(12-08-2022, 12:44 PM)msqueri Wrote: I think you are extremely wrong and it mainly boils down to your misapprehension with regard to #1. NFL head coaches translate spectacularly to college, or at least as well as any cohort of candidate. There of course will always be inherent uncertainty, fit issues, season of life issues, and so forth. No such thing as a sure thing. But somebody like Jason Garrett is MUCH more of a sure thing than somebody like Troy Taylor or Brent Brennan, and the most basic reason is that you are wrong NFL doesn't translate to college.
Those who can even get to mediocre in the men's league find it child's play to exceed their NFL success in college. For every Lovie Smith who fails in college, there's Pete Carroll, Jim Mora, Chip Kelly, Matt Rhule, Butch Davis, Steve Spurrier, and Rich Brooks who find college much easier. Because it is. When you have the street cred of having been an NFL head coach, the cachet you have in living rooms on the recruiting trail is indescribable. The rolodex (and name recognition that draws people to you) you can leverage in building a staff far outstrips your competitors. The egos you have to deal with seem quaint. The game day and Xs and Os machinations are like Neo operating in the matrix.
Those who think a coach's level of success in the NFL even comes close to approximating his upside in college don't understand the difference between the men's league and college. Look at Carroll. Or Saban. Or Mora. Or....ummm just about everybody.
Well, I think it's you who are wrong, but it's worth breaking down the reasons why. It's worth noting that most of the pro-Garrett arguments on this thread are premised on a very strong version of NFL superiority -- that you can take a pretty average NFL coach (which is what Garrett's .556 record and mediocre offensive coordination jobs say he is) and that person will easily exceed their college success. But that's unsupported by either the empirical record or indeed basic logic.
Let's take the empirical record. Take Jim Mora, the last example on your list. Another average NFL coach -- .476 record. In college? His .605 record as a Bruin is barely above UCLA's historical .579 winning percentage. Or take Pete Carroll, the example that's third-to-last on your list. His college record barely needs elucidating, but then again he's .593 as an NFL coach with a Super Bowl ring. I think the most natural reading of the evidence is that a pretty good NFL coach turned out to be an all-timer college football coach (albeit nearly twenty years ago. Pin that point.)
"That's exactly my point," an NFL supremacist might say. Well, it's also
exactly mine. Insofar as Pete's a good, not great, NFL coach, it's for specific reasons: he's pretty good defensive coach with some antediluvian offensive tastes. But NFL rewards specific qualities and doesn't some specific others. Would you say, in general, NFL coaches have sparkling personalities? The answer, of course, is no. Pete is a charismatic guy -- a quality college tends to handsomely reward. And he also hires very well.
Not an accident at least four head coaches -- one of whom won a CFB national championship -- emerged from his USC staff. But that's the benefit of going from the NFL (generally a parity-driven culture, with some semi-exceptions. Again, pin this point) to one of the primo college jobs. Carroll went from a culture that doesn't necessarily reward all of his strengths to a spot that lavishly prizes his strengths.
It's also worth noting that Carroll -- the example literally everyone brings up first when discussing pro-to-college transition -- is like a decade-old example at this point. Anyone who watches a lot of football on both Saturdays and Sundays these days is struck by one thing: these offenses run by Pat Mahomes and Lamar Jackson these days...look awfully similar to the offenses we were watching in college in 2017. It's not a secret to anyone seriously reading press coverage or following the sport that intellectual ideas travel from college to the pros -- not the opposite direction. Of course, pros have their advantages and rigors, but it's hardly the case that the big braniacs in the NFL are running rings around the college yokels. Just the opposite.
So let's turn from the empirical record -- considerably more mixed than you present -- to basic logic. It doesn't follow that just because an arbitrary group is good at something that individual members are good at something. A venture capitalist might be pretty successful at investing in "college dropouts" before writing a big check on this Elizabeth Holmes character.
Garrett is no Elizabeth Holmes, of course, but it's nevertheless worth considering
Jason Garrett, specifically, and why
Jason Garrett, specifically, would be good at coaching
specifically, Stanford University. How did Jason Garrett get jobs? Well, in Dallas, he rather famously knew Jerry Jones through his dad. With the New York Giants, the owner foisted him upon a new coach. (The coach wanted to fire Jason Garrett four games into his first season, reportedly. Perhaps not coincidentally the Giants' QB been slightly-above-average when not under Garrett's care and below-average when he is.) To be fair, managing upwards might be a helpful quality in getting transfer, NIL, etc., rules changed.
Then it's worth considering the specific situations Garrett's moving from. He's not an NFL coach; he's a former Dallas Cowboys coach. He won't be a college coach; he'll be a Stanford University coach. That is, Garrett will be moving from
possibly the richest and most aggressive sports organization in the planet to Stanford. Under Jones, Garrett benefitted from an owner who's willing to pay $3 million a year for an assistant. Garrett used that generosity to hire, so far as I can tell, exactly one future head coach -- Derek Dooley. At Stanford, with fewer resources, will he be able to hire better or worse?
In the NFL, Garrett enjoyed a reputation of predictable offenses -- especially an inability to get the plays in on-time -- poor special teams, poor game-management. Most of these qualities annoyed Stanford fans about Shaw. (Well, except for special teams.)
It's also fair to question his cachet. I concede some recruits may find the mere fact of an NFL resume to be appealing. But reputations are two-edged. A Texan recruit has likely heard for most of his boyhood that Garrett is a brobdingnagian moron. Garrett doesn't enjoy a strong reputation among Cowboys fans (or really any other fans).
So even if you have strongly-held NFL supremacist views, you have to concede that there's variation. And once you concede that point, there's little reason to believe Jason Garrett, specifically, is a wonderful fit for Stanford or the college game generally. I think the most likely outcome of a Garrett hire is a Jerod Haase-type tenure.
