NFL
By: Rick O’Donnell
Another week of losses, and another coach is named to be fired by fans. No matter how much a coach has won for a team, fans are outraged and want the head coach fired if their team isn’t in a position to win the Super Bowl that season. There have been names that have been added to that list and rightfully so. However, seeing names such as Sean McDermott, Mike Tomlin, or even Andy Reid on that list is ridiculous. Teams with an embarrassment of riches who are still in the hunt calling for their head coach to be fired is laughable.
Don Shula coached the Miami Dolphins to two Super Bowls and led the charge on the only undefeated season in NFL history. With that being said, today’s fans would be calling for him to be fired after his first 6-8 season with the team (1976). By that time, Shula was in his 14th season, had never had a losing season, won an AFC Championship, and 2 Super Bowls. Today’s fans would be calling for his head. True, he may not have won a Super Bowl after that, but he’d go on to coach 18/19 seasons without a losing record, two more AFC championships, and go down as the winningest coach in NFL history. They’d want him fired.
That’s how you know your team hasn’t been bad long enough. You don’t get how hard it is to find the perfect pairing of coaches, GMs, and leadership for a team. There are 32 teams in the NFL, 31 of them go home losers every season. Just because the team doesn’t have a highlight reel week in and week out, doesn’t mean good coaches should be fired. Do you really want NFL teams to hit the reset button because you’ve gone a few years without being in the Super Bowl? This isn’t baseball where the Yankees can buy their way to a championship.
Good teams will have bad seasons, contracts only last so long, and injuries happen. There’s always next year. If you want to have a fire sale every time your team isn’t the top in the sport, good luck ever getting back to the top of the NFL. Yes, good coaches can have bad years. Speaking of Andy Reid, he had the Philadelphia Eagles fighting every year to be contenders, he wasn’t getting them over the hump, so they fired him, he’d go on to win many Super Bowls with the Chiefs and build a dynasty. Good coaches don’t need to be fired, they just need better decisions made around them.
