To be fair, that is an intirem hire.
Fine. Let’s let Weenut tell us what made Jeff Saturday the best candidate for the interim hire as the head coach of the Indianapolis Colts.
I am not asking you to say what made Saturday the best hire, since I know that you do not believe that for one minute.
are we done discussing black coaches and the whole race thing being unfair?
Then I’ll discuss Jeff Saturday
he is interm coach and we will see how his record goes
Good punt on not answering the question. You said that the best get the jobs for both playing and coaching positions. What made Jeff Saturday the best for the interim position for the Indianapolis Colts head coach?
Better question.
What made Josh McDaniels the best choice for the Vegas Raiders?
Or Hackett for the Broncos?
I would disagree that it is a better question. Jeff Saturday was an ESPN analyst whose only coaching experience was at the high school level. Both McDaniels and Hackett had better qualifications than that.
To your point, I think they are two different cases. For McDaniels, one can make the case that he had gone back to the Patriots and gotten more experience under his belt since his first flop as a head coach. And, if you believe what was written, McDaniels had made a real effort to learn from his past experience and what he had done wrong as Denver’s head coach. In hindsight his hire as Raiders head coach has not gone well and one can say that there were red flags, but his hire was not universally panned.
As for Hackett, I think there is something to the theory that the Broncos hired him only because he was Aaron Rodgers’s offensive coordinator in Green Bay and the Broncos were hoping that would get Rodgers to the Broncos too. That hire was not well received, and it is obvious that Hackett is in way over his head.
Who else was available? All the other coaches are under contract and games are being played so you put in a place holder. Jeff played many years for the Colts so he knew their system. He also has a better record this year than the gut he replaced
I don’t think you honestly believe this, but in case you do, Saturday last played for the Colts in 2011. And, as mentioned before, he was an ESPN analyst whose entire coaching experience was at the high school level.
But, he was the best person available for the job.
This reminds me of this earlier thread. We had a great discussion.
OK who do you think they should have gotten to take the job?
I would have promoted an assistant on the Colts staff. That is generally how in-season coaching replacements are handled, and any one of those assistants would have been better qualified than Saturday.
This subject was discussed earlier here:
and yet he is at .500 if he wins tomorrow then .667
With that one win aginst the Raiders.
I am going to touch on why both of these guys got a job.
McDaniels is riding (for the second time) on Belichick’s coat tails.
I think we both agree that it a terrible idea, but NFL owners keep doing it.
Hackett basically is in the NFL due to his dad being a former coach, and was only successful due to Aaron Rodger and DeVonte Adams.
IMO, Eric Bieniemy has a better resume than both of them. But he doesn’t have a former coach as a father, and Andy Reid doesn’t have the cache of Belichick.
I don’t disagree with anything you said. However, according to Weenut the best guy always gets the head coaching job.
Saturday has a better record than the Texans coach who has 22 years experience.
Don’t really follow the NFL but your position is that a pro sports franchise would choose not to hire the best guy ? Interim obviously doesn’t count because you are just putting a bandaid until the season ends. No target candidate is going to leave their team in the middle of the season.
The Texans are a clown show. Lovie Smith is a retread who never should have been hired. His predecessor David Culley also never should have been hired.
I am talking about the NFL here, though I guess it could apply elsewhere. I am saying that there are times when an NFL franchise will hire somebody as its head coach when there are other candidates with more solid resumes available. And, in many of those cases the decision is a head-scratcher.
Parrot mentioned Nathaniel Hackett, whose resume was rather thin and who has been a bust as Denver’s head coach. As another example, last year the Jacksonville Jaguars hired Urban Meyer, who had never coached an NFL franchise and who had a number of questions marks and red flags. He was a total disaster and didn’t even last his first year before being fired. As a third and fourth example, I mentioned David Culley and Lovie Smith, in Houston. Culley was a guy in his sixties who had only been a position coach, and he lasted only one year. Smith was a retread who is on his third NFL team and also most recently coached at Illinois, where he did not do well. As a fifth example, a few years ago Raiders owner Mark Davis fell in love with Jon Gruden, honed in on him and him only, and gave him a king-sized contract, even though he had not coached in the NFL in ten years and his track record was questionable at best. I could cite others, but in those instances the hire was questioned at the time and did not pan out.
Looking at the bigger picture, there are only thirty-two NFL head coaching positions and a multitude of candidates aspiring to hold one of those positions. In many instances you could take the resume of a guy who got a position and compare it to a guy who didn’t and say that they are equal, or you might say that the guy who didn’t get the job has a better background. There may have been a legitimate reason that the first guy got hired that does not show up on the resume, such as his personality and approach best fits with the team’s current roster. There are always going to be plenty of disappointed aspiring NFL head coaches. I am not saying that every candidate with a great resume who does not get hired is automatically screwed over by the decision. I am saying that there are those times when the hiring decision is questionable at best.
That is true. However, as I said before, it is a joke that the Colts hired a guy whose only previous experience in coaching was at the high school level and who was serving as an analyst on ESPN when he got the call. In a case like that an assistant from the team’s staff is usually elevated to interim head coach. There are also other people with experience but currently not on a staff who could be hired. Saturday’s hire was almost universally panned, and for good reason.
Lovie is a good coach.
The Texans are a train wreck right now. Have to give him at least 3 years to turn it around.