The Trend of Less Experienced Coaches in the NFL

Head coaches in the NFL are starting to become less experienced. Now that doesn’t mean they are losing their knowledge of football, it’s due to the average years of experience for NFL coaches has gotten smaller.

If you pay attention to sports news, it’s pretty well known that head coaches can have very short tenures based on how well the team they are coaching performs. Their behavior on and off the field plays just as much of a role in determining if they keep their job.

Former Jacksonville Jaguars head coach, Urban Meyer, was fired after week fourteen of the 2021 NFL season. During his time there he had multiple conflicts with players, and after a loss during week four, a video went viral of him dancing at a bar with a young woman who was not his wife. This came after the unorthodox behavior of not taking the plane ride home with his team after their loss that week.

The job of head coach in the NFL is considered very stressful and many factors come into play with determining if one can stay in the league as a head coach. The current average years of experience for head coaches coming into the 2022 season is 5.78. This number is pulled up by eight of those coaches having over 10 years of experience, and two of those eight having over 20 years of experience, those two being Andy Reid and Bill Belichick. The average is being pulled down by the other 24 coaches having less than 10 years of experience, with five of them having only five years of experience, and the other 19 having less than 5 years of experience. All of this coming from ESPN’s page on NFL head coaches.

With the 2022 NFL season almost here, there are currently six head coaches with no head coaching experience. There is Matt Eberflus of the Chicago Bears, Nathaniel Hackett of the Denver Broncos, Mike McDaniel of the Miami Dolphins, Kevin O’Connell of the Minnesota Vikings, Dennis Allen of the New Orleans Saints, and Brian Daboll of the New York Giants.

My First Post

What you can expect from my writing in these blog posts are mostly going to be opinion pieces. Unless I have a clear goal for a story I want to research, interview, and write about, I will probably stick to writing my opinions here. I’m not looking to only write op eds in my career, I just find them easier to quickly publish, compared to a news/investigative story. I want to keep my well thought out pieces on my writing samples page.

I tend to have a lot of thoughts that go through my head each day, and instead of just writing them down somewhere, why not share them in a blog. I hope that if you look through my blog posts as they go out, you can see my writing start to improve. I have a lot to write about, but making sure it’s coherent, organized, and interesting to read is still something I am working to get better at. I don’t think you ever truly perfect that, even the masters of writing can still improve. Whether you are a journalist, reporter, author, or any other writing job, you can always improve your skills. Some might think of that as frustrating, but always being able to improve and push your limits can be seen as a great thing. With enough work and creativity, it’s possible that a writer’s work doesn’t ever stagnate and/or plateau.

This leads me into another thought I have had about getting better, and even being considered the greatest of all time, or now commonly referred to as a GOAT. I completely agree with the sentiment that there have been people in many different areas of expertise to be considered GOATs. What I disagree with is that then those people are considered unobtainable, that they are GOATs up until now and no one else could surpass them.

Sports is one of the few fields where you can measure accomplishments, and for the most part, objectively agree on a GOAT. Michael Jordan is heavily agreed upon as the GOAT of the NBA, and basketball as a whole. There is a reason why almost everyone knows his name. I think it’s small minded to then think no one will surpass him, I believe that another player will eventually come along and break all of his records. People will then bring up his influence and how he changed the game, which is a good point, but a separate argument all together. In my opinion, being the greatest of all time, and the most influential of all time are not mutually exclusive.

That’s what I have to say for now, I hope you enjoyed this first blog post of mine.