The Ringer NFL Show - Never Hire a College Coach for the NFL | The Island

Episode Date: October 12, 2022

Welcome to ‘The Island’! Each week a guest tries to persuade Nora Princiotti to agree with an argument they feel strongly about. This week’s guest is The Ringer’s Ben Solak, who argues all the reasons you shouldn’t hire a college coach for the NFL. Will Nora join him on the island, or sail elsewhere? Host: Nora Princiotti Guest: Ben Solak Associate Producer: Stefan Anderson Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal and Conor Nevins Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The time has come to get ready for the 2022 World Cup. And what better way to prepare than by revisiting the World Cup's most amazing goals? I'm Brian Phillips. I'm making a podcast about the history of the men's World Cup, told through the stories of 22 iconic goals. The show's called 22 Goals. It's out now on the Ringer Podcast Network, and we're having so much fun. Hello, I am Nora Pryanti and welcome to the island.

We have a first-time guest this week. It's Benjamin Solac. Ben, welcome to the island. Isn't the island like five weeks old? Is everybody first-time guests? No, we've had a... Stephen. Stephen. Wow.

Stephen, two times in four weeks. Incredible. I'm a little jealous, I'll get over it. Let's be honest. That was a predictable outcome. Yeah. Stephen likes to put himself on islands. The concept of the island.

coming from a Ringer podcast team sets itself fairly well for Stephen Rees is going to be involved. But that's true. We've had a lot of first-time guests. Very excited to get you in the fold, Ben. Without further ado, tell us why you're here. What Island are you on? Yes. I would like to believe a founding member of never hire a college coach again, Ireland.

Coach, you said you listen to everybody, but you never really listen to me. I tried to give my input and it fell on deaf ears. so go wrong. Matt Rule fired this week by the Carolina Panthers after going, what is it, like 11 and 37 or something abysmal over 27, I believe, 11 and 27. Over three seasons of the Carolina Panthers head coach, this after the most recent college to head coach hiring Urban Meyer last season,

didn't even last a full year. And the current odds for next head coach to be fired feature at the top. Cliff Kingsbury, the third most recent NFL coach hired director from the college ranks, which technically, by the way, Cliff was not a college head coach fired to the NFL. He was a fired college head coach, unemployed man, who was then maybe going to be the OC at USC and instead went to Arizona. Right. You know who didn't think that he was a good candidate to coach an NFL team?

Cliff Kingsbury. You know who also didn't think that he was going to be a strong candidate to coach an NFL team? Cliff Kingsbury's agent. It's a tough look for the Arizona Cardinals has been since day one. But when you go and you cycle back through primarily college coaches who have been then hired to the NFL, these are the names you see since 2000. And we'll kind of clarify some of these names as we go through. But Bill O'Brien, Jim Harbaugh, so not the Ravens one, the 49ers one is in Michigan now. Cliff, Matt Rule.

I always get them. It's Jay names. It really is hard. It's important. Jim and John are essentially the same name. Yeah. Think khaki's not fourth down decisions. That's the one.

So Matt Rule, Chip Kelly, Doug Marone, Greg. Greg Shiano, Bobby Petrino, Steve Spurrier, Nick Saban, and Bush Davis. That since 2000. And there are a couple names there that are, like, tricky to figure out, right? Doug Marone, for example, was an offensive line coach for the Jets, an offensive coordinator with the Saints.

And he was the head coach of the Bills after being the head coach of Syracuse. So his first head coaching job was in college, but he also coached a lot in the NFL, right? Greg Chiana was in Tampa. Bill O'Brien was with New England. And so there's a little bit of gray area here, If we generally accept that to be the list,

it's very hard to find a successful coach on that list. You only Super Bowl appearance comes from Parbaugh, who obviously did it with the 49ers. Your only winning seasons, or excuse me, I should say winning records across the course of their careers come from Harbaugh and Chip Kelly, who Chip was winning there,

but also was only league for four years and a lot of the winning comes from there, his first season with Eagles. Bill O'Brien did finish 52 and 48 as well. So Bill O'Brien is your third one, good save. other than that, you have really successful college coaches, Steve Spurrier, Nick Saban, Bobby Petrino, all of whom are really, really bad at the NFL level. You have also, like, kind of a cup of coffee guys, like Greg Shiana was only for a couple of years. Steve Spurrier was a short-term coach as well.

It doesn't feel like this is a tenable approach. And I think there's a number of reasons why. Roster management is so different. The college level, you're getting 100 plus, 150 plus kids into the building, right? You've got your four deep, your red shirt and cats, whereas in the NFL used to be a lot more stringent. with what players are there. And we've seen college coaches typically come to the NFL and start bringing in guys who they know.

Like Matt Rule was just signing everybody from Temple that he could find. Cliff Kingsbury had multiple Texas Tech and Air Raid background wide receivers on his roster because they already knew the offense. Chip Kelly was just bringing in Oregon five stars,

Urban Meyer, Tavon Austin, Tim Tebow, just who were the five stars back around when I was a college head coach? We kind of see these college coaches throw a roster spot at guys that, okay, It's just some dude you know.

And at the college level, that's, you know, less than 1% of your roster. The NFL, that's almost 2% of your active game day roster. It's a huge impact to kind of have a throwaway roster spot. So roster management is a big part of it. The differences in college-to-N-Fel schemes are also a part of it. Even as the NFL becomes more collegiate and they're borrowing stuff from the college level, you can't not adjust at the NFL level year over year, let alone week to week. And we've seen from college coaches who come in, Chip Kelly, who tailed off,

Kingsbury keeps having great start to the seasons, and then things tail off by the end of the season, a stativeness, right, an inertia, and only willingness to become different on offense over the course of a season, over the course of multiple seasons. And then last but not least, I think a big part of this is how you deal with people changes dramatically from the college level to the NFL level. College coaches are kings of their domains, everything the light touches. They run the business. there is no general manager over them who kind of also has a say on how things go.

And you've seen college coaches come to the NFL and immediately try to get some control over personnel, Chip Kelly in Philadelphia, Bill O'Brien and Houston. And those things tanked them really, really quickly. When you're an NFL head coach, you have to be comfortable dealing in a different ecosystem, an ecosystem that has ownership and has a general manager who are much more involved in the day-to-day than you have to deal with at the college level. So that's it. We have different environments.

You have different roster sizes, different personnel that comes in the building, and then also a different onus, a different stress. You do not get North Dakota, central Missouri state when week one. You get the Houston Texans, and even if it's the Houston Texans, as NFLers, board to board, you do not get the cupcakes. You do not get the time to develop the way you want to be offensively. As Urban very famously told Vic Fangio, it's like every week is playing Alabama. Yeah, Urban, that's the point.

All the Alabama players came here and are now in the NFL. That's what happens. This is the next level. And so with the failed college coaches that we've seen recently, the divergence of how NFL and colleges are managed now, like NIL is going to change college dramatically. I don't see a reason why when you sit down as an owner and go, all right, time to hire a head coach,

you would even give a moment's thought to a guy who is primarily a college head coach. Because it just doesn't seem like the juice is worth the school. It doesn't seem like you're going to find a top 20 percentile coach. Maybe you get a 50 percentile guy, but a top 20 percentile, 10 percentile, a game changer, a franchise dude, 10 plus years in the building. We can't find them here on this list. I'm not sure they're ever going to come from the college ranks. Well, so let's, I get why you're saying that that makes sense. That's the take. And it is supported very well by this list of names, right? Because the success level of these guys who follow that path, it's bad. It's very, very bad. And I think choosing

the 21st century sort of as the window to look at this in is smart because if, you know, if you want to start cherry picking the Jimmy Johnson's and whatever, I don't think it makes a lot of sense just because the nature of college coaching in particular I think has changed so much because it's easier for recruits to travel and being away from your family isn't as big of a deal in social media and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So if we accept that as the list, I think what you're saying here is very well supported by the data. but do me a favor and let's flip it. Okay.

Who on that list do you think is the best, is the closest thing to a success story? Is it Harbaugh? I think it's Harbaugh. And Harbaugh, like I said, there's some gray areas on these guys, and Harbaugh doesn't feel like one of them because Harbaugh was pretty much exclusively a college head coach.

He had a cup of coffee with the Raiders, 2002-2003 as a quarterback's coach. Then he was the head coach of San Diego, head coach at Stanford, and hopped up to the NFL level. But we have to remember Harbaugh played in the league for 14 years, long, long, long, long, long time before he started coaching. And when you go and look at some of these other guys, they did not have that amount of time in the NFL. So Harbaugh, and the other one is Pete Carroll, who people bring up Pete Carroll a lot of times as a successful NFL or college to NFL transplant.

Pete's first head coaching job was not in college. It was in the NFL. He was the head coach of the Jets in 1994 and then the head coach of the Patriots, 97 to 99. since 1984. So from 84 to 99, 15 years, Pete Carroll was a coach in the NFL, defensive backs, defense coordinator, and head coach. So, like, Harbaugh and Carol,

their crucibles were not college. That is not where they cut their teeth. I mean, Carol had, like, grad assistant at, you know, Pacific University or whatever the frick, I don't remember. But, like, these guys came up in NFL ranks. They came up in NFL culture. They understood it. And so, like, Harbaugh is your most successful.

But also Harbaugh is not as, like, born and bred college as he appears. And the same thing is true for Carol. What about Chip Kelly? Yeah. You burn bright and then not so much. But there's, again, we're dealing with slim pickings here. And I want to unpack, if anything good came of these guys.

Like, what do you think made that at least a little bit better than the average result here? Yeah. So I think that with Chip, you had a frontiersman at every level he was at. You had a guy who was spurring on evolution. Like, you know, if an NFL, team goes and hires Matt Campbell out of Iowa State tomorrow. Then like, oh, let's use Matt Rule as an example. Matt Rule did a good job turning around Temple.

He got Baylor on the right track. He was a culture resetter, right? He was pulling teams out of the garbage. Okay, great. Like, there's like six of them. You know what I'm saying? Like that, like that's what college coaches do is they hop up to teams that are bad and they try to turn around the recruiting and whatever.

Chip was a guy who was innovating, right? Chip went to the NFL and like changed the way the Eagles were covered, changed the way the Eagles dealt with their bodies and track their health and their rest. He changed the way that college teams thought about tempo and thought about space, right? And that's why you saw the rise that you did from, he was at New Hampshire and then boom, Oregon offensive coordinator, boom, Oregon offensive head coach, right? Like there was a massive series of leap there for Chip because what he was doing was cutting edge.

Like I said, it was a frontiersman. You see that dawn in Philadelphia and you see that kind of immediately work. And then it comes time for the second punch, right? Then it comes time for the, okay, the NFL's kind of figured out what you like to do, right? in 2015, it was last year with the Eagles, and then in 2016, when he was with the 49ers, teams are just sitting on stuff, right? We kind of know what you run.

We know how you get into tempo. Okay, it's third and one. You guys are going to a huddle. This is zone read. It's always zone read. We're on it. You know, there was kind of no development there. That lack of development,

plus then the interpersonal issues that Chip had. Remember, Chip took control of the front office from Howard Rosenen in 2015, was then ousted and went to San Francisco, where Trent Bolkey was, after Trent Balky and Jim Harbaugh had their little snafu, and Harbaugh lost that, right? And so there is a toxicity that kind of followed ship

that I think also tanked his NFL experience more than it could have. But again, that's part of understanding college coaches is when a guy comes up in the NFL crucible, he knows how to play the game. He knows how to behave with his assistance. He knows how to behave with his owner and with his general manager. Critically, he knows how to behave with his players. Right.

These adult men who are multi-billionaires, which are decisively different. than non-multi-billionaire 19-year-olds, which is a huge changing frontier in college now with NIL, which may or may not affect this college NFL pipeline. We don't really know just yet. But the interpersonal relationships are different in the NFL than in the college level.

And I think that you've seen that tank guys like Chip, you saw a tanker guy like Bill O'Brien, where there are issues engaging with the other members that are on their team, the DeAndre Hopkins tradeaways, and the Harry Roseman debates and everything. Yeah, it leads to just toxic situations that owners eventually feel they have to break up. What do you think the Bill O'Brien's story looks like in Houston

if he doesn't have roster control? I think it looks better. I do think that O'Brien had a chance to be an argument for one of the more successful ones. Record-wise, 52 and 48, it feels like 500. But, like, you know, offensively, they were doing good stuff. He brought in a quality, talented quarterbacking Deshaun Watson. Obviously, we then, you know, learned a lot more about Deshaun Watson

the Bill O'Brien era. But at the time, like, the offense was working, they were making it to the playoffs, and they were working around injuries and, like, there were stuff that made them look like a mature NFL team. So without roster control, maybe it stays better. Could you have gotten that with O'Brien? Could that have been the case?

Like, we'll never really know, right? The Rick Smith situation, the previous general manager in Houston, obviously was a bit of a one-of-one because Rick Smith's wife was having health problems and Rick Smith stepped down from the job. That plus the presence of Jack Easterby, again, kind of one-of-one, makes the Houston front office milieu writ large kind of a difficult one to map onto other teams and other circumstances.

So Bill O'Brien is... And ownership that creates sort of a power vacuum, which attracts the people who want to fill a power vacuum, which, you know, there's sort of a little finger vibe to all of that. Yeah. But the thing is that while there's instability in Houston, that leads to questions about O'Brien and kind of his tenure what it could have been. The same thing is true of Harbaugh,

with bulky in San Francisco. The same thing is true. You could even argue Cliff in Arizona. Obviously, they've kind of tried to project stability with their extensions, but things are definitely weird there. NFL head coaches. No. Yeah.

NFL head coaches have to exist in a place of instability. Like, people are calling for Mike Tomlin's job right now. Right. Mike Tomlin. Right. John Harbaugh is coming under heavy fire. John Harbaugh. Andy Reid was fired by the Eagles.

Andy Reid. Right? So you... you can be about as good at this job as anybody in the world not named William Belichick. And if you are, you are still going to be. Don't tell me you don't think there have been this bill on the hot seat takes. Yeah, but to that point, you can be the best NFL coach there is. There is going to be power struggles, politics, dynamics, star players, frustrated, lulls and swells,

that you have to be able to ride. And I think that the more time you've spent in an NFL room as a player, certainly in Harbaugh's case, but generally as a coach, the better you're going to be able to be at identifying the lulls and the swells and saying, I've been here before. I've seen teams go through this. I know the way out. As opposed to the college ranks where I don't think you see that as much, right? Like Ohio State's Ohio State. Right. Bama's Bama.

And then for somebody like, you know, like when Doug Marone gets hired from Syracuse, right? when Rule gets hired from Baylor, when Cliff gets hired from Texas Tech, it's not like, oh, they're Ohio State, their Bama, it's, oh, Texas Tech's better than they usually are. Oh, Syracuse is better than they usually were. That guy must be a good head coach. And I think we can see over some of the names that have been floated but not hired recently, like Matt Campbell at Iowa State, like David Shaw at Stanford, right? Some of these coaches that get NFL run and they don't end up being hired. Well, yeah, they have a good couple of years, and NFL teams believe they're good coaches, they're good culture centers. They don't get hired.

and then over the next couple years, the teams get worse. And that's because it's just very hard to take a non-blue blood program at the college level and actually have sustained success. Right. So if you can't cash in on that two, three-year bump where you got a couple good recruits in and you surprise some guys with scheme

and you were ranked eighth in the AP poll there for a second, then the wave dies down. The thing that I'm curious about is, because it sounds like they're very different jobs. As you just did a good job of explaining, you don't go through the same types of challenges leading a college team that you do at the NFL level. And part of it is just those coaches

don't necessarily come to the NFL ready to be a right kind of political animal that you need to be to command an organization like that. And I actually liked the Matt Rule higher when it happened. I don't remember being like over the moon about it. But I thought it was at least interesting in particular because it just seemed like

he'd been in a situation at Baylor that was chaotic and weird and was going to present a lot of just strange pitches that he was going to have to find some way to navigate. And it seemed like he'd managed to do a good job of it. And when you're hiring someone for a job that just doesn't really have any analogous training position, I felt like, okay, all right, I get it. I get why that might be a guy to take a swing on. Obviously, that didn't work out.

And one of the things that seemed like it was a big-ish, was one of the reasons, you know, the chief one being a seven-year $62 million contract, but one of the reasons that the Panthers were able to get him when other teams like the Giants were trying to get him was giving him control of the 53. And this seems like a very simple and maybe slightly ridiculous question. I don't understand why these guys don't seem to be able to just be like, maybe I shouldn't be involved in personnel. Wouldn't there be some way of somebody with that experience?

Because one of the reasons teams hire from college is because unless you're hiring someone who's had previous head coaching experience in the NFL or, you know, different football league at various times, that is the job where you are the guy, where you are the head coach. And there has to be something for that. Now, obviously, the culture and the way that it all fits together is really, really different. The thing that just like always baffles me every single time is what would happen if one of these guys just came into the NFL, got a head coaching job, and looked in the mirror and said, hey, this is a different sort of challenge. And history tells us that asserting myself in personnel issues isn't the best way to do it. I don't understand. I don't

why every single one of these guys seems insistent on doing that. And I don't understand why owners let them. But do you think that that's do you think that that question which seems simple to me is not reflective

of reality because college coaching is so involved in personnel and recruiting is such a big part of the job that it's almost as if like then what is their experience? Yes. I think that the analogy is too far apart. the similarities are not there.

It's a bridge too far. The line that keeps rattling around in my head is like, where do you get NFL players from? You have to get them from college, right? Jordan Milata aside, the NFL players come from the college ranks. Sure. And accordingly,

there is a mental connection that then is made just naturally, which is, okay, well, where do the NFL coaches come from? Most of them come from the NFL, but some of them can come from college because that's where the college players come from. that sport of college football is similar enough to the NFL sport that we can watch the college players, say those are the good ones,

those are the maybe good ones, those are the bad ones. We'll take those, those good ones, we'd like them over here. And then they come here and they're generally good. And accordingly, our brain then maps that onto college coaches and say, okay, where are the good ones,

where are the bad ones, okay, the good ones, we want those. Let's get those to the NFL level. And that doesn't work. The sport on the field, 11 players moving around, is similar enough to the NFL sport that you can get the players from college to NFL and they map.

Our expectation is met, the good ones are good. We can't do that for college because the coaching responsibility is too different. They are not doing the same job at the college level that they would be asked to do at the NFL level when it comes to head coaching. When it comes like defense backs coach, maybe, yeah. Like you're teaching a guy how to T-step, teaching a guy how to three-step read and cut, you know what I'm saying? Like, you know, read this guy. If he's out now, go, blah, blah. Hey, we can do that at the NFL level.

But the college coach level is where are the five stars? How do I convince them to come? Where are the end of list? Yeah. Where are the genetically enhanced people that are able to play at the highest level? How can I get into their homes? How can I convince their mother that I'll watch out for them? How can I think that that's just that that's what it is.

You're so spot on, but it sounds so much like a science fiction movie. Right. It's very peculiar. But that's what it. That is the, the. Hit in the caboodle. That's the whole of it. How do I get the good ones here? In the NFL, everybody is the good one. Everybody's the five star. And so now it's how do I adjust my schemes to account for what these particular guys do well. How do I get replacements in the building and get them oriented fast enough? So I don't have 150 dudes on the roster. I only have 53 in a practice squad, right? There's the challenge is slipped on its head. At college, I need to get the five stars here. NFL, everybody's a five star. How do I maximize my five stars more than the other? guys maximizing his five stars. It is a different job. And so we are wrong in assuming that we can watch the college coaches. We can watch the college programs and say, those are the good coaches,

those are the bad coaches. I want the good coach here in the NFL. It doesn't map. The neural connection there is lying to us. So that in and of itself, I think, makes hiring the college coaches a moot point, just an empty exercise. And then to your question, well, why can't these college coaches when they make it just say, okay, this is a different job. I have to behave differently. Hubris. These are not humble people. They are the top one percent of a job that 95

bigillion people want in the world. They are world envers. They are 11 wins at Baylor, Matt Rule. They are Cliff Kingsbury. I love the best pass in attack in the nation. We've made fun of these guys. We put fun at these guys. They're not good at the NFL level. They can't win football games. Why are they making these bad decisions? Yada, yada, yada, yada. But in

their world, especially at the moment in which they get the call that they're going to be a head coach, oh yeah. There's nobody better in the world at this job and for this job than they are. That's what it takes to be a headgoat. You have to be a psychopath. You have to believe that you're the best. And so when somebody says, would you like to control the roster, they say, well, obviously, because nobody else in the world could do it better than me. It's hubris. Joe Person from the athletic had a story about just sort of the last 24 hours of Matt Rill in Carolina and what happened. And he had a line

mentioning that Rule got involved in the team's digital media operations. Yeah, got to do it. Don't got to do it. The team's digital media operations needs Matt Rule's insight.

They need his vision for the team, right? Culture, baby. Culture, baby. Okay. So this is the moment in the podcast where I point out that Benjamin Solac is broadcasting into your earballs

in front of his trusty whiteboard on which it says list of good coaches number one Andy Reid number two Bill Belichick but then in parentheses 1999 to 2019

just the last two decades just the last two decades number three me hubris this was a ranking created actually after like the the Harbaugh four-down decision stuff

That's what that bit was, was like, all right, none of these coaches are good at making decisions anymore. These are the only good ones. Me, because I'm on my couch going, go for it, go for it. But it works nicely for our purposes, right? Andy, Bill, and me, none of us were college head coaches before. So obviously we're going to be good at the NFL coaching job. So since that is true, I want your insight into two things.

First of all, I'm going to make you do something you don't want to do. You not only are one of the three good coaches in the NFL, you are now the owner of an NFL team. Congratulations, you have billions of dollars. What I need you to do is not leave the podcast, first of all, which is the objectively right choice for anyone who's just handed billions of dollars. I would get off a podcast immediately. However, that's off the table. If you had to hire a coach from college, you need a coach, he must come from the college game. Are there certain things that you would look for? Like, who is, it can be an individual guy or just a set of traits where it's like,

you have one hand tied behind your back and you absolutely have to do this. What are you looking for? It's cheap, but like NFL experience. I think that you have like a guy like in Carol who not only like he's obviously a very good college NFL coach, but also like Carol feels different. He behaves differently than a lot of NFL coaches do in terms of his like day to day to engagement of the players. Like, you know, he's got such a good energy for his age and kind of you feel like there's a

Like any age. Pete Carroll has so much more energy than I do. Right. And like obviously, John Schneider has control of the roster there. And so he has some understanding of like kind of how it works at the NFL level. And so number one, I'd like a guy who was an NFL coach. I do think like, like, or at least spend enough time in the NFL as a player that he kind of has an understanding of how things are supposed to roll there. I definitely don't just want a culture guy to. I love the success of a culture coach like a Mike Tomlin. I appreciate it. I admire it. It's really cool to see it work. I am not confident in my ability as an individual to identify it, right? I think that like it's a lot easier to figure out, oh, he runs an offense that works as opposed to like, oh, he runs a culture in the building that works. The only way I think you can really see that is if he's somewhere for a long, long time. And that's where I struggle with a guy like Mel Tucker, right? Like Mel Tucker is the current head coach and Mel Tucker is the current coach. He came up in the NFL ranks, right? He came up in the NFL ranks, right? He's a president's a coach, Beard Stevens coordinator. Mel's been a director. He's the president's a coach. Mel's been a around in the NFL. I think Mel could be a good NFL coach. The book on Mel as the one-year

head coach of Colorado and now the past, I want to say three seasons at Michigan State is that he has a really, really good culture. He's a great impact on the guys. That's great. I've heard that for a lot of coaches who are then fired two years later. So I would feel so much better about Mel in like 26 when I've seen Michigan State just like continue to consistently be a team that does things the right way that handles their business. They have good personnel management. they have good, like, disciplinary and pure dimension. Like, that works for me. But, like, I haven't seen that enough from Mel to really, like, say, like, yeah, the culture works.

The other thing is that, and I really used to and urban and rule the last wave of these guys has sort of made me rethink this. I used to feel like if you were going to get someone, get a culture guy, because you have experienced running a program. And I definitely believe that the most important part of being an NFL head coach has to do as sort of being a CEO and being willing to have your. hands in a lot of different areas and understanding how to balance all of that. So I think I fell into the trap of feeling like there could be analogous work.

If you really think about it, that doesn't actually make sense. Because first of all, for all the reasons that you've explained, it's really, really different. But second of all, instituting a good culture is hard anywhere. but in terms of a head coach running a program to his own desires and specifications and getting buy-in, that's the part of the college game where the coach is kind of advantaged. Whereas in the scheme stuff, you don't have all five stars. I mean, you know, maybe you're Alabama, but still, you don't have NFL caliber talent. And that's why we consistently see the college game being the site of a lot of innovation.

Now, if you want to steal that innovation, which teams always do, is a really important part of being smart as an NFL team. It can only last for so long, right? Because you're dealing with NFL talent playing against you. They will figure it out. They will adjust. They will have the talent to deal with it. So you have to be willing,

if you're going to take that stuff, to then be able to pivot from it and not expected to save you for years at a time, right? But if you're looking at someone in college who, you know, is the quote, unquote scheme lord type and is getting more out of less, they actually really are doing that in an environment where they're not just advantaged by having all of the best talent.

Yeah. Whereas when you talk about culture, a college head coach can be a dictator. Like, they can control everything that they want to, and if there's a player who doesn't like it, they can sweep that guy under the rug, and there's four backups who can take the place, and they have levers to pull

that NFL coaches don't have to pull because you might be paying that guy $12 million a year. Exactly. That's why when you were like, I kind of liked the rule higher because it felt like what he did at Baylor was like an impressive pull out of a tailspend.

He was able to do that because he walked in and then everything went the way he decided it would go. Right. Matt Rule ran Baylor. Right. Period. And so Matt Rule knew how to get that done

and he did. That's a great train. That's like people are like, oh, he's going to go back to the college rings and be good, which college has changed and Matt Rule was there. But like maybe, sure.

That at the NFL, you don't, you can't monopolize. You cannot dictate. And accordingly, it's a lot harder to get your culture set unless you are like a Mike Tomlin one of one in terms of like dudes come into your building, experience you and go, I don't want to be anywhere else. I want to learn from, work under and have a relationship with you. And finding those guys, if you can find one and get it right, do it. Go hire them. You're the best. It's tough.

Needle and a haystack. And I, in the hypothetical where I'm running an NFL team, I don't know if I believe in my own ability to identify that guy, any better than I can identify a really good schemer, right? And that's why, like, to me, the name that I would really pursue would be Lincoln Riley. Because not only is like scheming really, really good. And obviously, he had some five stars in Oklahoma. He's certainly got some at USC.

And like, that's going to give you an advantage. Lincoln developed quarterbacks. And scheme is a great thing, but also developing a quarterback. Getting a guy to be better is even better than a scheme. And with Baker, you know, kind of walk on whatever, Tyler, very good recruit, Hertz, quality recruit, but not a good thrower. Like enough guys have gotten a lot better under Lincoln as quarterback position that I'm kind of like, all right, if Lincoln is what I think he is,

I can draft a rookie and he's more likely than other coaches to make that rookie quarterback good. And now I have the rookie contract quarterback, the single greatest thing an NFL team can ever have. Yeah, I'm willing to go down that route and see if I can get that right. So to me, like, I want a culture dude. I like that. But I probably am just going to go for a guy who's scheme, I understand. I see the development on players.

And I'd be a guy like Lincoln Riley. Which, like, look, let's be fair to Matt rule. I think that was a much more disappointing tenure than I ever thought it would be. However, they were desperate for a quarterback. They were grasping at straws the entire time, never found the guy. Who knows what it would have looked like if somehow they had, I think we've seen enough to know that things weren't going great there and that there were a number of problems.

But we have to acknowledge that the quarterback issue is always, it's the triumbrant of coach quarterback GM, right? And the quarterback is probably number one in that list. But even if you're a good coach, if you're missing the other two or even one of the other two, particularly if it's the quarterback, it is really, really hard to tell these things. you want to give me 15 seconds or as many seconds as you want

on how to fix the Carolina Panthers before I will make my final decision about the island. And gave you two seconds. Damico Ryan's. Boom. Yeah. They shouldn't let him back on the plane.

I talked about this on the Monday pod. I did with a Chicago Point taken. But the Carolina Panthers should do a little bit of a fire sale. And they got some big veteran contracts. You can move off of, get some picks because they spent a lot of picks during the rule era. Scott Fitterer kind of knows how to get that done, go for it.

But I wouldn't touch that defense with 10-foot pole. I do it on offense, DJ Moore, Robbie Anderson, Christian McCaffley. Because you can get a really good defense coach in the building. And you can point to Brian Burns, Derek Brown, Shaq Thompson, Jeremy Chin, J.C. Horn, rookie contracts, Cepa Shaq, young players, and say, hey, we can turn this around quick if we get this teamwork in. that defense has the pieces to be like immediately good with a good coordinator.

They were good with Phil Snow. They can be even a step above if you get like a guy like Damico in the building. And you want to launch a rebuild fast, then load up on picks, load up on money, and then show free agents that you have a good unit. Oh, this defense works. You know, we're halfway there and guys will start to come. So you want to turn this around quick. D'Amico, Ryan's.

Are we putting D'Amico on the list of good coaches? have you not had my D'Amico conversation? Oh, no, I know you. I know you love Domingo Rions, but I only see three names up on the whiteboard. Oh, oh, I forgot about the whiteboard. Yeah, this is head coaches. It's head coach.

I don't have enough room. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's not head coach only, Ben. Your name is on there. Three good coaches. I'll add a four and I'll add D'Amico Rhyans, and then it will be comprehensive. All right, all right, a little bit of everything.

Okay. Ben. It feels like you're on the island. Are you trying to, like, brainwash me right now? What? Make an argument for not being on my island. It's a great island. It's a great island.

I'm on the island. Don't do this. Everybody's got to not do this. Now, let's be clear. I do think that hiring a college coach who has NFL experience is fine. But if you hire the next big thing, the quote unquote next big thing from college, we have. Two decades worth of evidence that it basically doesn't work out,

that the best, the absolute best outcome you're hoping for is essentially like a Bill O'Brien situation. Harbaugh, obviously, I think, is the most successful one. I agree with you that it just makes it, it almost seems like he doesn't count just because he would have such an understanding of NFL players. But maybe, maybe that's the other way to do it. You need someone who understands how,

to work with players who are making a lot of money, who are used to being the best, who are only playing other players who are used to being the best. And if that comes from experience, playing in the NFL, fine. If it's coaching in the NFL, I also think that that's fine.

But the pure college only cut your teeth in that kind of environment thing, I just, I think the critical point that you made was we think that it's a good analogy because the players can translate from one to the other. But coaching, that doesn't mean that coaching should be the same thing. So I'm on the island, Ben. Thanks for letting me join you. The water's fine. This is a very exclusionary island. Everybody's invited, except for college coaches. You are not invited. That's the whole

point. The actually, the weirdest thing about this island is why this isn't, like, why this is a spicy thing. When you get down a brass tax, it is not. It shouldn't be. But we like to think that we can figure out

who the good coaches are. And in reality, we can barely get the coordinator hires right. So why are we trying to pull due to the college ranks? It just doesn't make any sense. On that note,

this has been the island on the Ringer NFL show feed. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for Ben. Ben, for welcoming me to your island and for making such a good case for this. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Tropical and nice and friendly, and I expect to be back more often than Stephen in the future. We will be back next week, but for now, Shil Kapady will be up next on the feed tomorrow, going in depth on NFL news on The Scramble. Thank you to Stefan Anderson for production on this episode and to Conorne Evans and Arjuna Ramgapal for additional production, supervision.