History Indicates the Odds Are Stacked Against New Eagles Coach Chip Kelly
Howard Smith-USA TODAY Sports
In just a few weeks, the Philadelphia Eagles
will start their first training camp with their brand-spankin'-new head
coach. The excitement level in Philadelphia is extremely high, because
things had become stagnant under Andy Reid and Chip Kelly brings a very fresh feel to the City of Brotherly Love.
But is Kelly too fresh? Nobody really knows what to expect from the offensive mastermind from Oregon, mainly because he's never been on an NFL coaching staff before.It's impossible to predict how things might pan out for any new coach, and that's especially the case with Kelly. He becomes just the ninth NFL head coach in the last 30 years without any experience within the league, joining this list:
Kelly Is a Rare Bird
Excluding those in interim roles and the seven new coaches hired this offseason, 123 head coaches have been hired for NFL jobs in the last 30 years. We compiled a database with all 123 of them, breaking them down into three categories.
The first category contained the eight inexperienced head coaches listed above, the second contained 22 head coaches who were hired or promoted despite never serving in NFL coordinator roles (the majority were positional coaches), and the third contained the 93 head coaches who were hired with backgrounds as offensive, defensive or special-teams coordinators.
You Might Have to Be Patient
Let's begin simply by looking at first-year success rates in order to determine how difficult it might be for Kelly to turn this franchise around overnight.
Interestingly, the most successful of the coaches from that first category started off the slowest. Johnson was 1-15 with the Dallas Cowboys in 1989. Wins were arguably handed to Switzer on a platter in 1994, while the rest of them put up mediocre inaugural seasons.
It's probably not a big surprise that coaches with NFL backgrounds have fared better during that first year transitioning into head-coaching roles. Those coaches posted a .448 winning percentage in year one, while the newbies posted a mark of .414.
Just don't expect a Super Bowl run right off the bat. Only Switzer made the playoffs and posted a winning record in his first year.
Experienced coaches also fared a lot better in that category:
But Will It Get Easier?
Logically, you'd think it would. But that's not necessarily the case.
When you compare first-year winning percentages to career winning percentages, you get only an eight percent increase for those coaches who entered the league with no pro experience while getting a 13 percent increase for those coaches who entered the league with at least some pro experience.
In other words, in the last 30 years, no coach has ever gone from being strictly an NFL position coach to head coach and won the Lombardi Trophy. Active head coaches who fit that criterion and could buck that trend: Jim Harbaugh (quarterbacks coach in Oakland but never a coordinator); Greg Schiano (secondary coach in Chicago but never a coordinator); and, interestingly, Andy Reid (quarterbacks coach in Green Bay but never a coordinator).
Nope, It's Not Going to Be Easy
It's probably not going to surprise you to learn that, at the end of the day, coaches who haven't jumped straight from college have lasted longer in this league than those who have.
In this comparison, those in the first group have gone on to coach for an average of seven seasons, while those newbies have coached for fewer than five. Here's a breakdown with all three categories (we've removed all active coaches in their first five years from the sample):
Considering how poorly the majority of those guys fared and how much similar cases like Steve Spurrier, Bobby Petrino and Nick Saban struggled, you'd have to think that the history-based odds are stacked greatly against Kelly delivering at the NFL level.
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