Outside Counsel

The joke about the Bills hiring Doug Marone is that their search encompassed a 150 mile radius. Fair enough, and I'll be the first concede that Marone is an underwhelming choice. That said, I'm not so sure that he's a bad choice, or that there is any coach that would make a difference. Watching Mike Shanahan's Redskins yesterday I thought about what a great football genius he was-- when he was coaching John Elway. Nowadays he's putting his franchise player, a guy who could be the foundation of the franchise for the next ten years, out on the field injured. I understand that he wants to win now, but if you have the most famous orthopedist in the world on the field to find out if your franchise player is injured you already know the answer. Football coaches are geniuses when they win, full stop. Here's the job description: evaluate talent, and put the best talent on the field; design and implement game plans that enables that talent to play up to its potential; make adjustments as necessary. In order to do this a head coach relies on assistants, so managing the staff is a component. I suppose there is a sense in which player motivation is important, but I'm with Marv Levy on that- the players are professionals and should be able to motivate themselves. If they can't, then you probably have the wrong players. It isn't easy to evaluate coaches. The guys who have been winning lately aren't available, so you have to look to their staff. A coordinator may be great at game planning and design, and is probably good at player evaluation and instruction as well, but managing the entire staff is another story. Gregg Williams, for example, was terrible at this. Mike Mularkey, who followed Williams, wasn't able to figure out who to put on the field. Dick Jauron was over his head entirely. Chan Gailey, it seems to me, was poor at game management and game planning in general. I'd say there is enough talent on this team to win-- I'd rather have the Bills situation than the Jets, for example, or the Cowboys. Getting it on track is the issue, and that isn't something that typically happens in the first season of a new coach's tenure.