Sports: Is It Coaching or Talent

 What wins in team sports?  Is it coaching, is it talent?  Is it both?  This of course is the ever unknown question.  How good would Michael Jordan have been with a different coach and how good would Phil Jackson have been without Michael Jordan?  I don't know.  We'll never know.  It's not just having him on the roster, it's also how much you learn as a coach having a player like Jordan.  Same for the player who has a coach who is a good teacher.  

There are some great examples right now of this in the NFL and it's interesting to watch. Let's look at a few teams and how they are handling young quarterbacks.  

 

Washington Football Team:  With rookie quarterbacks you never really know what you are going to get.   The bust rate is high, even for first round picks and so you want to bring in an offensive coach, if you are a defensive head coach, that you believe can get the most out of your young QB and teach them.  Dan Quinn chose to go with Kliff Kingsbury.  Kingsbury is an interesting guy.  He's never been greatly successful at any level.  Famously he was 13-19 with Patrick Mahomes as his college quarterback.  That success led to him getting the head coaching job of the Arizona Cardinals in the NFL to coach up their rookie QB Kyler Murrary.  Murray would flash greatness and the Cardinals at times looked like a contender, but every year things would fall apart down the stretch and soon Kingsbury was gone and no one knew what would happen with Murray.  Kingsbury would hang with USC for a year and then get the nod to be the coach for rookie QB Jayden Daniels.  

There are two ways to look at the Kingsbury hire.  

One is to look at the success he had with Murray, an undersized QB in Arizona, and give Kingsbury credit for bringing his young star along and getting them all the way to an 11 win season and getting talk of Murray as an MVP.  This means Kingsbury should be a good fit for Daniels.  And though Kingsbury's offense may have limits we will get a good idea as to how good Danels can be. 

The other is to look at his success with Murray and walk away thinking that was almost all Kyler Murray and very little Kliff Kingsbury.  There were many people covering the NFL who said repeatedly that Kingsbury's offense did nothing to help Murray.  That essentially his offensive coaching was to toss the ball on the field and say go get em boys.  There are a lot of people covering the NFL today who argue that for almost all QBs, especially young QBs, they need a coach who can give their QB answers and solutions that fit that QBs strengths.  They did not think Kingsbury was a good pick for the WFT.  

This weekend left us with two interesting data points.  The first one being that the WFT had 425 yards of total offense and that Daniels was 23/29 for 226 yds.  The second one that Kyler Murray was 17/21 for 266yds and 3TDs.  Why does Murray matter you may ask.  Well it is because if you watch the film on Kyler Murray he was amazing in the Cardinals game.  Making great decisions, showing off his amazing arm talent, and hitting all the easy passes he had to make.  Games like this help to confirm what many people have thought about Murray that he is an exceptional talent.  That with better offense scheme around him, he may be an even better quarterback than what he's been.  In a way this is a strike against Kingsbury, though you could easily argue that without Kingsbury teaching Murray early in his career he wouldn't be where he is today.  The Daniels numbers are trickier.  I can point you to people who will happily tell you these numbers had way more to do with a horrible defense and Jayden Daniels than it did with Kliff Kingsbury but the numbers are the numbers.  They put up over 400 yards of offense, Daniels had a high completion percentage.  The team ran the ball very effectively in support of Daniels.  At some point the numbers speak for themselves.  

And this is where the difficulty lies in this idea of trying to determine is it the coach or the talent.  Here's how I'm trying to look at it.  If the football people are correct about Kingsbury and he runs a very simple offense and his coaching is, "go win," and Daniels can be successful then that means Daniels is probably talented enough to make it in the NFL.  We may never know his ceiling with a coach like that, but we do know he's good enough.  With  solid running game, which they also had in Arizona, and a good game plan maybe that is enough.  He's not teaching Daniels bad habits, he's obviously not affecting his believe in himself, so maybe that's enough and maybe regardless of how things go over these 2 or 3 years we see that as a success.  As much as people complained about the Greg Roman offense with Lamar Jackson I don't think you can say that they weren't successful years together.

Maybe in the end what we can say is the as of now Kliff Kingsbury appears to be a safe pick for bringing along your young quarterback, though you may have to move away from him when your QB hits a development ceiling.  

 

Chicago Bears:   The Bears took a little different approach and hired an offensive coordinator from a team that revived an older QBs career.  That would be Shane Waldron. Waldron has had a long career moving through the ranks until he landed the offensive coordinator job with Seattle.  That first year for Waldron was Russel Wilson's last in Seattle.  It did not go well.  Most of that was placed on Wilson.  The next year the offense exploded with Geno Smith at quarterback.  He had good offenses the last two years with Smith revitalizing his career.  

When Waldron became available after the coaching changes in Seattle he became an attractive candidate and was hired by the Bears.  At least one football person I follow became a bit skeptical after they went back and watched film from the last two years of the Seahawks.  Their concern was that the offense worked because Geno Smith was actually playing at an incredibly high level and they were concerned that this approach would not necessarily translate to a rookie QB.  

So far, I would say their concerns appear to be correct.  Caleb Williams has not looked very good in these first two games and many people are starting to question whether Waldron's success in Seattle was him or Geno Smith.  Geno has looked great these first two games of the season.  

Carolina Panthers:  When the Panthers signed Bryce Young to be their quarterback they had in place what many people thought was the perfect brain trust for any new rookie quarterback.  It didn't take long for that to all fall apart.  Young was struggling, the team looked bad and all of this fell on the head coach.  He was fired after week 11 and the next move was to find a guy who was going to fix Bryce Young.  

This is how we get to Dave Canales and another connection with Geno Smith.  Canales was the quarterbacks coach in 2022 when Geno had his first big breakout year and then was the offensive coordinator last year with Baker Mayfield when he had a resurgence.  He seemed like the perfect pick.  

There are a few problems to note.  One is that in Tampa thought Baker had a solid year some of the numbers were a bit questionable as to whether they could be sustained.  Also they had a horrible run game.  So if you are bringing in a head coach for Bryce Young you are also hoping to have an improved run game.  The rookie will need the help.  

In retrospect by the numbers I'm not sure Frank Reich did as badly as everyone thought with Bryce Young.  He had a QB Rating of 75.6 with Reich and 72 after Reich left.  So no real improvement.  So far this year he's had a rating of 44.1.  In all 11 games with Reich his rating was never that low.  

The Panthers have announced they are benching Young and of course now the pressure is really going to be on Canales to show that he can coach.  If the offense can look competent with Andy Dalton then most of the failure will fall on Young for this year and Canales will get another shot maybe at a new QB in the draft.  If not.