The New York Jets aren’t the only team with this type of head coach to struggle
Maybe the New York Jets weren’t so far off base with Adam Gase.
Well, that’s stretching the truth to its breaking point — but at least they had the right idea.
For over 25 years, Gase is the only head coach the Jets have hired with an offensive background. They went from Bill Parcells (1997-99) to Al Groh (2000) to Herman Edwards (2001-05) to Eric Mangini (2006-08) to Rex Ryan (2009-14) to Todd Bowles (2015-18) and then to Robert Saleh (2021-present) after they fired Gase.
Under Saleh, the Jets’ biggest problem has been their offense. They can’t seem to get their personnel, staff, and philosophy in sync. The 2023 season was a case in point: the Jets’ defense ranked third in DVOA (Defense-adjusted Value Over Average, a measure of efficiency adjusted for strength of opponent and game context), while their offense languished at 32nd. It was the worst offense in Jets history based on DVOA (since the stat was first tracked in 1981).
It has never been clear whether the background of the head coach makes a difference in his team’s success, but let’s look at some statistics on the matter. Do the Jets’ struggles have something to do with their defensive bent?
Breakdown
During the 2023 season, there were 32 head coaches plus an additional 12 offensive or defensive coordinators with previous head coaching experience. That makes 44 coaching backgrounds to examine. The breakdown is very even, too: 22 have a defensive background, 21 offensive, and one special teams (John Harbaugh, the eternal exception).
Head coaches with a defensive background have a cumulative win percentage of 52.1% and an average win percentage of 43.2%. Those with an offensive background have a 57.5% cumulative win percentage and a 53.1% average win percentage.
(Harbaugh took a defensive position for one year to parlay it into a head coaching job. However, his background is so thoroughly littered with special teams that it would be disingenuous to put him in the defensive category, though he could sway the outcome of the review.)
That is a notable difference. A 10% swing in average win percentage and a 5% disparity in total win percentage is enough to be noticeable. Though Bill Belichick is included in the defense, he is offset by Andy Reid on offense.
Among defensive head coaches, just seven of the 22 (31.8%) have a career win percentage above 50%. Meanwhile, 14 of 21 offensive coaches (66.7%) have a winning career record. Even when filtering to at least three seasons of head coaching, 6 of 14 (42.9%) defensive coaches have a winning record compared to 11 of 16 (68.8%) offensive coaches.
This survey is small and includes only NFL coaches during the 2023 season. A further study would need to include head coaches from a longer period to determine a correlation. Additionally, the team’s quarterback during that time makes a major difference. One can argue, though, that offensive head coaches tend to help develop the quarterback drafted by the team during his tenure.
Still, it is one cautionary note for the Jets’ plan as a team. They came in with Saleh as head coach and initially did not build a robust enough offensive staff to develop their young quarterback. Then they hired retreads without a track record of success to take over the offense. Perhaps Saleh’s background as a defensive coach makes him struggle to identify proper offensive coaching talent.
Or maybe the best job building an offense is usually done by the head coach himself. This unscientific survey would definitely say so.
The problem is obvious. Woody sell the team.
This is exactly the same conversation that led to the Jets’ firing Rex Ryan and hiring Adam Gase. Just as with Zach Wilson, there was a lot of disappointment and regret surrounding the failure of Mark Sanchez to develop, and everyone around the team seemed to be believe that the problem was having a defensive-minded coach who did not know how to develop a young QB or an offensive to support him. So they hire this supposed offensive guru in Gase and he turned out to be a weirdo. But then, just because Gase wasn’t the guy, they (and I mean the Johnsons) totally forgot all they learned with Ryan and went right back to a defense fanatic!!! It’s really incredible that these guys run a billion dollar company (they’re probably just figure heads or the company would be bankrupt by now). To fail to learn from your own experience is deadly, and that’s exactly what we’re looking at with the Jets.
Plus, I thought it was very interesting at half time of the Cowboys-Packers game when Terry Bradshaw remarked that the Cowboys had to come out very aggressively on offense if they had any hope of a comeback, and said when you play defensively, you get tunnel vision and he put his hands around the sides of his head to illustrate. I thought, that’s exactly how Zach Wilson played. He had a defensive minded coach who kept telling him not to commit turnovers to the point where he couldn’t even see the field. Maybe an offensive minded coach would urge him to do the opposite, to be aggressive and keep throwing until he gets the hang of things. Hopefully, Wilson will go some place where he’ll have an opportunity to resurrect his career.
While the data is instructive, can coaches adapt when presented with damning evidence of deficiency? Thats where Saleh may be at this point. The Rodgers dynamic though restricts changes that would otherwise be made. That said, even with Rodgers, Saleh needs to show tweaks in his approach next year to quiet the theme that has developed around him.