I brought up the following head coach rating system in another post. 2socks mentioned it might make a fun topic, so here is my explanation. Tell me what you think. What would you change? Head Coach Grading System - use grades A+ through F for each category - 50% the staff assembled and retained - 25% quality of the game plan assembled week to week - 20% handling of the players - 5% decisions during the game. Assembling a top notch staff is the most important job of a head coach. The staff has a profound impact upon the development of players and upon developing a game plan that maximizes players opportunity to excel. This is the reason it is half of my grade. The 25 percent grade for grading comes from my recognition that Andy Reid and The hooded one are great coaches that develop consistently great game plans. They help their staffs identify weaknesses in the opponent and customize comprehensive game plans. It is an aspect of how well they lead their organization. This probably where I graded Philbin too high. Managing employees is a time consuming skill. Each person is different, and maximizing each person's talent requires custom approaches that do not shake the overall foundation of your organizations culture. It is definitely an art. I believe Philbin is unfairly judged in this area, but I admit I may have inflated the grade here a little bit. I do care about game time decisions, but I believe most fans and analyst ludicrously inflate its importance. That is why it receives only 5% of the grade. Finally, I do understand that I have not accounted for player evaluations that support the GM. I did mention it is not a mature grading system.
The key for a HC is the establishment of the winning system, for us. That's what great organization have, Steelers, Packers, Ravens, Pats. Sometimes it comes from the HC, sometimes it comes form the GM. For us, it comes from the HC, and we got it, the winning system, thanks to Joe Philbin. I pity teams like Bills, Niners, Panthers, with great GMs who are struggling to establish a system because coaches are terrible. You look at those rosters with Dareus, Mario Williams, premium talent all over the field, and they can't find a way because they have no better than a Tony Sparano, just a coach on the sideline.
We have a WCO passing system, it's completely new to the Dolphins, we've never had it before. So that playbook and offense is from scratch. For that passing system, we need a QB, we had no QB for over decade. We got that. That QB had to be developed, not only to play in the system but to play against NFL defenses and fronts. We got that. Personnel development around him on offense. Olinemen, like Dallas Thomas and Jason Fox, Satele, off the street, have to come in to block against SB contending D. We got that. They are ready and they plug in. Receivers have to be trained. No problem, we got that that. Any receiver who comes in performs. Personnel, needed to be revamp to be faster so they can play faster for that system. We got that, they resemble Packers personnel. This is a coaching process that takes place year around, and needed to be revamped to give us a chance to turn the corner from the NFL armpit we were in. And Joe did it. This is monumental work. From choosing staff, players, establish scouting approach, revamping playbooks, training on the field, to the finished product, and all that in a franchise that had nothing going for them.
The only specific thing you identified was a WCO passing scheme. I'm not sure thats really anything all that valuable. The rest is really just identifying the basic things any football team does. That does not equate to any form of a system.
Given the lively debate about Philbin's decision making when acquiring staff, I am proposing the following modification. Head Coach Grading System - use grades A+ through F for each category - 30% Retaining coaching staff and staff functions well together - 20% Upgrading the staff and acquiring top notch coaching talent - 25% quality of the game plan assembled week to week - 20% handling of the players - 5% decisions during the game. The debate is related to the 20% Upgrading the staff and acquiring top notch coaching talent. The interesting debate has convinced me that this aspect needs to be broken into its own category. I have seen manager and head coaches destroy a good staff when their management style was dysfunctional. At a minimum, a coach deserves some credit for working well with an existing staff or working well with a coach they should not be credited with hiring.
I agree this is an important aspect of handling players. I am considering how to integrate your feedback.
