The New Coach Bump? A look at the chances of success for the 7 new Head Coaches

Will any of this year's new head coaches enjoy the success Coach Boone did in his first season?

Hope springs anew in 7 NFL cities this fall.  Fans in Jacksonville, Kansas City, Miami, St. Louis, Tampa Bay, Oakland, and Indianapolis are convinced that their new coach is the one to lead them to a Lombardi Trophy or, at the very least, that he has to be better than that clown they just fired.  But are these new coaches any more likely to see success than their predecessors?

After the jump, a look at how the 65 first-year head coaches since 2002 have fared in their first season, and what it means for the 7 teams who made coaching changes for this season.

Our main metric for assessing coaches in their first year will be how much their team improves (or regresses) from the previous year.  So we would regard a coach that takes a team from 5-11 to 8-8 as a +3, and a coach whose team drops from 10-6 to 9-7 as a -1.  Using this metric, we assessed all 64 first-year head coaches who took the helms of a non-expansion team since 2002.  Some key observations:

1. On average, teams with new coaches improve 1.5 games from the previous season.  And the average isn't skewed by just a few teams, either.  42 out of 64 coaches (66%) lifted their teams records in their first seasons, while only 18 (28%) saw their records decline.  This probably stands to reason, as teams who change coaches typically aren't very good the previous season.  Regardless, it seems like a trend worth exploring.

The best performances since 2002?

Best Single-Season Turnarounds for First-Year Head Coaches

	Year	Coach	Team	Record in Coach’s 1st Season	Record in Team’s Previous Season	Games Improved
1	2008	Tony Sparano	Dolphins	11-5	1-15	10
T2	2006	Sean Payton	Saints	10-6	3-13	7
T2	2008	Mike Smith	Falcons	11-15	4-12	7
T2	2011	Jim Harbaugh	Niners	13-3	6-10	7
T5	2002	John Fox	Panthers	7-9	1-15	6
T5	2003	Marvin Lewis	Bengals	8-8	2-14	6
T5	2004	Jim Mora Jr.	Falcons	11-5	5-11	6
T5	2006	Eric Mangini	Jets	10-6	4-12	6
T5	2008	John Harbaugh	Ravens	11-5	5-11	6
T10	2003	Bill Parcells	Cowboys	10-6	5-11	5
T10	2005	Nick Saban	Dolphins	9-7	4-12	5

Incidentally, each of the 7 teams with new coaches were .500 or below last year.  That's obviously pretty common for a coaching change -- only 12 teams who switched coaches were over .500, and only 4 improved.  Which means teams that were .500 and below improved at an even higher rate (73%, or 38 of 52), making the outlook even brighter for the 7 teams who switched coaches.

What are some common characteristics of successful coaches in their first year with a new team?  We broke new coaches into 4 buckets based on their most recent job:

1. NFL coach
2. Assistant promoted from within
3. College coach
4. Assistant from another team

The results:

Previous Job	# of Coaches	# of Seasons Improved	Average Games Improved	Variance of Games Improved	Median of Games Improved
Assistant,  different team	35	22 (63%)	1.86	12.48	2
Head Coach	11	9 (82%)	1.82	4.16	2
College Coach  (head or assistant)	7	4 (57%)	1.29	14.90	2
Assistant,  same team	11	7 (64%)	0.18	6.56	1
All	64	42 (66%)	1.50	10.25	2

Our 7 new head coaches represent all 4 buckets:

- Jeff Fisher (Rams) was most recently a head coach with the Titans.
- Greg Schiano joins the Bucs from Rutgers
- Romeo Crennel was promoted from defensive coordinator / interim head coach to head coach of the Chiefs
- Mike Mularkey (Jags),  Joe Philbin (Dolphins), Dennis Allen (Raiders), and Chuck Pagano (Colts) were most recently coordinators with other teams.

Some takeaways:


2.  Previous NFL head coaches seem to be the safest bet.  11 times, teams hired coaches whose most recent job was that of NFL head coach.  9 out of 11 times, the hire paid off, with an average improvement of 1.8 games (vs. 1.5 for new coaches at large).

New Coaches Since 2002 who were most recently NFL Head Coaches

	Year	Coach	Team	Record in Coach’s 1st Season	Record in Team’s Previous Season	Games Improved
1	2003	Bill Parcells	Cowboys	10-6	5-11	+5
2	2002	Tony Dungy	Colts	10-6	6-10	+4
T3	2002	Marty Schottenheimer	Chargers	8-8	5-11	+3
T3	2002	Jon Gruden	Bucs	12-4	9-7	+3
T5	2003	Steve Mariucci	Lions	5-11	3-13	+2
T5	2004	Tom Coughlin	Giants	6-10	4-12	+2
T5	2004	Dennis Green	Cardinals	6-10	4-12	+2
T8	2004	Joe Gibbs	Redskins	6-10	5-11	+1
T8	2009	Eric Mangini	Browns	5-11	4-12	+1
10	2006	Herm Edwards	Chiefs	9-7	10-6	-1
11	2006	Art Shell	Raiders	2-14	4-12	-2
		Average		7.2-8.8	5.4-10.6	+1.8

Notably, if you take the coaches who were brought back out of retirement to coach teams they had coached in the past (Art Shell and Joe Gibbs), the average improvement goes up from 1.8 games to 2.3 games.

This bodes especially well for the Rams and new coach Jeff Fisher, the only new coach who was most recently head coach of another team.  The Rams went 2-14 last season but, to their credit, were really more of a 3-win team.  It stands to reason that Fisher could push them from the NFL cellar into the realm of mediocrity.

If Coach Fisher could morph into Peyton Manning, we might like the Rams chances this season even more

3. Promoting from within typically works for a few games' improvement, but no more than that.  11 times since 2002, teams have promoted an assistant to fill their head coaching vacancy.  More times than not, it's worked, but not as frequently as getting a previous head coach and never for more than a 3 game improvement.  In the case of resuscitating a team from a rough season, it seems that continuity can be helpful, but not as much as change.

New Coaches Hired from Within Since 2002

	Year	Coach	Team	Record in Coach’s 1st Season	Record in Team’s Previous Season	Games Improved
1	2011	Mike Munchak	Titans	9-7	6-10	3
T2	2009	Jim Caldwell	Colts	14-2	12-4	2
T2	2009	Jason Garrett	Cowboys	8-8	6-10	2
T4	2002	Bill Callahan	Raiders	11-5	10-6	1
T4	2002	Mike Tice	Vikings	6-10	5-11	1
T4	2009	Mike Singletary	Niners	8-8	7-9	1
T4	2009	Jim Mora, Jr.	Seahawks	5-11	4-12	1
T8	2009	Tom Cable	Raiders	5-11	5-11	0
T8	2011	Hue Jackson	Raiders	8-8	8-8	0
10	2011	Leslie Frazier	Vikings	3-13	6-10	-3
11	2009	Raheem Morris	Bucs	3-13	9-7	-6
		Average		7.3-8.7	7.1-8.9	+0.2

The performance here really isn't as bad as the average suggests, as Raheem Morris' first year with the Bucs skews it significantly to the downside.  9 out of 11 coaches who were promoted from within did at least as well as their teams did the previous year.  But only 3 out of the 11 improved by 2 games or more.  Bad news for the Chiefs and former defensive coordinator and interim head coach Romeo Crennel, who, by looking at this set of historical precedents, not to mention their "expected" performance last season, look unlikely to break .500 next season.

(Note: Crennel is obviously also a former head coach.  Although this analysis looked at a coach's most recent job, Crennel's former coaching experience may provide him with a bit of a bump.

4. College coaches are more rare, and they typically "shake things up," one way or another.  We've only seen 7 coaches from the college ranks (head or assistant coaches), but when we have, the results have been high-variance:

New Coaches Hired from College Since 2002

	Year	Coach	Team	Record in Coach’s 1st Season	Record in Team’s Previous Season	Games Improved
1	2011	Jim Harbaugh	Niners	13-3	6-10	7
2	2005	Nick Saban	Dolphins	9-7	4-12	5
3	2007	Lane Kiffin	Raiders	4-12	2-14	2
4	2010	Pete Carroll	Seahawks	7-9	5-11	2
5	2002	Steve Spurrier	Redskins	7-9	8-8	-1
T6	2003	Dennis Erickson	Niners	7-9	10-6	-3
T6	2007	Bobby Petrino	Falcons	4-12	7-9	-3
		Average		7.3-8.7	6.0-10.0	+1.3

Small sample size here, but the average jump (positive or negative) is 3.3 games.  Keep in mind that, from year-to-year, about half of teams are within +/- 2 games of their previous season.  So for Greg Schiano and the Bucs, it could be boom or bust.  And at 4-12 last year, the Bucs don't have a whole lot of room to get worse.

5. Assistants from other teams typically improve the most in their first season, but with a high amount of variance.


On average, assistants from other teams improved by 1.9 games in their first year.  The best and worst cases are pretty pronounced here, from Tony Sparano (+10) to Cam Cameron (-7) (incidentally, both with the Dolphins).  We won't print the whole list here, but you do see a fair amount of variance in performance -- not quite that of college coaches, but far more than head coaches and "promoted-from-within" assistants.  A third of the time, these coaches see 3 or more games' improvement, but another third of the time, they regress from the previous season.  All of which means that Mike Mularkey (Jags),  Joe Philbin (Dolphins), Dennis Allen (Raiders), and Chuck Pagano (Colts) look like high-risk, high-reward hires.

Note: We honestly had no idea what to do with the Saints.  Technically, they should qualify as "promoting from within" but it's such a special situation that we chose not to place them in one of our buckets above.

Think we're crazy?  Think we're brilliant?  Tell us in the comments!

Like us on Facebook at facebook.com/backupquarterbackblog
Follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/TheBackupQB

Idea for a post?  Email backupquarterback@gmail.com