There are four head coach "types", so which would be ideal?

Submitted by CLord on December 10th, 2020 at 2:01 PM

Head coaches obviously oversee the entire football operation, but there are theoretically four types of head coaches:

1.  Offense - Controls.  Defense - Influences.
2. Offense - Influences.  Defense - Controls.
3. Offense - Controls. Defense - Controls.
4. Offense - Influences.  Defense - Influences.

"Controls" = Has assistants to support, but flat out calls the play to play shots and is the team's foremost intellectual "talent" on that side of the ball.
"Influences" = Exercises various degrees of veto power as the HC, but is not the team's foremost intellectual "talent" on that side of the ball, and defers calling the shots to an assistant.

Not too many 3s that I can think of, but I feel like Harbaugh was more of a 1 to start, then when he hired Gattis he became a 4.  Ryan Day for example, is clearly a 1. Saban?  Dabo?

I wonder which type of head coach is the most desirable.  I would personally say a coach who brings the intellectual control/talent to one side of the ball or the other, because if they are just overseers and not in direct control over schemes, the team can lack identity from year to year as successful assistants move on to HC jobs of their own.  Thus why I am not sure at this point what it is about Harbaugh that makes him desirable any more, other than running a clean program.

Thoughts on this?  Curious everyone's take on which HC types have traditionally excelled and if there is a pattern there.

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blue in dc

December 10th, 2020 at 7:56 PM ^

While I generally like your list, I’m not so sure about your translating them into coaching tiers.

A position coach needs to be at least adequate at coaching skills and what is going to make them a better and/or higher level position coach.

a coordinator needs to have the skills of a position coach as well as having at least some of the attributes related to program cultural leadership and in game coaching

A head coach needs to have the skills of a coordinator and also be a good staff builder.  Program cultural leadership is going to be an even more important part of their job.  They also more than anyone else need to understand their strengths and weaknesses.  I agree it is hard to be an elite coach without being very strong as a closer in recruiting, but if you aren’t the best at identifying talent you can address that by having staff who are.   You also have to be very strong in building staff.   
 

In short, to be an elite coach you’ve got to:

1. Be really strong at the establishing program culture and inspiring part of program culture.   You also have to be highly efficient with everything you do because your time, your staffs time and your players time is one of your most limited resources.

2. On the recruiting front at a minimum be a great closer.   Anything else (like identifying talent is icing on the cake).

3. Finally you have to be strong at building staff.   This includes not just hiring good staff but understanding your weaknesses and making sure that your staff makes up for them.  
 

As long as you realize it and hire coordinators who can make up for it, I’d suggest that great in game skills are great to have, but are not an absolute necessity.   The one exception to this is your game day ability to inspire.   You set the tone for the team and you’ve got to keep them at an appropriate emotional level.   That they don’t get so excited that they make stupid mistakes and that they don’t get too low when things go wrong.

One of the challenges is that while many coaches follow the path of position coach to coordinator to head coach, the skillset that makes you a great position coach is not necessarily the skillset that makes you a great coordinator is not necessarily the skillset that makes you a great head coach.

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BTB grad

December 10th, 2020 at 4:22 PM ^

I think adapting your team's strategy and scheme to the talent you have at hand on your current roster is a trait the best coaches have. Putting your guys' skill sets in the best position to succeed. Whether the coach "controls" or "influences", living and dying by a specific scheme usually is bad coaching trait.

John Harbaugh transitioning his entire offense from a traditional pro style to a power spread once they moved on from Flacco in favor of Jackson. The Pats went from a run-heavy approach using Brady as a game manager early in their run to vertical passing game throwing bombs to Randy Moss, Aaron Hernandez, and Gronk during Brady's prime to then transitioning to short quick throws as Brady began to age once you have guys like Edelman and Amendola. Ohio State transitioned from a decade of running QB offenses with Pryor, Braxton, and JT to one season of Dwayne Haskins relatively seamlessly. Meanwhile, Borges put Denard in the I formation all season or we only ever utilize the Norfleets and McDooms of the world with jet sweeps

Trying to fit square pegs into round holes is one of the worst coaching traits

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Golden section

December 10th, 2020 at 4:46 PM ^

Doesn't really matter. Urb Meyer was a guy that had much greater 'influence' on the offense than the defense but he didn't control either. He oversaw the offence and always hired and paid tiop coordinators. Larry Johnson gets a million bucks a year to coach the D line.

Dabo Sweeney follows the same model. Guys do their job. Dabo influences both sides of the ball  but basically Venables calls the defensive shots. 

Nick Saban has more of a defensive philosophy heavily influences but doesn't control anybody.

Urb talks about installing a culture of success. He says you do that by creating an environment of

  1. Collaboration: whether you are a coordinator, assistant or player your voice will be heard. It might not be enacted on but it will be listened to. 
  2. Accountability: if you are put in-charge of something you are expected to do whatever it takes to make that happen. Players are especially accountable to each other, in practice to push each other. Veterans are expected to lead and guide and mentor younger players on and off the field.
  3. Innovation: You rarely win if you are predicable. You have to constantly evolve as teams adjust to successes. You can't stop looking for new wrinkles and you have be able to adjust to what your opponents do. 

The next coach should be a perceptive, intelligent, leader with the ability to recognize in teenagers the innate qualities required for success at the college level. He should have the psychological skills to maximize the specific assets of a widely diverse set of individuals from across the societal spectrum and channel them into one cohesive unit.He has to shoulder more blame than he is responsible for and share credit though it might be deserved. Above all though he has it have the football acumen to understand every aspect of on-field success from quarterback's footwork, through fundamental blocking to DB's hip placement. 

There is a reason why so few coaches are consistently successful at the highest level in college football. It's of little relevance whether the guy controls this and influences that what is far more critical is the leadership attributes he has and the system he installs.

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Pumafb

December 10th, 2020 at 4:47 PM ^

I would venture to say there are 0 “3’s. They don’t exist. Even at the high school level, the amount of preparation that takes place on a week to week basis preclude a scenario where a coach is both the OC and the DC. I know you said “calls the plays”but you can’t “call the plays” without having spent considerable time developing the game plan. I have never met with or coached with anyone that could call both and be effective. I coach high school and our Sunday staff meetings alone could last 6+ hours dissecting the previous Friday night and then installing the game plan for the week (which was a loving breathing thing that we would change and adjust as the week went on. I know college coaches have significantly more time, but I just can’t see someone doing both. 

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stephenrjking

December 10th, 2020 at 5:48 PM ^

There are different types of coaches, but this oversimplifies. There is more to coaching than the level of influence a coach has on the offense or defense. While I don't know of anyone in the modern age who is a type 3, there are certainly successful coaches of the other three types (top of my head: 1. Lincoln Riley; 2. Nick Saban; 4. Dabo Swinney) but the major factors that influence their success go waaaay beyond that. 

I upvoted rainingmaize for looking at coaching characteristics from a different angle and provoking some good thought, though in the end I don't think those categories quite give us the whole picture, either.

The truth is that there can be multiple ways to reach the same ends. You have to look at what a successful program has and then determine what is needed to get there. Big picture and little picture both.

Successful programs win lots of games. They win lots of games because they have some combination of excellent players and excellent Xs and Os; the elite programs have both. Those elite players perform those Xs and Os because the culture and organization of the program facilitates it. So, you need elite players, quality Xs and Os, solid organization, a healthy culture. The HC is obviously responsible for all of these things, but how they get there can vary somewhat. 

I don't think a head coach can be elite without being a good recruiter. He needs to bring in elite recruiters on his staff as well, but the HC is the face of the program and he has to be able to recruit. I do, however, think that the X-and-O skill is a bit fungible. He can't be a buffoon, but if he's not an expert he needs to have guys on his staff that are. So the HC must know what he is and is not good at, and know how to manage staff. Same with player development. 

"Organization" and "culture" are kind of buzzwords and it's really hard for those of us who never played high-level football to understand what that actually looks like in practice. But not every good HC will look alike. Some of them may be organizer types, not great with people. Others may be rah-rah guys who have staff that keeps things moving in order. Nick Saban and Dabo Swinney seem to be completely different guys, and they both succeed just fine. 

The trick with evaluating HC candidates is that there are aspects of producing an elite team that are total unknowns. So you have the question asked by Spath this afternoon:

https://twitter.com/MichaelSpathITH/status/1337144301986443264?s=20

We don't know how well Campbell recruits. While some great recruiters (Mack Brown, a recruiter rather than an Xs and Os guy) do well at small schools, others don't really show what they're made of until they get to a bigger program. 

On the other hand, we don't really know if guys who are known recruiting commodities (Elliott, Hafley, etc) are actually good at scheme or at running a program. Tennessee and Georgia are still waiting for the great recruiting they're getting from Nick Saban disciples to translate into elite field performance. 

But that's what we're left with. There isn't an obvious elite-at-everything candidate that we can get, so you're going to make a leap of faith of some kind and hope that the stuff that is blank on his resume turns out to be good. 

Which, it might. 

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DeBored

December 10th, 2020 at 8:16 PM ^

I'll vote #4. I think the Michigan job is huge, and you really need a CEO type. Someone who can handle the press, AD, Athletic Department, donors, boosters, gliterati, assistants, staffing, recruiting, etc. When you think about the scope of the job, there is likely not much time left for X and O's. That being said, the #4 type should understand how to hire, retain, and develop quality assistants to handle the X's and O's and evaluate their performance.

So who are the best CEO types out there?

 

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BrightonB

December 11th, 2020 at 3:03 PM ^

#4 Please and let him oversee both but let the OC and DC do their thing with only minimal / needed input at times when it is necessary.  Like say something when he sees 1) the offense continuing to run up the middle over and over and over and it isn't working and 2) when he sees the defense getting slanted for 1st downs over and over and over and can walk over to either coach and say .... "Hey ... can you NOT do that or let that happen any longer .. make an adjustment ..... NOW"

Yep, that would be great.

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