There’s so much smoke surrounding the end of Bill Belichick in New England, it’d be naive to not believe there’s legitimate fire behind all of it. From local to national, everyone is telling us that it is, at least, more likely than not, that Belichick will not be the HC of the NE in 2024. And, with Belichick having a 30-40 record since Thanksgiving 2019 to go along with a dreadful draft track record since 2015, we get it. It certainly feels like the wheels have fallen off and it’s time to go out and purchase a brand new car.
The two most popular names that reporters and/or insiders have thrown into the ether have been Jerod Mayo and Mike Vrabel. Both men are former NFL linebackers for Belichick’s Patriots and neither have any offensive coaching experience under their belts.
Meanwhile, IF Belichick is gone, it seems to us that most fans’ desire is for Robert Kraft to hire a young up-and-coming offensive coach as the replacement. They’ve had enough of Belichick’s defensive ways. Shoot, we get that too. The Patriots haven’t had an offensive-minded head coach since Raymond Berry finished up the 1989 season. Holy “My Prerogative,” Bobby Brown!!
These fans point to Sean McVay, Kyle Shanahan, Mike McDaniel and every other successful young offensive mind, transitioning beautifully to the big chair. Those fans have not only seen the win-loss success from those coaches, but they’ve also seen offenses effortlessly move the football, while those same fans have suffered through the last two seasons of the inch-by-inch Patriots approach.
With all of that in mind, the two most crucial questions are this: Are offensive coaches preordained to be better head coaches than defensive coaches? Or, is it more of a numbers game than anything else? Well, we did some research looking at all NFL Head Coach hires from 2018-2023 and the results are interesting.
From 2018-2023, a total of 41 head coaching hires were made in the NFL. Out of those, 27 were from the offensive side of the ball. ONE hire was from special teams (Joe Judge, LOL). The remaining 13 had defensive backgrounds. We’re not mathematicians, but this means that offensive coaches over the last six offseasons have been hired by a more than 2-to-1 margin versus their defensive brethren.
Not only that, but offensive coaches were more than twice as likely to get a second chance as a head coach than their defensive counterparts. Offensive coaches were also four times as likely to get their first shot as a head coach at the age of fifty or older.
Ipso facto, NFL owners and GMs have overwhelmingly leaned towards hiring offense over defense since, at least, 2018, to fill the head coach position. When those coaches failed, those same owners and GMs were much more likely to give those offensive coaches a second chance at being head honcho. Put simply, defensive coaches aren’t winning many popularity contests.
Now, is that because offensive coaches have been that much more successful than defensive coaches? Yes and no.
When you take coaches, under the age of 50 (let’s call them the “Up & Coming Crowd”), offensive coaches have won around 52% of their games. Defensive coaches? Well, their win percentage hovers closer to 43%. Game, set, match, right? Not really.
Matt LaFleur and Nick Sirianni have won around 69% (nice) of their games. LaFleur obviously enjoyed a comfortable and soft landing with Aaron Rodgers as QB1. Sirianni, in 2021, finished at 9-8, before really taking off with arguably the best roster in football. Since Week One of 2022, Sirianni has gone 24-6 in the regular season. Without LaFleur and Sirianni, the “Up & Coming Crowd” from the offensive side have won ~48% of their games. While still better than the defensive coaches’ win percentage, both finish under .500. And, remember, offensive coaches have had a lot more opportunity to prove themselves.
The difference isn’t as dramatic as you’d think, when one side is outnumbering the other side 2-to-1 over the last six hiring cycles. It’s certainly not dramatic enough to walk away believing that’s the ONLY or BEST way to go about the hiring process.
There is another way, as we’ve seen in Houston this year. The Texans decided to hire DeMeco Ryans as their new HC, while Ryans brought OC Bobby Slowik along with him from San Francisco. That duo has exceeded expectations early on in their tenure.
Meanwhile, we’d argue some of the most successful head coaches over the last two decades have come from outside the offensive sphere: Belichick, Vrabel, Pete Carroll, Mike Tomlin, and John Harbaugh are all considered very good to great lead men. And, Sean McDermott is 69-41 as the Bills' head coach.
Let’s also not forget that many offensive coaches over the last six years have taken over the head job with the owner and GM fully behind an offensive rebuild. Both were willing to dump endless resources into that side of the ball. For example, Zac Taylor: Taylor finished 2-14 in his first season. Then everything changed after they added Joe Burrow, Tee Higgins and Ja'Marr Chase. LaFleur walked in with Rodgers and Davante Adams to work with. And, there’s no way of telling if the Bengals or Packers would have been less successful if they didn’t go defense over offense to lead their respective programs.
Now that we think of it, the only time-tested common denominator between the most successful football programs is a very good QB1. No matter if it’s Belichick with Tom Brady or Andy Reid with Patrick Mahomes. You have a top-5 QB, you’re more than likely going to contend year in and year out.
So, after all the work and thought, we’re left with this:
1) Talent, especially talent at QB1, helps any coach from any “phase” win more than lose, unless that coach is just truly dreadful at his job. And, 2) Don’t focus on getting an offensive guy, focus on getting the right guy. If that leads the Patriots to someone like Detroit Lions OC Ben Johnson, so be it. If not, it doesn’t mean they’ve done anything “wrong” or that they’re destined to fail. Just imagine what we’d be writing today, if Kraft decided to go offense instead of defense the last time he had this decision to make.
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