FanPost

Rabble, Rabble, Rabble! Why Everybody's Wrong About Hackett (pt 1?)

th.0.jpeg

The idea that Nate Hackett is a leading cause of problems on offense or that Marrone might fire Hackett is nothing more than a failure to understand how the NFL works. It's interesting that we would all call NO's offense Sean Payton's or Philly's offense Chip Kelly's or the Jets' defense Rex Ryan's. But nobody seems to do that with Marrone. Especially considering that everybody did and still does refer to the Gailey years as his offense. It was Jauron's defense and everybody associated corners playing off the line and cover 2 philosophies with him. Why does anybody call it Nate Hackett's offense? It's not. He's the intermediary employing Doug Marrone's playbook and philosophies. It's why he was hired. Marrone was an offensive coordinator (granted, running Payton's offense) when he was hired at Syracuse. Marrone held the title of OC and called the plays in his first year there. Hackett was hired to coach the QBs and be an offensive assistant. Marrone hired somebody who shared his philosophical background to groom him to be his OC at Syracuse. When he was the OL coach with the Jets, Marrone's OC was Paul Hackett. And beyond just being his son, Nate worked with his father in Tampa. Their HC was Jon Gruden. Sean Payton's first NFL job was Jon Gruden's QB coach in Philly. They all share the same concept on how to attack a defense. It gets called cronyism and loyalty. But it's not about those things at all.

Fun fact: There are EIGHT OCs who are longer tenured with their current team than Nate Hackett. That is the degree to which the position of OC is a revolving door for almost every organization and the degree to which offenses produce based on the QB and talent around the QB.

The notion that Doug Marrone should have or would have hired an experienced OC doesn't mesh with the reality of the NFL. Look at head coaches with an offensive background and who their OCs are: Jim Harbaugh hired his OC at Stanford. Talk about incompetence, oh the horror of bringing his college OC with him! Andy Reid's OC is a QB he coached at Philly. It's Doug Pederson, who was a high school coach until Reid pulled him into the NFL. He was the quality control guy in Philly, then their QB coach and Reid brought him to KC to be his offensive coordinator. Bruce Arians hired Harold Goodwin, his Indy OL coach, who was just coming off his first year as a head offensive line coach. All his previous experience was as an assistant OL coach or quality control guy. Marc Trestman hired NO's OL coach, Aaron Kromer, who has never been an OC anywhere, but did coach with Trestman in Oakland back in the Gruden days. Bill O'Brien is his own OC. Jason Garrett was also originally his own OC, but Jerry Jones' ridiculous level of involvement has led to them hiring experienced coaches to work with Garrett. Ken Whisenhunt brought San Diego's TE coach, Jason Michael, with him to Tennessee to be his OC. Jay Gruden promoted Washington's TE coach, Sean McVay, to OC. Both Michael and McVay had never held a higher NFL title than TE coach. Sean Payton and Mike McCarthy have always promoted from within. Mike McCoy just promoted from within with Frank Reich.

The handful of HC/OC combos that don't fit the pattern: Jim Caldwell hiring NO groomed Joe Lombardi in Detroit. Joe Philbin first hired Tannehill's coach Mike Sherman (who Philbin coached for in GB) and broke the standard by trying to catch lightening with Bill Lazor. Lazor has been a QB coach for a whole bunch of teams, including UB, and was Chip Kelly's QB coach last year. Chip Kelly's OC is experienced Pat Shurmer, but given Kelly's history, there really wasn't a "Kelly" guy he could have hired. His OC (who also served as his QB coach) at Oregon was the logical coach to get the huge pay day to be the next Oregon HC leaving Kelly with zero options outside of a proven NFL guy. Then there's Tom Coughlin who I am not bothering to research a coaching tree for considering that he was a college head coach in 1970 and Syracuse's OC in the 70s, a position coach for a bunch of NFL teams in the 80s, a head coach at Boston college for a few years and has been an NFL head coach since 1995.

I'll use Bill Belichick as another example. He has a defensive background and was the DC for the Giants before getting the Cleveland HC job. After Cleveland, he took secondary and asst HC jobs before basically being traded to NE to be their head coach. His first DC hire in NE was Romeo Crennel. Crennel's first NFL job was as the asst ST coach for the Giants. The head ST coach was Bill Belichick. Belichick gets promoted and so does Crennel. Belichick gets promoted again, this time to DC and Crennel gets promoted too. They spent 10 whole seasons together with the Giants. Then they coached together as DL coach and DB coach for a few years with the Jets. I'm sure they were friends, but more importantly, they work with the same terminology and same philosophies. Crennel gets hired to be the Browns' HC and Belichick promotes from within. DB coach Eric Mangini is named DC. His NFL job before being the secondary coach for Belichick was as a defensive assistant on the same staff that Belichick was on for the Jets. One year later and Mangini leaves to become yet another Belichick disciple turned failed HC. LB coach Dean Pees is promoted to DC. Pees' contract ends, he tried to pull a Pettine and leave his defensive minded HC to go to a team that would give him more control, which he eventually found in Baltimore. It's 2010 and Belichick actually didn't name a DC until 2012. But the coach who called the plays after Peas and was eventually named DC was some guy named Mike Patricia. Patricia's resume before joining NE's staff: Grad asst at RIT, DL coach at Amherst College and Grad asst at Syracuse. Seriously, that's it. What Patricia brings to NE's staff is a degree in aerospace engineering from RPI and is a passionate football loving ball of clay for Belichick to mold. He spends a couple seasons as an offensive assistant. When Peas gets promoted to DC, Patricia takes his spot as the LB coach. Three years later, he's calling the plays on defense for the New England Patriots. This is the degree to which sharing experience in the same philosophy matters to coaches when choosing their staff. That is the degree to which having a proven track record or wealth of experience is considered irrelevant by coaches who do have that experience or authority on one side of the ball.

But go ahead everybody. Blame everything on Hackett. Talk like Marrone should have hired some Norv Turner type. Pretend that hiring an OC who had the 10th best offense with the 10th best QB will come in and turn this offense ranked 22nd in points per drive with, like, the 22nd best QB and 22nd best OL in the league into an above average group. Everybody just continue with all this rabble, rabble rabble! And now I realize I need to write a fanpost about how this coaching staff has basically achieved a level of success on par with the talent on the offense. Maybe a rabble, rabble, rabble pt 2 coming up.

Just another great fan opinion shared on the pages of BuffaloRumblings.com.