Put some GMs on the hot seat
Posted: Friday October 16, 1998 08:19 AM
My background precedes me to this argument, but I have a longstanding pet
peeve about team owners and general managers who won't relenquish complete
authority to their head coach, but hold him alone accountable when the team
isn't winning.
This power struggle has created sticky situations before -- Jimmy Johnson
leaving Dallas, Bill Parcells leaving the Giants and the Patriots, even
Mike Ditka leaving the Chicago Bears.
The league's coaches know more about the game than all the general managers
and personnel directors put together. Many front-office types fall into two
categories -- failed coaches who couldn't cut it on the sidelines, and the
other group is pure nepotism -- Daddy owns the club, so the son gets to
work for the team.
When coaches can make their own decision -- see Landry, Shula, Lombardi and
Walsh, who all ran the show -- you get things like championships and
dynasties. But for some reason, these gurus sitting up in the owner's boxes
think they know more than the coaches.
Take front-office "mastermind" Bill Polian, now the general manager of the
Colts -- look at what he's left behind at Carolina. His first pick, Kerry Collins, was a
quarterback with no heart. His '96 first-rounder, tailback Tim Biakabutuka, hasn't
been good enough to merit a single carry this season on a winless team.
Polian jumped ship and left behind a miserable 0-5 team. Coach Dom Capers,
who wouldn't have made such poor decisions, is left to feel the wrath of
Polian's ineptitude.
The NFL's other winless team is another good example. Redskins general
manager Charley Casserly went out and spent $57 million on defensive
tackles Dana
Stubblefield and Dan
Wilkinson, and his draft mistakes can be traced back from Michael Westbrook to Heath Shuler to even Desmond Howard.
To coach a team and not have a say in who you're coaching is naturally
frustrating. Case in point
In 1984, I was coaching the Patriots -- the late Dick Steinberg was
personnel director and Pat Sullivan (the owner's son) was the general
manager. So we're in the fourth round and I have my eyes on a nose tackle
named Michael Carter, but they want a tailback.
I'm running a single-back set at the time, and I already have plenty of
good backs -- Tony Collins had rushed for 1,049 yards and 10 touchdowns the
year before, plus Mosi Tatupu and Robert Weathers had averaged better than
five yards a carry, and we added Craig James from the USFL that season.
Forget about adding someone else -- I couldn't keep all of them happy.
There's only one ball, after all.
I pleaded to the powers that be and told them I had coached Carter in
college, recruited him, knew his family. And we desperately needed a nose
tackle that year.
Well, they didn't think Carter was tall enough. They took a 5-foot-9
tailback out of Penn State named Jonathan Williams -- he never carried the
ball once, returned kickoffs for nine games (his long was a 29-yard return)
and then was out of the league. Carter, meanwhile, went on to three Super
Bowl rings and seven All-Pro seasons in a nine-year career with the San Francisco 49ers.
Steinberg's the same guy who traded down from the 16th pick in 1985 to the
28th pick -- he got a center named Trevor Matich, while Bill Walsh and the
49ers drafted some small-school receiver named Jerry Rice. Later, while he
was dismantling the Jets, he used the second overall pick on Blair Thomas
while Junior Seau, Cortez Kennedy and Emmitt Smith were out
there.
Coaches are always the first to go -- you never see general managers
getting fired. It's an insulated job -- they're never under the same
microscope of the press, nor the same scrutiny from fans.
Look around the league, and you'll see the coaches who really run teams are
the ones doing well. Dan Reeves has found success again now that he has
control of the Falcons, Jimmy Johnson has the Dolphins on the right track
and Mike Ditka has turned the Saints into a respectable team.
My contention is that if you let your finest chef buy his own ingredients
to prepare a meal, why not let your coach buy his own ingredients as he
works to create a winning team? It's a recipe for success, but all too
often in the NFL, it's missing from the menu.
Start your NFL Sunday by watching Ron Meyer, James Lofton, Sports
Illustrated's Peter King and host Bob Lorenz on CNN NFL Preview. At 10 a.m.
ET, it's the day's first look at all the NFL action.
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