NFL Coaching Decisions: Eagles, Cowboys and Chargers Wise to Retain Coaches

Andy Reid, Norv Turner and Jason Garrett all endured tremendous criticism as their teams underachieved throughout the season and missed the playoffs. However, the Philadelphia Eagles, San Diego Chargers and Dallas Cowboys all decided to keep their highly-disparaged coaches.

The retention of these leaders is a breath of fresh air in an age when front offices are often trigger-happy when it comes to firing coaches.

I'm not the biggest fan of Jerry Jones, but I was impressed by his vote of confidence in Jason Garrett. He emphasized that 2011 was Garrett's first full season as head coach of the Cowboys and said he's willing to be patient and see Garrett develop a championship caliber team.

If more owners had that kind of patience and confidence in their coaches, there wouldn't be so much turnover and prolonged mediocrity for franchises. Of course, in many cases, change is necessary, but sometimes management groups are too hasty to dump coaching staffs.

Owners and GMs need to ask themselves, "is the grass really greener on the other side?"

Oftentimes, it is not.

Take Oakland, Cleveland and St. Louis, for example. All three franchises have been lousy for the better part of the past decade, and they haven't given recent coaches such as Tom Cable, Eric Mangini and Steve Spagnuolo a chance to develop a winning program.

In today's "win now" NFL, many programs undervalue the patience it takes to build a championship team. That's why keeping Garrett is so counter-cultural and refreshing.

In Philadelphia and San Diego's cases, the head coaches were retained in part due to their players' support of them. San Diego owner Dean Spanos ignored public cries for the axing of Norv Turner and decided to put more stock in the Chargers players' backing of Turner. The players love playing for him, and they believe he can lead them to a Super Bowl.

As for the Eagles, Jeffrey Lurie decided to keep Andy Reid because he's a coach that players want to play for and has a great track record. It would have been easy and popular to fire Reid this winter; the Eagles' season was a grand underachievement and there was a massive movement in Philadelphia to get rid of him.

Lurie took into account Philadelphia's new roster, injuries and the fact that Reid's players played hard for him and gelled toward the end of the season.

Reid, Turner and Garrett are all great coaches. Each of their teams will be rewarded for their loyalty with successful seasons and championship contention in the future.