The year was 1969, and the first coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers was finishing off a 10-0-1 season at USC with his Trojans beating Michigan 10-3 in the Rose Bowl, finishing off with a #3 National Ranking. The only blemish was a 14-14 tie At Notre Dame. McKay was 7 years away from being told he would be the FIRST Head Coach in Bucs history.
Meanwhile, in another part of the country, the Rooney Family had been turned down by Joe
Paterno, so instead hired Chuck Noll to be the Head Coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers in early 1969 and set in motion what history looks at as one of the most successful Organizations in Pro Football with 6 Super Bowl Championships.
What’s happened since then? The Bucs have just hired their 10th football coach in Lovie Smith, the 3rd Head Coach in 6 years. The Steelers have only had 3 head coaches since 1969: Chuck Noll, Bill Cowher, and Mike Tomlin…in 45 years. Bucs with 3 coaches in 6 years, Steelers have 3 Coaches for 6 Super Bowl trophies!!
Continuity is a key signature among the NFL’s great teams: The San Francisco 49ers were a model of winning- From 1979 to 2002 the 49ers had 3 Coaches: Bill Walsh, George Seifert, and Steve Mariucci. SuperBowls and NFC Championship appearances were the norm. Then in ’02 Mariucci was fired and San Francisco had 4 coaches in 9 years, all losing seasons in that time until Jim Harbaugh was hired and straightened out the mess out west!
New England Patriots changed ownership three times in the years following their 1985
Super Bowl loss to the Chicago Bears. Then the Kraft Family purchased the team and hired Bill Belichick to coach the team, which he has from 2001 to the present. What’s the one thing we know about the Patriots under Belichick? They WIN…alot, and they go to Super Bowls, and AFC Championship games…A LOT, every year it seems. Heck they completed the perfect regular season.
Not every team can win Super Bowls, or Championship Games, But for a franchise that could be on the verge of a 7th straight year in a playoff drought, theres a lesson to be learned. One team that does make the playoffs often is the Cincinnati Bengals. The Bengals had their chance to shake things up a few years ago in 2010, after a disastrous 4-12 season, Head
Coach Marvin Lewis was on the verge of being let go. A Press conference was convened and instead it was announced the Bengals would sign an extension with Lewis, and heading into a rough 2011 season, the team would move on without aging veterans Carson Palmer, Chad Ocho Cinco Johnson, and Terrell Owens. Instead draft picks Andy Dalton and A.J. Green formed the basis of a new Bengals offense, and the winning continues in the Queen City.
Belichick and Lewis form the two most tenured Head Coaches in the NFL right now, and it’s no surprise these two teams are two of the winningest. Shall we go on in order the rest of the way? You’ll see a familiar pattern if we do.
- Tom Coughlin NY Giants
- Mike McCarthy Green Bay Packers
- Sean Payton New Orleans Saints
- Mike Tomlin Pittsburgh Steelers
- Mike Smith Atlanta Falcons
- John Harbaugh Baltimore Ravens
That’s 2008, the last year the Bucs had with Head Coach Jon Gruden who was fired at the
end of his second consecutive 9-7 season. I’m not saying Jon Gruden would still be here had he not been fired, nor am I saying Gruden would have won here in Tampa with regularity. Truth is he did not win regularly after the SuperBowl, with Losing seasons in 2003, 04, and 06. But he won division championships in 2005 and 07.
But its worth asking the question; what would the Bucs be like
had Gruden stayed on with Raheem Morris as his defensive coordinator? We’ll never know, because the Bucs have gone by the opposite recipe as the winning teams listed above, changing coaches every few years, expecting a different result each time. Thats not to say there isn’t a time when a Coaching change has to happen; The Packers, Saints, Falcons, and others had to make that move to get away from the losing regimes to make the move to winning.
There is no crystal ball that tells you when the move is a smart one or not, but when you’re
paying one coaches contract off, it may be too fresh to add another one to the debt!! Change, just for the sake of change, has to stop. Each New coach brings in his players and parts ways with the last regimes. Before you know it, your roster is void of talent. Before you know it, your roster looks like the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, not the Pittsburgh Steelers.
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