John Madden may not have lasted ten years in the current environment for National Football League head coaches. Madden was the first NFL coach to win 100 games in his first ten years in the role. He won a Super Bowl to complete the 1976 season and retired by his own decision after the 1978 season.
While Madden led the Silver and Black to one Super Bowl, a win over the Minnesota Vikings in Roman Numeral XI, he also lost five American Football Conference Championship games, four before his lone Super Bowl victory. In the past couple weeks, we have seen head coaches with similar credentials either fired or, like Madden, decide to retire.
Mike Tomlin never suffered a losing season in 19 years with the Steelers and led his team to a pair of Super Bowls. He beat the Arizona Cardinals in Super Bowl XLIII and lost to the Green Bay Packers two years later. He didn’t match his early success in leading Pittsburgh to Super Bowls, both gained in his first five years on the job, and in more recent times the Steelers have been a punching bag for opponents in the postseason.
Tomlin lost his last seven postseason games and has a career record of eight wins and a dozen losses in the playoffs. He was feeling heat this year from the media and fans, and perhaps the front office too. That can be based on the fact that team owner Art Rooney was quick to state at the press conference following Tomlin’s announcement that no coach on his current staff was being considered for the head coaching position.
The loss of 19-year veteran Tomlin was nearly matched when the Baltimore Ravens fired John Harbaugh after 18 years on the job. Like Tomlin, Harbaugh had one Super Bowl win to his credit during his tenure with the Ravens. Baltimore beat the San Francisco 49ers to complete the 2012 season. This year, the Ravens started poorly based on whatever goes wrong with a team and numerous injuries while winning only one of their first six games. Then Baltimore got flashes of brilliance enroute to earning a shot at their division title in a road game against the Steelers on the final day of the regular season.
In that contest, a last play of the game field goal sailed wide right, and the Ravens two-point defeat gave Tomlin and his Steelers a one-week reprieve while the Ravens fired Harbaugh soon after the loss.
Okay, the AFC dismisses two highly regarded NFL head coaches with a combined 37 years of experience on the job and respect throughout the league … but the most shocking dismissal was still to come.
That happened on Monday when the Buffalo Bills gave Sean McDermott his pink slip. His firing was also in the wake of a close loss, like Harbaugh, when the Bills were eliminated at Denver in overtime.
Coaches can be fired for a variety of reasons. When a dismissal seems totally out of alignment with the results on the field, one has to dig deeper for a reason. One of my favorite coaches and people I ever had the pleasure of knowing, Marty Schottenheimer, may be the best coach ever to never lead his team to a Super Bowl.
Perhaps his best chance was in 2006 with the San Diego Chargers. He guided that team to their best ever franchise regular season record, 14-2, earning the top seed in the AFC. If their defender would have simply gotten down with the interception instead of trying to return it in the waning minutes of a Divisional Playoff Game the Chargers would have hosted the AFC Championship Game against the Indianapolis Colts.
Instead, the defender tried to return what could have been the game-ending interception, was stripped of the ball, and the Patriots recovered to give Tom Brady one more chance to win the game. Everyone knows Brady did just fine with one chance, give him a second chance and you can start rehearsing your postgame excuses.
The Chargers lost that game, but this was arguably the best team in football that year with a coach the players loved, respected and played hard for. But he was out after that game.
Why?
“Couldn’t get along with A.J. Simith,” Schottenheimer told me of his rocky relationship with the team’s general manager.
Bright ownership may have replaced the general manager, but he was left in place to lead the Chargers out of prominence while Schottenheimer never coached in the NFL again.
Does a team forget what they had before they get rid of a coach as good as McDermott?
The eight head coaches to hold that position before McDermott in Buffalo had a combined 104 and 152 won/loss mark and none of them ended their tenures with a winning record. In nine seasons, McDermott was 93-47, led the Bills to eight postseason wins in 16 games and was close, but didn’t get the Bills over the hump, to advance to their first Super Bowl since losing four straight beginning in 1990.
In recent years, the Kansas City Chiefs were their primary obstacle, as Patrick Mahomes has a perfect 4-0 postseason record against the Bills formidable QB, Josh Allen. This year, with both Mahomes and Lamar Jackson not in the postseason, the door seemed ajar for Allen to lead the Bills to their first Super Bowl since the 1993 season. But the surprise assent of the New England Patriots relegated the Bills to a second-place finish and after winning in the Wild Card round lost that overtime nailbiter last Saturday in Denver.
Reason to fire their coach?
We don’t know what went on behind closed doors in Buffalo, but there was no outward indication that McDermott’s dismissal was either expected or warranted.
What they had was eight straight coaches with losing records, and after getting one that won nearly twice as many games as he lost, they fired him.
Go figure.
Or, as Bum Phillips once said about NFL head coaches, “There's two kinds of coaches, them that's fired and them that's gonna be fired.”