SPORTS
The Coaching Tree that wasn’t
Matt Patricia’s firing accentuates the rarity of Bill Belichick’s genius
With the firing of Detroit Lions Head Coach Matt Patricia, it’s time to revisit the coaching tree that wasn’t — that of New England Patriots Head Coach Bill Belichick. As of his hiring in 2000, we have seen twenty years of his former coordinators getting hired and fired as head coaches. As the list grows longer, a deeper dive leaves clues as to why these assignments ended in failure.
Coaching is a uniquely human endeavour with highly variable results. Two plus two rarely equals four in sports. Few NFL head coaches leave a job on their own terms. Superbowl winners like Mike McCarthy can be made to walk the plank.
The NFL is a copycat league in all things. The conventional thinking is that an assistant coach or coordinator from a winning program must have the recipe for the secret winning sauce. The complete dearth of original thought evidenced by this approach to hiring first time head coaches is on public display.
While the tenure of Miami Dolphins Head Coach Brian Flores looks promising, NFL teams should understand by now that hiring Belichick acolytes does not get you a shake and bake version of the Patriot Way. Instead, teams are getting a replaceable part of…
