Topic: A general non-emotional football observation...

[_sturt_]

Isn't it striking how often you find that a college or pro team has a head coach who made their name as an offensive or defensive coordinator, only to find that once that guy ascends to a head coach position, it's the opposite side of the ball that excels for his team?

Consider our own coach's defensive headaches in comparison to the offense... regardless of what you or I think of this play call or that, it's difficult to argue that ultimately if our defense could get off the field with any even average regularity, we'd be a far cry from 0-5 right now.

But now, think beyond that... Tony Dungy, esteemed for his great defensive mind, rides his offense to a Super Bowl title... the last NFC champ, Tampa Bay, was propelled by an outstanding defense, led by the supposed great offensive brain in Jon Gruden's head... the prior year, Brian Billick, the offensive genius formerly of Minnesota, took the title with a defense that some consider one of the best in NFL history... at the college level, if I'm not mistaken, Pete Carroll was a defensive mastermind, yet his USC offenses have been particularly potent...

You get the idea... it's not an "always" thing, but on the other hand, consider how rarely you find the exact opposite thing to be true -- ie, that a championship is won with the offensive genius riding a great offense and a substandard defense to a title.

Just interesting to me... possibly *just* me(?).

[ThunderZone]

The fact that you brought this up is just scary ... Lightning strike me dead if I'm lying, but the group that I go to the call in shows with were talking about this exact same thing last night.

All of the same names were brought up too ... Except for Carrol ... He slipped my mind.

Les Miles at LSU is another one that we talked about ... Known as an offensive mind ... LSU's "O" isn't the worst thing in the world ... But, it's not great either ... LSU continues to win with a dominating "D".

[ThunderZone]

You can add Marvin Lewis to this list too ... Another defensive guy whose team has to win with it's "O" and putting up big points.

That "D" is a mess in Cincy and has been for some time now.

[banker]

The NFL guys are a little different situation due to salary cap issues.  Usually a team gets a new coach because something isn't going right.  In the case of Indy, they hired Dungy because their D sucked.  Problem is, he has so much money tied up on the O side they can't get the players they need on D to build his defense.  You certainly aren't going to dismantle the O to build the D.

The Ravens are the polar opposite of that, as was Tampa when Gruden took over.  

Even with colleges, you may have a plan, but the ability to put it in place is dictated by recruiting success.  If you want to run a D that blitzes all day but you miss on signing those cover corners you need you have to do something else.

The one thing all the coaches you mentioned have in common is that they are very good and know how to play to their teams' strengths.