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How long should a head coach get before he's fired?
doubledragon
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in Sports Talk
I was thinking about the firing of Texans head coach Lovie Smith after just one season, seems a bit unfair. How long do you think a head coach should get to turn things around before he gets fired?
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No sir, I just don't like it, they fired my Lovie Dovey.
Very catchy name. You know what, as a matter of fact, I want to be addressed as Loveydragon from here on. I'm Loveydragon and I'm lovey dovey all the time.
Anyway, the Texans should have given the guy at least 2 or 3 seasons to get things turned around, I hope they suck next year!
I think a new coach should get 3 years. It would take that many years to clear out aging free agents and re-tool with the draft.
that is, unless there are behind the scene things happening that we dont know about.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
Depends on how bad the franchise is, some of these teams are in complete rebuild mode which in that case I'd say 5 years, for a team like Denver I have no problem with 1 and done after that disaster
If I was an owner I'd fire a guy right after the game for making an inexcusable moronic in game mistake though
As @craig44 stated, three years should be the minimum unless a new Head Coach displays total ineptitude and seems clueless. But in that case not only the HC should be jettisoned but the guy who hired him, the GM, should also go. I think that's a bigger problem with some franchises, the GM's who are running things behind the scenes, hiring all the different parts that make things happen, are just inept and need to be fired.
With a new HC, they are stuck with players from the previous guy and a system/scheme of play which needs to be overhauled. Think about it, if a guy is hired in January his first concern is in evaluating the Draft. After that there's quite a bit of work preparing for the pre-season and then the regular season just to know what he's working with. The first season is really not a good judge of what a new HC can do. Lovie Smith got a raw deal coming in and an even worse one going out.
I was impressed with the effort the Texans gave when the Chiefs played them late in the season. Their record was bad, no chance to make playoffs but they played hard and hustled all over the field.
That can be a sign they have a lot of respect for the coach and are playing for him to keep his job
In the course of every human endeavor since the dawn of time the risk of human error has always been a factor. Including but not limited to field goals, 4th down attempts, or multiple paragraph ramblings on a sports forum authored by someone who shall remain anonymous.
if a coach calls anything other than a QB sneak with less than a yard to go, there should be a tv timeout and he should be fired & removed from the stadium before they get back from commercial break
announcer: i'm sorry but no one seems to know where he went. but i think it had something to do with him being a supreme idiot? now let's resume action.
I agree with the 3 year run as coach. But I could see it changing due to losing a team (which did not seem to be the issue with LoveyDovey) or a change in the GM / owner.
But these coaches usually have a buy out clause should they be terminated early, so they are not being left empty handed.
The only other issue with LoveyDovey may be that he is 64 years old.
Very interesting opinions from everyone, thank you kindly for participating in this thread, you make Loveydragon very happy!
Gotta agree with @Maywood on three years with an exception for ineptitude/lunacy. I'm not sure DD (LD now?) could have survived three seasons of Urban Meyer at the helm of his Jaguars. But under normal circumstances a coach needs to be given a decent amount of time to change the roster and culture of a team. One season isn't long enough.
I think it depends almost entirely on expectations and progress. However, there is always the stuff that happens behind closed doors that we are not privy to as fans.
However, while no one will ever say it on the record or publicly, I would guess that Lovie Smith was probably fired for winning Sunday’s game and costing the Texans the first pick in the draft. First, it’s a business and having the number one overall pick in the draft is good for business by improving almost immediately the product on the field. Second, and even beyond the addition of talent for the roster, it excites a down fan base that just had a terrible season, it creates instant optimism and it generates incredible positive off-season publicity for a team in dire need of it. I imagine the owner and GM had to be rather upset by the drop to second pick even though they may end up with the same player.
Before you jump on me or call me crazy, just recognize how different things would be in New York and Jacksonville if the Jets hadn’t done the same thing three seasons ago, losing Trevor Lawrence to the Jags and ending up with Zach Wilson.
The fortunes of franchises change with number one picks and you could easily argue that no franchise is more in need of a change of direction than the Houston Texans after the last two years…
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Nobody will know the repercussions of that win and the resulting 2nd round pick, but if nothing else it saved the owner(s) probably $50 million by not having the 1st rounder.
I like Smith. He has been in tough situations in terms of trying turn programs around. Contrary to expectations, head coaches are unable to walk on water.
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In general, I'd say 3+ years. Some guys show they don't belong faster than that - Nathaniel Hackett being a good example. Me, I'd have fired Mike Singletary at halftime of his first game after he dropped his pants. As in literally don't let him back on the field for the second half.
I watched Smith make some very questionable decisions during the Dallas game. He didn’t take a chip shot field goal when a touchdown was a long shot.
After the Eagles fired Rich Kotite, the Jets foolishly picked him up where he did a lousy job again. Do you stick with a guy like that for three years? When fans and players talk about failed coaches, Kotite’s name heads the list.
The New England Patriots during their worst period had a coach named Rod Rust. He was so bad the team could barely run an offensive play without a procedure penalty in week 12. His record was 1 - 15. Do you stick with that guy for three years?
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ya think? here i am cruising into a glorious weekend and BillJones is trying to raise my blood pressure
ok class, what should the Texans have done here? if you say turn around and hand the ball off to the running back 6 yards deep instead of utilizing him for a bush push and an all-but-guaranteed touchdown via a sneak, i'm gonna take you down to the principal's office, call your mommy and daddy, then whoop your ass good
you better think before you speak. now carefully make your way to 10:47.
With society trending towards an ever shorter attention span it would not surprise me to see coaches who do not produce acceptable results getting fired part way through a season (i.e. after 6-8 games in the NFL, after 30 games in the NBA and hockey and after 50-60 games in MLB).
If you are failing in the corporate world, as a grunt up to middle management, you don’t get three years unless you have friends in high places. If you are a top officer, you are out a lot quicker than three years if you are not producing. At one company where I worked, the CEO was out in less than six months.
Comparing the "Corporate World" with an NFL franchise Head Coach is somewhere between apples-and-oranges and just plain stupid. Following that logic, there are probably 5-10 Head Coaches that should be fired because of team performance.
No, you need to look it in context. If a coach takes over a team with a 1 and 16 record and wins 5 or 6 games and is close on a few others, he’s probably done well. If they win only 1 or 2 games, it might time for him to go.
The Patriots went though a period like this until one of the Bush family heirs hired Bill Parcels. He got to a Super Bowl but then did his “I resign” thing, which leaked out before the big game.
As corporate comparison, we will agree to disagree.
An NFL team can't be seen as a company like ATT because of the NFL revenue sharing agreement. Every team is like a division of the NFL and the commissioner, Roger Goodell, is the CEO of the company. Lovie Smith was just a division head(actually a dept. head under the owner) for the Houston branch of the NFL. Following the "corporate comparison" logic, maybe the Houston Texans owner or NFL commissioner should be fired when several franchises perform poorly, but that won't happen because the comparison is flawed and irrelevant.
I would add that telling me about HC's who get dumped after a season or two is like preaching to the choir, I'm a Cleveland Browns fan and have suffered through that with regularity. Guys have been dumped after a season or two for the last 20 years without really having been given a chance simply because their success hasn't been big enough fast enough. The example I hold out for people to examine is the way the Pittsburgh Steelers run an organization.
Most franchises don't suffer from a Head Coach problem, they suffer from an ownership problem and a management problem. That has been the trouble in Cleveland and from what I have read about the Texans it is the heart of the problem in Houston, not Lovie Smith. If the Texans ownership fired Smith because he won that game and lost the 1st round draft pick as some people postulate, maybe ownership should have told Smith to lose that game or he'd be fired. I doubt they did and so he was playing to win.