Cleveland Browns Shadow Offseason: The Head Coaching Search

How a football team is run starts with the head coach. More so than other sports, like baseball and basketball, football head coaches have autonomous control over in-game strategy and outcomes, and in some cases even more operations-based tasks such as player acquisition and roster control. Knowing that, it’s extremely important for a team to thoroughly vet each candidate and find the one that most fits what they are trying to do.

And I mean that on a philosophical level. You need to find the guy that fits the philosophy and identity of the organization. For example, with the real life Cleveland Browns new-age front office shakeup, in my opinion, it would be a horrible idea for them to sign an “old-school” head coach. Guys like Mike Singletary need not apply. They need to find a head coach that will not only be accepting of their philosophy, but they must EMBRACE it. The reverse also applies. An innovative head coach with radical ideas on how to run an organization will butt heads with a front office and ownership that is used to old school football traditions. We saw that happen this past season with Chip Kelly and the Eagles.

In my search for a head coach, I wanted to start by looking at the numbers. I set out to find what were the most effective signs of a successful head coach, and go from there. I built two logistic models, based on a decade of head coaching hires to predict the percent chance of that coach accomplishing two things: (1) Chance of having a season with a win percentage of at least 0.500 within 4 years of being hired, and (2) Chance of making the playoffs within 4 years of being hired. I tested many variables such as total years of coaching experience, age, and what side of the ball they previously coached (offense vs defense). None of these variables had any statistical significance. However, there were two that did: previous head coaching experience and percentile rank in yards per play on their side of the ball (either offense or defense). Previous head coaching experience actually had a negative correlation, meaning that retreads more often than not did not end up working out. Keep in mind that this is just an interesting thing to look at, and is not the end all, be all of the search.

I took a list of the rumored head coaching candidates, and used the model to make some predictions:

Name	Team	Position	0.500 Chance	Playoffs Chance
Harold Goodwin	Arizona Cardinals	OC	88.02%	68.47%
Sean McDermott	Carolina Panthers	DC	87.31%	67.09%
Darrell Bevell	Seattle Seahawks	OC	84.96%	62.75%
Matt Patricia	New England Patriots	DC	83.22%	59.76%
Greg Roman	Buffalo Bills	OC	82.26%	58.19%
Ben McAdoo	New York Giants	OC	88.81%	56.65%
Dirk Koetter	Tampa Bay Bucs	OC	45.98%	47.58%
Hue Jackson	Cincinnati Bengals	OC	39.56%	41.32%
Tom Coughlin	New York Giants	HC	36.44%	38.26%
Adam Gase	Chicago Bears	OC	78.31%	37.90%
Chip Kelly	Philadelphia Eagles	HC	17.64%	19.29%

This year looks like an excellent year for head coaching candidates. Just on this list, the model has 6 candidates that have a better than 50% of making the playoffs within 4 years of being hired. Not too shabby. As you can see, retreads like Hue Jackson, Tom Coughlin, and Chip Kelly all struggle. I think that Hue Jackson has a pretty good chance of beating those odds though, just because he probably should not have been fired by Oakland after a solid 8-8 season.

Before we narrow down the search, let me outline what I want from my head coach. For starters, I want a head coach to be, above all else, the leader for the entire coaching staff. He (or she) needs to be able to oversee all phases of coaching and ensure that they are all being held to a high standard. This includes game preparation and player development. That does not, however, include absolute power on player acquisition. I don’t want my coach concerned with finding the “best fits” for his scheme, but rather collaborating with his coaching staff to construct a scheme that fits the players that the front office provides them. The head coach will still assist the general manager and front office in the offseason with potential draft picks, but will have no absolute power involving the draft.

My criteria for a potential head coach basically comes down to three qualities: innovative, collaborative, and confident. Obviously, with my analytics-heavy philosophy, I would want them to embrace that as well. They need to be able to work with their staff to create a scheme and strategy that fits the roster, all while being the symbol for success of the organization. And that last part is very important. The head coach needs to convey to the players, staff, and public that this organization will be successful no matter the circumstances, even if things don’t seem that way. Success is the standard, not the goal.

When it comes to football specific things I look for, I want them to focus on passing on both sides of the ball. I’m not saying eliminate the running game, but it needs to be limited in its use on offense. It’s much less efficient than passing the ball, and that’s why the league has been becoming more and more pass heavy as time goes on. The same goes for the defense. Other than that, I don’t have much of a preference. Whether it’s a west coast system, spread option, or down field vertical passing scheme doesn’t really matter to me. The talent on the team should have a significant impact on those kinds of decisions.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at my top three candidates:

Matt Patricia

Defensive Coordinator, New England Patriots

The mountain man-looking Matt Patricia has been an emerging candidate recently, getting some interest from the real life Cleveland Browns before they went ahead and hired Hue Jackson. A former offensive lineman from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Patricia has coached on both sides of the ball in his journey to defensive coordinator for the Patriots. He’s done a great job as coordinator, improving the defense’s yards allowed per play each year from 24th best in the league in 2012 to 7th best this season. Maybe the most interesting thing about him is that he majored in aeronautical engineering while in college. One could reasonably conclude that based on that background along with working with the Patriots would make him open to more analytical football decision making.

In the end, Patricia ends up as number three on the list because I just can’t find out enough about his personality or coaching style. The Patriots have pretty strict rules about their coordinators talking with the media, meaning there is next to nothing I can find about him. There are very few interviews of his out there on the internet, and even when there is he doesn’t reveal much (in typical patriot fashion).

Sean McDermott

Defensive Coordinator, Carolina Panthers

Like Patricia, McDermott is a guy that has massively improved Carolina’s defense since he took the reins in 2011. They went from 30th in yards allowed per play to 2nd in 2015. Specifically, I like that he has done a lot without much. He took young, raw players like Josh Norman and Kawann Short and turned them into superstars. He knows how to work with what he has and develop what he has.

Harold Goodwin

Offensive Coordinator, Arizona Cardinals

I love Harold Goodwin. He would be my top choice. Goodwin was a long time offensive line coach for the Steelers, who followed Bruce Arians to his stops at Indianapolis and Arizona. The offense yards per play went from dead last in 2012 when they got there, to the best in 2016. A lot of that has to do with Bruce Arians’ influence on the offense and acquiring quarterback Carson Palmer, but Goodwin was a co-architect in this beast of an offense.

When you watch interviews and videos of Goodwin, you can instantly see how smart he is at teaching. Here, you can see him coaching up guys at OTAs back in June. He can easily communicate technique to has players, and that’s paid dividends for Arizona’s once shoddy offensive line. In interviews, he talks a lot about efficiency, which jives with the philosophy that I bring to a team. Efficiency should be a focus for any team.

One concern some may have is that Goodwin didn’t call the plays for the Cardinals, a job that Arians took. I’m not all that concerned about that. I want the head coach to act as more of a “big picture” leader, and I think that play calling can get in the way of that. I would actually prefer that the coordinators be the ones calling the plays, so that the head coach can be focused on the team as a whole.