success so they know what it takes, they have prior head coaching experience, or they worked with the best head coaches in the league. However, all teams will measure success the same: wins, playoffs, and championships.

This last season, Kevin Stefanski helped turn around the Cleveland Browns and delivered their first winning season in more than a decade, and their first playoff win since 1994. Stefanski’s inaugural season brings a lot of promise into his second season for the Browns, but how does his successful turnaround stack up historically?

The largest single-season turnaround since the league went to 32 teams in 2002 is the Miami Dolphins’ hiring of Tony Sparano in 2008. Coming off a dreadful season where the team went 1-15, Sparano’s first season saw the team win ten more games, the best improvement of any new coach in NFL history.

Led by quarterback Chad Pennington, the comeback player of the year, and unleashing the Wildcat offense, the Dolphins surprised everyone around the league. Not only did the team win eleven games, they also won the AFC East for the first time since 2000. In fact, 2008 was the only season between 2003 and 2019 that a team other than the Patriots won the division.

Unfortunately for Dolphins’ fans, Sparano wasn’t able to maintain that level of success. In the next three years, Sparano was not able to replicate the magic of 2008. The team failed to post a winning record, and Sparano was fired with three games remaining in the 2011 season.

Sparano and the Dolphins are not alone with the flash-in-the-pan success following their rapid turnaround. Most recently, Doug Marrone led the Jacksonville Jaguars to a seven-win improvement in 2017, taking the team all the way to the AFC championship game. After winning ten games in 2017, the team won twelve games in his remaining three seasons, and he was replaced this offseason by new head coach, Urban Meyer.

One coach that was best able to sustain their quick success was Andy Reid and the Kansas City Chiefs. After he was fired by the Philadelphia Eagles, Reid was hired in 2013 to replace Romeo Crennel. In his first season, the Chiefs won nine more games than the prior season and secured a wild card spot in the playoffs. The Chiefs only continued to improve from that season.

In the eight seasons under Reid, the Chiefs have won five straight AFC West titles, hosted three consecutive conference championship games (first AFC team in history to accomplish this), and won a single Super Bowl. Reid hopes to make that a second Super Bowl next week against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

However, all signs point to a bright future in Cleveland. Of the 123 head coaching hires since the league grew to 32 teams in 2002, the average team improved about two wins over the prior season with their new head coach. Only seven of those new coaches won a playoff game after improving at least five wins in the regular season.

If Stefanski can maintain his first season’s success, he will have the Browns well positioned in the AFC North for years to come.

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By Stephen Juza

January 17th, 2021

On January 14th, the Jacksonville Jaguars announced Urban Meyer as their new head coach, turning the keys of the franchise over to a coach who has no NFL experience. Heading into the offseason, they have the first pick in the draft with a generational quarterback talent available in Trevor Lawrence, and they have the most cap space of any team. It could be a very quick turnaround for the franchise, with the ability to change much of the roster that finished 1-15 in 2020.

However, hiring a coach without NFL experience is usually a risky proposition in NFL history. Since 1980, Meyer will be the twelfth head coach to be hired without any NFL coaching experience. Three of the twelve coached in other professional leagues, either the CFL or the USFL, while the other nine had coached exclusively in college. Success is a mixed bag from this group, a trend that the Jaguars hope Meyer will break.

The gold standard of this group is either Jimmy Johnson or Barry Switzer. Both were hired by the Dallas Cowboys, and they are two of the three coaches who have won both a college national championship and a Super Bowl (Pete Carroll is the other). Between Johnson’s hiring in 1989 and Switzer resigning from the team in 1997, the team went 84-60, with three Super Bowl titles. In fact, from 1991 to 1996, the Cowboys went 70-26, good for a winning percentage of 73%. These coaching hires can clearly pay dividends for a team.

Meyer is the most accomplished coach from this group of twelve and his college success matches closely with Switzer and Johnson. He found success wherever he coached. He won three national championships, two with Florida and one with Ohio State, and had an undefeated season at Utah. In fact, he is only the second coach to win a national championship at multiple schools, preceded by current Alabama coach Nick Saban.

However, success is not a sure thing. Even removing Johnson and Switzer, there are accomplished names in the group. Steve Spurrier and Dennis Erickson both won college championships and Hugh Campbell won five Grey Cups in the CFL. But the remaining nine coaches have an average winning percentage of 37% and failed to win a single playoff game in their combined 34 seasons.

At a pivotal moment in their franchise, the Jaguars are putting all their eggs in the Urban Meyer basket. Meyer has already said that whoever the team drafts first in April will be one of the most important professional decisions in his career. With a successful draft in April, the Jaguars could be set up for success for years to come.

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By Stephen Juza

December 25th, 2020

With the end of each NFL season comes a range of decisions that general managers have to make regarding their head coach. For underperforming teams, these questions focus on retention. Should the team move on from their current coach, or does the general manager think the coach will improve with one more season? Looking through coaching data since 1978 (when the league adopted a 16-game season), very few coaches have a poor first season and eventually turn into a winning coach.

Not every coaching hire achieve success as quickly as Doug Pederson did with the Philadelphia Eagles--capping his second season as a head coach with a Super Bowl victory. There are many successful coaches who take longer to reach the pinnacle of their career. Andy Reid was a head coach twenty one years before finally winning a Super Bowl, despite having one of the most accomplished head coaching careers in the modern NFL.

When looking at a chart of all coaches’ winning percentage as their career progresses, unsuccessful coaches have their career end early, leaving an indistinguishable mark in the chart below. Few coaches make it multiple years with a sub-.500 winning percentage. As coaches drop out of the dataset, survivorship bias slowly pushes the average winning percentage to around 60% for those that coach more than 200 games.

What does a poor initial season tell us about his future prospects? There are 191 coaches who have coached an entire 16-game season since 1978. After their first season, the average win percentage of the bottom third is 23%--the equivalent of a 3.6 win season. By the end of their coaching careers--whenever that may be--their career winning percentage isn’t much better, rising to only 33% by their final game.

Is this enough to write off a coach’s future? Almost a third of teams do--only 45 coaches complete another season as head coach. However, this group does contain some coaches who were able to quickly rebound after a poor first season. Reid was able to overcome a 5-11 start to his career to improve the Eagles to 11-5 and a playoff appearance in his second season, en route to a Hall of Fame-worthy career.

For coaches that start even worse than Reid, the chance of rebounding to be a successful NFL head coach are slim. Coaches who win fewer than four wins their first season average less than six wins in their next season--if they survive through two full seasons at all. Over the course of their career, their collective win percentage is below 30%.

However, while success is rare from these coaches, it is possible for a great coach to emerge from such a bad start. While this group contains such coaches as Cam Cameron (1-15 with the Dolphins in 2007 and not retained), it also contains several Hall of Fame coaches: Bill Parcells (3-12-1 in 1983) and Jimmy Johnson (1-15 in 1989).

In recent seasons, NFL teams are typically very quick to fire coaches who are underperforming. A coach is only as good as their recent season, as Pederson is finding out. After four seasons with the Eagles, two division titles, and a Super Bowl, he has faced criticism and talk of replacements much of the 2020 season throughout the worst season of his career. If Parcells or Johnson had started their career in 2020 instead of the 1980s, they may not have been able to overcome their dreadful inaugural season to compile their lengthy career.

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By Stephen Juza

December 5th, 2020

As the season progresses, NFL teams need to prepare for the weather to play an increasing role in their game planning. Using forecast data from NFLWeather.com between 2009-2019, one in twenty NFL games in September and October are played in inclement weather, defined as freezing temperatures or precipitation during the game. In the later months, as many as one in five games will be played in these conditions during December.

While the weather is inescapable for some teams such as the Buffalo Bills or the Green Bay Packers, other teams such as the New Orleans Saints or the Los Angeles Chargers will only encounter harsh weather conditions on the road. Encountering these conditions may leave those franchises unprepared. Home field advantage plays a more significant role across the league, increasing the home team’s win percentage 11% during inclement weather.

While playing on the road already stacks the deck against the visitors, those franchises that infrequently play in the cold or rain have their road winning percentage drop from 46% to 28% during harsh conditions. For teams that more frequently play in these conditions, their winning percentage only drops to 40% on the road during the regular season.

This phenomenon becomes more pronounced during the playoffs, when games carry more importance. Winter weather evens the playing field for the road team, making upsets more likely. Home teams win 62% of playoff games, but only 54% when they are played in these inclement weather conditions. The ability to pull off these upsets depends greatly on how often franchises play in these conditions.

When a franchise that rarely plays in the cold or rain has to play in these conditions on the road for the playoffs, their win percentage drops from 33% to 11%. These teams rarely play in these conditions, and likely can’t practice in these conditions even if they wanted to, leaving it more difficult to prepare themselves as well as they possibly can.

However, for the top third of the league that already frequently plays in these conditions, upsets become far more likely. Their winning percentage on the road jumps from 39% to 71%. Besides the experience of playing in these games, they also may be able to practice in these conditions throughout the week since their own practice conditions likely mirror that of the road stadium.

How will this potentially impact the playoffs this season? As the standings currently sit, in the AFC, the three highest seeds (Steelers, Chiefs, and Bills) are among the teams with the most games in inclement weather. It could be difficult to upset them during the playoffs if winter weather sets in, making their path to the Super Bowl easier.

In the NFC, the opposite may happen. The onset of winter weather likely won’t influence their games come playoff time. Right now, the path to the Super Bowl travels through New Orleans, a domed stadium. However, sitting one game back from the Saints is the Packers. A road playoff game at Lambeau Field in January will prove a daunting task for many aspiring playoff teams.

With only a few weeks remaining in the season, there is still plenty of football to play. But the weather will play an increasingly large role in game-planning between now and the end of the season, and one that will increasingly tip the odds in the favor of the seasoned team.

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