Boo your analysis is forgetting one huge thing, the inability to learn and adjust. Someone could be great at their jobs, but as things change and progress, if your unwilling to learn and adjust you could become bad pretty quickly. Who's to say the reason Gruden's downfall wasn't due to his inability to adjust his gameplan to his players talents or to what other coaches were doing? This would be an example of someone getting "worse" at their job.
Scientists can become outdated very quickly if they don't work hard at it.
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<< <i>Boo your analysis is forgetting one huge thing, the inability to learn and adjust. Someone could be great at their jobs, but as things change and progress, if your unwilling to learn and adjust you could become bad pretty quickly. Who's to say the reason Gruden's downfall wasn't due to his inability to adjust his gameplan to his players talents or to what other coaches were doing? This would be an example of someone getting "worse" at their job.
Scientists can become outdated very quickly if they don't work hard at it. >>
Sure-- that's possible. I concede that there's a chance that Gruden's performance deteriorated over the years. But there is NO compelling evidence of such other than his record, which I think I have argued (fairly convincingly) is probably due to variance, and not to any deficits which Gruden may have as a coach.
In every single endeavor that you, or I, or anyone else on these boards has ever undertaken over repeated trials, we have seen variance in our results while our own effort/ability has remained constant. So why do people insist that the basic laws of sampling distribution do not apply to the performance of NFL teams? Why do people insist, adamantly, that everything has to have a 'reason' in the NFL (or other sports leagues), and that the laws of variance do not apply to sports teams?
It's a viewpoint that is simply the picture of stupidity. Just look at how many teams have seen wild swings in their performance from year to year when nothing substantial has changed. The Bears go 5-11 in 2000, 13-3 in 2001, and then 4-12 in 2002. What, are you going to tell me that Jauron was an awesome coach in the middle year, but a terrible coach the two other years? Sorry, but that doesn't hold up. And the list of examples does not, in any way, end with the Bears. The NFL is positively rife with examples of teams that have exhibited similar performance blips.
I'm not rejecting your hypothesis, I'm just saying that the most likely explanation is that the dip in the Bucs peformance has been due to factors that were beyond Jon Gruden's control. Maybe his team is just less talented, maybe his division got harder, maybe he just suffered some bad luck-- whatever it may be, it's incredibly irresponsible- and I'm sure you know this, being a scientist-- to witness a phenomenon and then to post-hoc attribute it to a specific cause. Hell, I can go back and explain
everything that has ever happened to anybody if I'm allowed to just 'make up' reasons why my explanations are justified. Without sound, empirically verifiable proof all anybody is doing is blowing smoke up our channels. The aren't 'explaining' anything-- they're just guessing.
It's a viewpoint that is simply the picture of stupidity. Just look at how many teams have seen wild swings in their performance from year to year when nothing substantial has changed. The Bears go 5-11 in 2000, 13-3 in 2001, and then 4-12 in 2002. What, are you going to tell me that Jauron was an awesome coach in the middle year, but a terrible coach the two other years? Sorry, but that doesn't hold up. And the list of examples does not, in any way, end with the Bears. The NFL is positively rife with examples of teams that have exhibited similar performance blips.
The situation you cite above is in fact an excellent example of the variance argument...and it can certainly be argued that Jauron had a career year as a coach in 2001 (though the easy schedule helped) when the Bears went 13-3...but you discount that single season (much like Gruden's one season when he led Dungy's Bucs to to the Super Bowl) and you have a coach with a career record of 44-73 and zero postseason wins (even in 2001 with home field and the bye he couldn't muster even one playoff win), so the answer would be that Dick Jauron's overall coaching ability, even with 2001 thrown in, is simply pitiful...and certainly worse than the more respectably but mediocre-at-best Gruden's...
Collecting 1970s Topps baseball wax, rack and cello packs, as well as PCGS graded Half Cents, Large Cents, Two Cent pieces and Three Cent Silver pieces.
<< <i>It's a viewpoint that is simply the picture of stupidity. Just look at how many teams have seen wild swings in their performance from year to year when nothing substantial has changed. The Bears go 5-11 in 2000, 13-3 in 2001, and then 4-12 in 2002. What, are you going to tell me that Jauron was an awesome coach in the middle year, but a terrible coach the two other years? Sorry, but that doesn't hold up. And the list of examples does not, in any way, end with the Bears. The NFL is positively rife with examples of teams that have exhibited similar performance blips.
The situation you cite above is in fact an excellent example of the variance argument...and it can certainly be argued that Jauron had a career year as a coach in 2001 (though the easy schedule helped) when the Bears went 13-3...but you discount that single season (much like Gruden's one season when he led Dungy's Bucs to to the Super Bowl) and you have a coach with a career record of 44-73 and zero postseason wins (even in 2001 with home field and the bye he couldn't muster even one playoff win), so the answer would be that Dick Jauron's overall coaching ability, even with 2001 thrown in, is simply pitiful...and certainly worse than the more respectably but mediocre-at-best Gruden's... >>
Jauron's ability is still undetermined. Unless you control for all the factors that have a causal effect on team wins, and distinguish those that Jauron can't control from those he can control, you cannot with any confidence say that he is a poor coach. What you can say is that Jauron's record is pitiful; but that's an entirely different proposition.
Here's an interesting quote from the book that BigFische linked to yesterday (I went out and bought it yesterday afternoon), about NFL coaches:
"In sports we have developed a culture in which, based on intuitive feelings of correlation, a team's success or failure is often attributed largely to the ability of the coach. As a result, when team's fail, the coach is often fired. Mathematical analysis of firings in all major sports, however, has shown that these firings had, on average, no effect on team performance."
If any of the yokels here think that they are somehow so in tune with NFL football that they can distinguish 'good' firings from 'bad' firings-- in other words, that they know more about the game and the team involved than the men directly responsible for personnel decisions, despite the fact that the average effect that these firings have on performance is 0-- then said yokels have reached the pinnacle of arrogance.
"In sports we have developed a culture in which, based on intuitive feelings of correlation, a team's success or failure is often attributed largely to the ability of the coach. As a result, when team's fail, the coach is often fired. Mathematical analysis of firings in all major sports, however, has shown that these firings had, on average, no effect on team performance."
Tell that to a Jets fan who endured the Rich Kotite era before Parcells came to town and restored legitimacy and relevancy to the club...the key phrase in the paragraph above is "on average," which of course allows for various contrary examples, the aforementioned cited situation being one of them...
and at the end of the day Gruden , while maybe not a randon d-bag, is still a mediocre coach at best..
Collecting 1970s Topps baseball wax, rack and cello packs, as well as PCGS graded Half Cents, Large Cents, Two Cent pieces and Three Cent Silver pieces.
<< <i>"In sports we have developed a culture in which, based on intuitive feelings of correlation, a team's success or failure is often attributed largely to the ability of the coach. As a result, when team's fail, the coach is often fired. Mathematical analysis of firings in all major sports, however, has shown that these firings had, on average, no effect on team performance."
Tell that to a Jets fan who endured the Rich Kotite era before Parcells came to town and restored legitimacy and relevancy to the club...the key phrase in the paragraph above is "on average," which of course allows for various contrary examples, the aforementioned cited situation being one of them...
and at the end of the day Gruden , while maybe not a randon d-bag, is still a mediocre coach at best.. >>
You missed my point. Whenever a coach is fired it's because the GM is convinced that the move is best for the team. Yet, the evidence suggests that the mean effect on team performance is zero. Thus, if you-- or I-- say that the firing of a particular coach is a good idea, what we're saying is we are able to differentiate between 'good firings' and 'useless firings', despite the fact that the guys who do this for a living apparently cannot distinguish between the two.
If a GM can't tell when a coach should be fired-- and again, the evidence bears this out-- why on God's Earth should I think that any random numbskull on an Internet message board can figure it out?
Edit to add: I'm not looking to be inflammatory, or to cut anyone down, with the 'random numbskull' bit. Hell, I've personally held opinions on whether a coach should be fired or not (read: Rod Marinelli), so in a sense I'm as guilty as the next guy. But let's not pretend that our opinions are anything other than ill-informed guesses.
If a GM can't tell when a coach should be fired-- and again, the evidence bears this out-- why on God's Earth should I think that any random numbskull on an Internet message board can figure it out?
There are many, many ill-informed and downright clueless GMs in all major sports (you yourself have already described the Bucs GM as a stupid nitwit)...so I think you're giving too much credit here..
Like the Twins GM this past year who kept Liriano in the minors because Orlando Hernandez somehow knew how to "win" or pitch to the score..
Edit: We all have opinions here, that's the essential; premise for a sports talk board...your opinion at the top of this thread was that the Bucs made a mistake by firing Gruden..I disagree with that point, as I consider Gruden to be a mediocre coach at best..that's the bottom line, no use is trying to extrapolate anything more from the equation..
Collecting 1970s Topps baseball wax, rack and cello packs, as well as PCGS graded Half Cents, Large Cents, Two Cent pieces and Three Cent Silver pieces.
<< <i>If a GM can't tell when a coach should be fired-- and again, the evidence bears this out-- why on God's Earth should I think that any random numbskull on an Internet message board can figure it out?
There are many, many ill-informed and downright clueless GMs in all major sports...I think you're giving too much credit here..
Like the Twins GM this past year who kept Liriano in the minors because Orlando Hernandez somehow knew how to "win" or pitch to the score.. >>
Again-- I hate to sound repetitive, but this isn't the point. The point isn't whether GM's are clueless-- the point is that GM's, while perhaps being clueless, still know more about their team than the average I-net clown who watches games on TV.
The bottom line is that nobody, yet, has offered any kind of substantive argument for why Gruden should have been fired. His team's record? Again, I repeat, unless you can parse those variables that resulted in his team's record that were NOT within his control from those that WERE in his control pointing to his record is meaningless. So are arguments about 'not relating to players' and so forth if you cannot offer evidence that coaches who can 'relate' to their player will, ceteris paribus, enjoy better results than those who cannot. I submit that while it's possible that he's just an average coach (in which case it wouldn't matter if he was fired or not), it's also possible that he was the victim of circumstances which he could not control (see the variance discussion above, or the fact that TB sacrificed two 1st round picks and two 2nd round picks to get him--- picks, not coincidentally, that could have resulted in player's who would be peaking in ability right about now).
I cannot for the life of me see how anyone can blame a coach for things like turnovers, for instance, and it's been verified that turnovers play an enormous role in determining the outcome of a game (or even a season). Luck plays a huge role in the outcome of NFL events, and luck cannot be controlled. Trying to ascribe a 'reason' to everything that happens in the NFL is a fool's errand.
Again-- I hate to sound repetitive, but this isn't the point. The point isn't whether GM's are clueless-- the point is that GM's, while perhaps being clueless, still know more about their team than the average I-net clown who watches games on TV.
Who is even debating this? I certainly am not here to defend the opinions of other fans...so I don't understand why you are extending the debate into that area..on one hand you say that GMs know more about their teams than the fans, and on the other hand you describe the Tamp a Bay front office as a bunch os stupid nitwits..I think you're really reading way too much into all this...my only contention is that I rate Gruden as a mediocre at best coach..can you provide any substantive proof that Gruden is a terrific coach? I'd be interested in seeing that..
Collecting 1970s Topps baseball wax, rack and cello packs, as well as PCGS graded Half Cents, Large Cents, Two Cent pieces and Three Cent Silver pieces.
<< <i>Again-- I hate to sound repetitive, but this isn't the point. The point isn't whether GM's are clueless-- the point is that GM's, while perhaps being clueless, still know more about their team than the average I-net clown who watches games on TV.
Who is even debating this? I certainly am not here to defend the opinions of other fans...so I don't understand why you are extending the debate into that area..on one hand you say that GMs know more about their teams than the fans, and on the other hand you describe the Tamp a Bay front office as a bunch os stupid nitwits..I think you're really reading way too much into all this...my only contention is that I rate Gruden as a mediocre at best coach..can you provide any substantive proof that Gruden is a terrific coach? I'd be interested in seeing that.. >>
If you're going to fire somebody, or advocate firing them, you should have evidence that suggests they are doing a bad job. So far I have not seen that evidence. Am I somehow going out on a limb by accusing you-- or anyone else who advocated the firing-- of being presumptuous if they cannot offer any evidence that Gruden was a subpar NFL coach? You say Gruden is a mediocre coach. Well, OK, that's fine. But based on what? A 'gut feeling'? I don't find any argument that's based on his W/L record to be at all compelling, for reasons that I've already addressed. So, putting that aside, I would be very curious to see other evidence that supports the firing.
Can I provide proof that Gruden was a terrific coach? Of course not. But what I can offer is the following:
a) Evidence that changing coaches almost never affects a teams expected win rate going forward. b) Evidence that the major factors which influence the outcome of NFL football games-- indeed, of NFL seasons-- are very often beyond a coach's sphere of control (turnovers, injuries, etc.).
So far as I can see, the empirical evidence that argues against the firing outweighs the evidence (if there is any) in favor of the firing. But I am certainly receptive to being proven wrong.
Boo firing of coaches and how it relates to winning to me probably is a more human than empirical thing. We don't have all the information needed to see why a coach was ineffective and was fired other than the results on the field. Some questions that may lead to a coach being ineffective but something a fan wouldn't know much about.
1. Did he lose respect of his players? 2. Was he fair in how he handled personal issues between players? 3. Did he allow players too much freedom that they ended up not ready to play on Sunday (in Dallas alot of stories have surfaced of players getting blitzed the night before home games and playing like crap the next day, coaches can't control what players do but they can deal with the aftermath to ensure there is consequences for those types of actions). 4. Did he listen to others that may have had more experience dealing with certain issues or where they blown off? 5. How much say did he really have in personell decisions? At some point picking the wrong players becomes a management issue (see Detroit) and not about bad luck. 6. Did he allow others arround him the power to make decisions or did he micromanage the team to death?
All of these above could have caused a team or a workplace to become non functional if all were negative.
I would like to see the data on how a team has done the 1st year after a new coach is brought in. You would have to look at it from lots of view points like, how many key players were hurt that came back, what was their strength of schedule in those 2 years, were any key coordinators hired/fired, what were the drafts like etc, etc.
To me the only time a coach could really have huge impact 1st year is when he
A. Chases off a bunch of under performing TO type players and gets better team players (ie the Parcells method). B. Installs a new offense of defensive system that uses their current talent better. C. Takes over calling plays (D or O) and is just better at calling a game then their predecessors. D. Their old coach was so hated and reviled in the locker room, any new face would allow better play by the players just out of sheer joy (Bobby Petrino).
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<< <i>5. How much say did he really have in personell decisions? At some point picking the wrong players becomes a management issue (see Detroit) and not about bad luck. >>
If Rogers and WIlliams would have worked out for detroit, who knows, maybe they would be inthe superbowl this year with their two great WRs, a la the Arizona Cardinals. The only one that really sticks out from this group is Calvin Johnson, who coincidentally, the Lions got the most flak for drafting becasue of the failures of Rogers and WIlliams. NOBODY knows for certain who will come out of the draft looking good and who will suck at life as a pro. Charels Rogers may have been the best college wr in the last few decades. Mike Williams came froma pro style offense and used his size to dominate in college. You just never know how it will pan out, we just retrospectavely call them bad picks when in reality the were great picks on draft day.
When you have other dire needs than a WR then they are bad picks. Charles Rodgers was a well known pot head in college and couldn't stay in shape. Also, sometimes there is more to a player than just his number in a 40. Their inability to get a QB has been their real downfall.
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<< <i>When you have other dire needs than a WR then they are bad picks. Charles Rodgers was a well known pot head in college and couldn't stay in shape. Also, sometimes there is more to a player than just his number in a 40. Their inability to get a QB has been their real downfall. >>
Warren Sapp was also a pot head in college who couldn't stay in shape. Seriously, Jason aren't you a scientist? I thought you were, in which case issues like variance and sample sizes should not be foreign to you.
When your talking about human issues not things that can be anaylzed easily with empiracle data then to me things like sample size and variance are of much less importance. I do alot of sensory evaluation testing and to me it's still a crap shoot having people describe what they feel or taste and to try and analyze the data in meaningful ways. Trying to judge what criteria makes a coach "good" or should be fired to me is even more of a crap shoot as there will never be just one answer or set of criteria and can change depending on the players on the team.
Warren Sapp worked out, Rodgers didn't both would be considered risks right? How risk adverse a franchise is is also part of management philosophy. When a team is bad it doesn't have alot of fallback when their risks don't pan out. I am just saying they came up snake eyes on 2 of the 4 guys with Roy Williams still undecided. To say that Rodgers had no risk is false as there were issues with his character. When you take risks and they fail you should get some blame and can't say it was just bad luck.
I feel the same about turnovers, some say its all just luck but in reality alot of it is good defensive positioning, coaching and athletic talent all of which are not luck. A ball bouncing off 20 hands before being intercepted is lucky a guy reading a QBs eyes is not.
Using statiscal analysis to predict outcomes to given situations is a great tool but in my experience you can never be 100% confident in your analysis meaning that the opposite of your prediction could still happen and when dealing with human data your confidence intervals go up much higher (if I can get a 90% CI coorelations it is considered good when doing taste evaluations).
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Comments
Erik
Scientists can become outdated very quickly if they don't work hard at it.
<< <i>Boo your analysis is forgetting one huge thing, the inability to learn and adjust. Someone could be great at their jobs, but as things change and progress, if your unwilling to learn and adjust you could become bad pretty quickly. Who's to say the reason Gruden's downfall wasn't due to his inability to adjust his gameplan to his players talents or to what other coaches were doing? This would be an example of someone getting "worse" at their job.
Scientists can become outdated very quickly if they don't work hard at it. >>
Sure-- that's possible. I concede that there's a chance that Gruden's performance deteriorated over the years. But there is NO compelling evidence of such other than his record, which I think I have argued (fairly convincingly) is probably due to variance, and not to any deficits which Gruden may have as a coach.
In every single endeavor that you, or I, or anyone else on these boards has ever undertaken over repeated trials, we have seen variance in our results while our own effort/ability has remained constant. So why do people insist that the basic laws of sampling distribution do not apply to the performance of NFL teams? Why do people insist, adamantly, that everything has to have a 'reason' in the NFL (or other sports leagues), and that the laws of variance do not apply to sports teams?
It's a viewpoint that is simply the picture of stupidity. Just look at how many teams have seen wild swings in their performance from year to year when nothing substantial has changed. The Bears go 5-11 in 2000, 13-3 in 2001, and then 4-12 in 2002. What, are you going to tell me that Jauron was an awesome coach in the middle year, but a terrible coach the two other years? Sorry, but that doesn't hold up. And the list of examples does not, in any way, end with the Bears. The NFL is positively rife with examples of teams that have exhibited similar performance blips.
I'm not rejecting your hypothesis, I'm just saying that the most likely explanation is that the dip in the Bucs peformance has been due to factors that were beyond Jon Gruden's control. Maybe his team is just less talented, maybe his division got harder, maybe he just suffered some bad luck-- whatever it may be, it's incredibly irresponsible- and I'm sure you know this, being a scientist-- to witness a phenomenon and then to post-hoc attribute it to a specific cause. Hell, I can go back and explain
everything that has ever happened to anybody if I'm allowed to just 'make up' reasons why my explanations are justified. Without sound, empirically verifiable proof all anybody is doing is blowing smoke up our channels. The aren't 'explaining' anything-- they're just guessing.
The situation you cite above is in fact an excellent example of the variance argument...and it can certainly be argued that Jauron had a career year as a coach in 2001 (though the easy schedule helped) when the Bears went 13-3...but you discount that single season (much like Gruden's one season when he led Dungy's Bucs to to the Super Bowl) and you have a coach with a career record of 44-73 and zero postseason wins (even in 2001 with home field and the bye he couldn't muster even one playoff win), so the answer would be that Dick Jauron's overall coaching ability, even with 2001 thrown in, is simply pitiful...and certainly worse than the more respectably but mediocre-at-best Gruden's...
Collecting 1970s Topps baseball wax, rack and cello packs, as well as PCGS graded Half Cents, Large Cents, Two Cent pieces and Three Cent Silver pieces.
<< <i>It's a viewpoint that is simply the picture of stupidity. Just look at how many teams have seen wild swings in their performance from year to year when nothing substantial has changed. The Bears go 5-11 in 2000, 13-3 in 2001, and then 4-12 in 2002. What, are you going to tell me that Jauron was an awesome coach in the middle year, but a terrible coach the two other years? Sorry, but that doesn't hold up. And the list of examples does not, in any way, end with the Bears. The NFL is positively rife with examples of teams that have exhibited similar performance blips.
The situation you cite above is in fact an excellent example of the variance argument...and it can certainly be argued that Jauron had a career year as a coach in 2001 (though the easy schedule helped) when the Bears went 13-3...but you discount that single season (much like Gruden's one season when he led Dungy's Bucs to to the Super Bowl) and you have a coach with a career record of 44-73 and zero postseason wins (even in 2001 with home field and the bye he couldn't muster even one playoff win), so the answer would be that Dick Jauron's overall coaching ability, even with 2001 thrown in, is simply pitiful...and certainly worse than the more respectably but mediocre-at-best Gruden's... >>
Jauron's ability is still undetermined. Unless you control for all the factors that have a causal effect on team wins, and distinguish those that Jauron can't control from those he can control, you cannot with any confidence say that he is a poor coach. What you can say is that Jauron's record is pitiful; but that's an entirely different proposition.
Here's an interesting quote from the book that BigFische linked to yesterday (I went out and bought it yesterday afternoon), about NFL coaches:
"In sports we have developed a culture in which, based on intuitive feelings of correlation, a team's success or failure is often attributed largely to the ability of the coach. As a result, when team's fail, the coach is often fired. Mathematical analysis of firings in all major sports, however, has shown that these firings had, on average, no effect on team performance."
If any of the yokels here think that they are somehow so in tune with NFL football that they can distinguish 'good' firings from 'bad' firings-- in other words, that they know more about the game and the team involved than the men directly responsible for personnel decisions, despite the fact that the average effect that these firings have on performance is 0-- then said yokels have reached the pinnacle of arrogance.
Jon Gruden is a random d-----bag.
Tell that to a Jets fan who endured the Rich Kotite era before Parcells came to town and restored legitimacy and relevancy to the club...the key phrase in the paragraph above is "on average," which of course allows for various contrary examples, the aforementioned cited situation being one of them...
and at the end of the day Gruden , while maybe not a randon d-bag, is still a mediocre coach at best..
Collecting 1970s Topps baseball wax, rack and cello packs, as well as PCGS graded Half Cents, Large Cents, Two Cent pieces and Three Cent Silver pieces.
<< <i>"In sports we have developed a culture in which, based on intuitive feelings of correlation, a team's success or failure is often attributed largely to the ability of the coach. As a result, when team's fail, the coach is often fired. Mathematical analysis of firings in all major sports, however, has shown that these firings had, on average, no effect on team performance."
Tell that to a Jets fan who endured the Rich Kotite era before Parcells came to town and restored legitimacy and relevancy to the club...the key phrase in the paragraph above is "on average," which of course allows for various contrary examples, the aforementioned cited situation being one of them...
and at the end of the day Gruden , while maybe not a randon d-bag, is still a mediocre coach at best..
You missed my point. Whenever a coach is fired it's because the GM is convinced that the move is best for the team. Yet, the evidence suggests that the mean effect on team performance is zero. Thus, if you-- or I-- say that the firing of a particular coach is a good idea, what we're saying is we are able to differentiate between 'good firings' and 'useless firings', despite the fact that the guys who do this for a living apparently cannot distinguish between the two.
If a GM can't tell when a coach should be fired-- and again, the evidence bears this out-- why on God's Earth should I think that any random numbskull on an Internet message board can figure it out?
Edit to add: I'm not looking to be inflammatory, or to cut anyone down, with the 'random numbskull' bit. Hell, I've personally held opinions on whether a coach should be fired or not (read: Rod Marinelli), so in a sense I'm as guilty as the next guy. But let's not pretend that our opinions are anything other than ill-informed guesses.
There are many, many ill-informed and downright clueless GMs in all major sports (you yourself have already described the Bucs GM as a stupid nitwit)...so I think you're giving too much credit here..
Like the Twins GM this past year who kept Liriano in the minors because Orlando Hernandez somehow knew how to "win" or pitch to the score..
Edit: We all have opinions here, that's the essential; premise for a sports talk board...your opinion at the top of this thread was that the Bucs made a mistake by firing Gruden..I disagree with that point, as I consider Gruden to be a mediocre coach at best..that's the bottom line, no use is trying to extrapolate anything more from the equation..
Collecting 1970s Topps baseball wax, rack and cello packs, as well as PCGS graded Half Cents, Large Cents, Two Cent pieces and Three Cent Silver pieces.
<< <i>If a GM can't tell when a coach should be fired-- and again, the evidence bears this out-- why on God's Earth should I think that any random numbskull on an Internet message board can figure it out?
There are many, many ill-informed and downright clueless GMs in all major sports...I think you're giving too much credit here..
Like the Twins GM this past year who kept Liriano in the minors because Orlando Hernandez somehow knew how to "win" or pitch to the score.. >>
Again-- I hate to sound repetitive, but this isn't the point. The point isn't whether GM's are clueless-- the point is that GM's, while perhaps being clueless, still know more about their team than the average I-net clown who watches games on TV.
The bottom line is that nobody, yet, has offered any kind of substantive argument for why Gruden should have been fired. His team's record? Again, I repeat, unless you can parse those variables that resulted in his team's record that were NOT within his control from those that WERE in his control pointing to his record is meaningless. So are arguments about 'not relating to players' and so forth if you cannot offer evidence that coaches who can 'relate' to their player will, ceteris paribus, enjoy better results than those who cannot. I submit that while it's possible that he's just an average coach (in which case it wouldn't matter if he was fired or not), it's also possible that he was the victim of circumstances which he could not control (see the variance discussion above, or the fact that TB sacrificed two 1st round picks and two 2nd round picks to get him--- picks, not coincidentally, that could have resulted in player's who would be peaking in ability right about now).
I cannot for the life of me see how anyone can blame a coach for things like turnovers, for instance, and it's been verified that turnovers play an enormous role in determining the outcome of a game (or even a season). Luck plays a huge role in the outcome of NFL events, and luck cannot be controlled. Trying to ascribe a 'reason' to everything that happens in the NFL is a fool's errand.
Who is even debating this? I certainly am not here to defend the opinions of other fans...so I don't understand why you are extending the debate into that area..on one hand you say that GMs know more about their teams than the fans, and on the other hand you describe the Tamp a Bay front office as a bunch os stupid nitwits..I think you're really reading way too much into all this...my only contention is that I rate Gruden as a mediocre at best coach..can you provide any substantive proof that Gruden is a terrific coach? I'd be interested in seeing that..
Collecting 1970s Topps baseball wax, rack and cello packs, as well as PCGS graded Half Cents, Large Cents, Two Cent pieces and Three Cent Silver pieces.
<< <i>Again-- I hate to sound repetitive, but this isn't the point. The point isn't whether GM's are clueless-- the point is that GM's, while perhaps being clueless, still know more about their team than the average I-net clown who watches games on TV.
Who is even debating this? I certainly am not here to defend the opinions of other fans...so I don't understand why you are extending the debate into that area..on one hand you say that GMs know more about their teams than the fans, and on the other hand you describe the Tamp a Bay front office as a bunch os stupid nitwits..I think you're really reading way too much into all this...my only contention is that I rate Gruden as a mediocre at best coach..can you provide any substantive proof that Gruden is a terrific coach? I'd be interested in seeing that.. >>
If you're going to fire somebody, or advocate firing them, you should have evidence that suggests they are doing a bad job. So far I have not seen that evidence. Am I somehow going out on a limb by accusing you-- or anyone else who advocated the firing-- of being presumptuous if they cannot offer any evidence that Gruden was a subpar NFL coach? You say Gruden is a mediocre coach. Well, OK, that's fine. But based on what? A 'gut feeling'? I don't find any argument that's based on his W/L record to be at all compelling, for reasons that I've already addressed. So, putting that aside, I would be very curious to see other evidence that supports the firing.
Can I provide proof that Gruden was a terrific coach? Of course not. But what I can offer is the following:
a) Evidence that changing coaches almost never affects a teams expected win rate going forward.
b) Evidence that the major factors which influence the outcome of NFL football games-- indeed, of NFL seasons-- are very often beyond a coach's sphere of control (turnovers, injuries, etc.).
So far as I can see, the empirical evidence that argues against the firing outweighs the evidence (if there is any) in favor of the firing. But I am certainly receptive to being proven wrong.
1. Did he lose respect of his players?
2. Was he fair in how he handled personal issues between players?
3. Did he allow players too much freedom that they ended up not ready to play on Sunday (in Dallas alot of stories have surfaced of players getting blitzed the night before home games and playing like crap the next day, coaches can't control what players do but they can deal with the aftermath to ensure there is consequences for those types of actions).
4. Did he listen to others that may have had more experience dealing with certain issues or where they blown off?
5. How much say did he really have in personell decisions? At some point picking the wrong players becomes a management issue (see Detroit) and not about bad luck.
6. Did he allow others arround him the power to make decisions or did he micromanage the team to death?
All of these above could have caused a team or a workplace to become non functional if all were negative.
I would like to see the data on how a team has done the 1st year after a new coach is brought in. You would have to look at it from lots of view points like, how many key players were hurt that came back, what was their strength of schedule in those 2 years, were any key coordinators hired/fired, what were the drafts like etc, etc.
To me the only time a coach could really have huge impact 1st year is when he
A. Chases off a bunch of under performing TO type players and gets better team players (ie the Parcells method).
B. Installs a new offense of defensive system that uses their current talent better.
C. Takes over calling plays (D or O) and is just better at calling a game then their predecessors.
D. Their old coach was so hated and reviled in the locker room, any new face would allow better play by the players just out of sheer joy (Bobby Petrino).
<< <i>5. How much say did he really have in personell decisions? At some point picking the wrong players becomes a management issue (see Detroit) and not about bad luck. >>
Charles rogers-4.28 40 yard dash 38" verical 6'3" 220
Mike williams- 4.5 40 yard dash 37" vertical 6'5'' 242
Calvin Johnson-4.4 40 yard dash 47" vertical 6'5" 235
Boldin- 4.47 40 yard dash 34" vertical 6'1" 217
Fitzgerald 4.63 40 yard dash 35.5" vertical 6' 223
If Rogers and WIlliams would have worked out for detroit, who knows, maybe they would be inthe superbowl this year with their two great WRs, a la the Arizona Cardinals. The only one that really sticks out from this group is Calvin Johnson, who coincidentally, the Lions got the most flak for drafting becasue of the failures of Rogers and WIlliams. NOBODY knows for certain who will come out of the draft looking good and who will suck at life as a pro. Charels Rogers may have been the best college wr in the last few decades. Mike Williams came froma pro style offense and used his size to dominate in college. You just never know how it will pan out, we just retrospectavely call them bad picks when in reality the were great picks on draft day.
http://sportsfansnews.com/author/andy-fischer/
<< <i>When you have other dire needs than a WR then they are bad picks. Charles Rodgers was a well known pot head in college and couldn't stay in shape. Also, sometimes there is more to a player than just his number in a 40. Their inability to get a QB has been their real downfall. >>
Warren Sapp was also a pot head in college who couldn't stay in shape. Seriously, Jason aren't you a scientist? I thought you were, in which case issues like variance and sample sizes should not be foreign to you.
Warren Sapp worked out, Rodgers didn't both would be considered risks right? How risk adverse a franchise is is also part of management philosophy. When a team is bad it doesn't have alot of fallback when their risks don't pan out. I am just saying they came up snake eyes on 2 of the 4 guys with Roy Williams still undecided. To say that Rodgers had no risk is false as there were issues with his character. When you take risks and they fail you should get some blame and can't say it was just bad luck.
I feel the same about turnovers, some say its all just luck but in reality alot of it is good defensive positioning, coaching and athletic talent all of which are not luck. A ball bouncing off 20 hands before being intercepted is lucky a guy reading a QBs eyes is not.
Using statiscal analysis to predict outcomes to given situations is a great tool but in my experience you can never be 100% confident in your analysis meaning that the opposite of your prediction could still happen and when dealing with human data your confidence intervals go up much higher (if I can get a 90% CI coorelations it is considered good when doing taste evaluations).