Poll Question for Everyone

[fordfixer]

No. Boom?

Boom.......

[fordfixer]

Boom.......

Crap I forgot to Quote myself first.

[fordfixer]

Crap I forgot to Quote myself first.

Boom......

[fordfixer]

Boom......

That’s better

[Steel Maniac]

No.

Good. My point proven. Thanks.

[Northern_Blitz]

Last question..

So, your telling me we can fire Frank Reich ( for example) of the Colts, and bring in Jeff Fisher with the exact same players, and Jeff Fischer will be just as successful as Frank Reich was last year?

Yes or no. That’s all I need.

You seem to be arguing against the position that
- coaching isn't important.

People are actually saying
- coaching matters, but talent is more important than coaching.

From Wikipedia:
"A straw man is a form of argument and an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not presented by that opponent.[1] One who engages in this fallacy is said to be "attacking a straw man."

[Northern_Blitz]

You seem to be arguing against the position that
- coaching isn't important.

People are actually saying
- coaching matters, but talent is more important than coaching.

From Wikipedia:
"A straw man is a form of argument and an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not presented by that opponent.[1] One who engages in this fallacy is said to be "attacking a straw man."

Am I supposed to say Boom now?

[Ernie]

We just saw the lest talented patriots beat the vastly more talented Rams. What was the difference? Coaching.

That defensive performance by the Cheats in the SB was a thing of beauty. Best coaching effort I've ever seen.

[tiproast]

I wish Tom Brady would get to his stop date.

Pappy

It's going to happen. And probably soon (in geological time, that is.)

[RuthlessBurgher]

Good. My point proven. Thanks.

What point does it prove? I literally have no idea what your random scenario about firing Frank Reich and hiring Jeff Fisher to coach the Colts was about.

[Steel Maniac]

Ruth, the whole point I've been trying to make is that good coaching is just as important or more as having good players. That's all. North_Blitz said in another thread that good coaching isn't important and having good players is all you need. And I disagreed.

He changed the scenario within this thread because he was embarrassed by his thought process. But that's what he said.

Anyway, we move on.

[Oh wow]

I disagree that the Patriots were less talented than the Rams. Taking a look across the starting 22 and special teams I'd say the Pats talent level is on par with the Rams. This was a case of a good coach taking a good team and making them great, which is my argument. BB wouldn't have taken the Browns roster and won the Superbowl, he needs good players.

Pappy

So tired of people acting like the Pats don’t have talented players.

[RuthlessBurgher]

North_Blitz said in another thread that good coaching isn't important and having good players is all you need.

He did? I highly doubt that. Could you link to that thread, or is it now lost in the interwebz like my supposed posts hating on Conner, proclaiming that he'd only ever be a backup.

[Oh wow]

He did? I highly doubt that. Could you link to that thread, or is it now lost in the interwebz like my supposed posts hating on Conner, proclaiming that he'd only ever be a backup.

Whatever it takes

[Northern_Blitz]

He did? I highly doubt that. Could you link to that thread, or is it now lost in the interwebz like my supposed posts hating on Conner, proclaiming that he'd only ever be a backup.

I wanted to provide what I think is all the quotes relevant to Maniacs argument from the previous thread. The thread is this one and the quotes I found are from pages 24 and 25. Maniac, you can use the search function on the site if you ever want to see what someone posted in old threads. In this case, I searched with the terms "McVay" and "luck" and there were two threads to choose from. It wasn't too hard.

http://www.planetsteelers.com/forums/showthread.php/48648-Rooney-Now-Signaling-That-AB-Is-Done/page24?highlight=mcvay+luck

I tried to include all of my posts that were relevant and previous quotes to give context to what I wrote. The link is above if anyone wants to add other pieces of the discussion. I've tried not to cherry pick things, and I think I've got all of what I wrote on the topic here.

Since there's a lot of text (you may have noticed that I tend to be long winded), I've added gold coloring to the things I wrote that I think are most pertinent to the current discussion. I haven't changed any of the text except for the coloring. I did add a couple of comments in square brackets [these comments are in green].

Our best to way to get to the SB is to get a competent head coach and to keep AB.

Why do you believe that?

Outside of New England, I'm not convinced that coaches are more important than players in terms of results. And even in NE, I think it's just that BB is amazing at being flexible with schemes so that they fit the strengths of his players (and hide their weaknesses). I don't think any other coach does that to a degree where it make a consistent difference in team success.

That's why I'd be OK if we fired Tomlin.

But it's also why I don't think firing Tomlin would dramatically improve the team.

Really? Did you not see the difference in the same exact Rams players [in context from the current thread we know that 1/2 the starters were different] from Jeff Fisher to Sean McVay?

I don't really think so.

My guess is that their improvement is mostly driven by luck, young players getting better due to more experience, and having a good QB on a rookie deal. [I think this must be the part Maniac is pointing to now saying that I think it was totally luck. In retrospect, I think I should have researched the roster changes myself and included coaching here as well. Note that I do talk about coaching in the next sentence.]

McVay is probably a good coach. But, I think don't think it's his coaching that will make the Rams as one of the best teams in the NFC over the medium term.

Instead, I think that their success will remain above average while Goff is on his rookie contract. Then, they'll have to sign him to a massive deal. That will mean that they can't keep / acquire talent elsewhere and their team will get worse.

This is the same path the Steelers followed with Ben as a rookie QB.

It is the path that the Seahawks appear to be on.

And I think it will be the same path the Rams follow.

All three of those teams have very good QBs and good coaches.

But if you consider Tomlin to be "under-performing", the only coach who's been able to consistently deliver "acceptable" performance with a franchise deal on a non-rookie contract is Billy B in Boston.

I think that probably means that good coaching is necessary, but not sufficient for consistent team success. I also think that the biggest driver for consistent success is having a good QB on a rookie deal.

If you consider what McVay did with the Rams " Luck" from what Fisher was doing then there's no further need for conversation. You don't believe that coaching makes a difference despite the example I gave you. [here you can see that he latched on to one of the things on the list of three things. It is still what he's saying now. Hopefully, seeing the whole conversation helps put it in context]

I think you missed the point of what I was trying to say.

If coaching ability was the most important piece of team success, I think we would see that the best coaches would have consistent success in the league. You see this in things like Fantasy Football betting sites that are dominated by a small number of very strong players.

But, outside of BB in NE that's not what we see in the NFL.

Instead, good coaches outside of BB tend to be consistently competitive when they have good QBs on cheap deals and then sporadically successful when they have to pay good QBs market value. This is like stock pickers who beat the index 20% of the time in a way that you can't repeatably know which 20% beats the index before hand.

I think that suggests that coaching ability is important, but it isn't the most important piece of the puzzle. In a salary cap league, I think the most important thing is having players on below market value deals. And in football, I think the QB is dramatically more important than all the other players.

Another way of asking this might be to name a coach other than BB that you think consistently drives the success of their team (you can check the previous comparison I put up for Sean Payton if you like).

My guess is that coaching in the NFL is more like picking stock that consistently beat the market than winning pay to play fantasy football sites.

Re: Luck

To be successful in a single elimination tournament, you need to be good and lucky. I don't know what the breakdown is on McVay. But, without repeated success, I'd tend to lean more toward luck.

This is especially true of the Browns (another example given of the importance of coaching). Winning a few games after firing their coach doesn't show that the coach was good. Half a season isn't enough time to determine if someone is good or not. This is more like Adam Smith seeing a short term bump in production when down when they made the lights brighter (and also less bright).

I hear what you're saying and I disagree with you. I think coaching is more important then what your saying. Jeff Fisher had all those things that you said were more important and he couldn't win. Because he sucked at being a coach.

Coaching /having the right environment (culture) in my book is very important. And the Rams are just the latest example to prove what I"m saying.

I guess I'm not yet convinced that McVay is so much better than Fisher. Like I said, I think we need more than one season before we anoint anyone as a great coach.

But doesn't it seem like a very big part of why they lost was because the coach decided not to play one of their best offensive players (really one of the best offensive players in the league)? This probably should have cost them the conference championship, but they were gifted the win by the officiating crew.

And isn't it odd that the newest offensive coaching genius could only score 3 points in the most important game of his life?

I'm not sure the Rams are a great example of good coaching.

Time will tell, but I'd like to see more of a track record before anointing someone.

Look at Fisher. Now, you're saying that he's not a good coach. But when he started his career he was pretty successful. Was that because of good coaching, or did he just flip heads a few times in a row at the beginning of his career? And if Fisher had a good run flipping heads over a small sample, how do we know that McVay didn't do the same this year?