NFL Teams Searching for New Head Coach Should Steer Clear of Josh McDaniels

The NFL’s regular season concluded last weekend, meaning the coaching carousel has started to spin.

Black Monday came and went with the Atlanta Falcons, Chicago Bears, New York Jets and San Francisco 49ers in need of new head coaches.

Six NFL teams are currently without head coaches, including the Oakland Raiders—who finished the season under interim head coach Tony Sparano—and Buffalo Bills, after Doug Marrone exercised an opt-out in his contract which was triggered due to an ownership change in October.

According to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, the six current openings are about normal for an NFL offseason since 2000:

Among the names being considered for these vacancies is current New England Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels, who interviewed for the Falcons position Friday and will do so with the 49ers Saturday, according to NFL Network’s Albert Breer:

McDaniels, of course, has been a head coach once before, taking over the Denver Broncos prior to the 2009 season and going 11-17 before being fired 12 games into his second season.

His Denver tenure was an utter failure—a then-32-year-old given complete control over player personnel, despite having neither coached a game nor ran a draft, as the Broncos became enamored with the idea of finding the next Bill Belichick, they handpicked someone right off his tree.

Fox Sports’ Adam Schein wrote at the time of his firing that McDaniels showed he had no clue how to run an organization, making an “absolute comedy of errors [during his tenure].”

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Expectations were high for the Broncos when McDaniels took over, yet they missed the playoffs in his first year, despite a 6-0 start. Wrote Schein: “McDaniels deserves to be fired for sheer incompetence, for awful people skills that have caused talent to leave the building, for some of the worst personnel decisions in the past two years, for losing games at a rapid rate.”  

First, McDaniels made a phone call to Belichick, trying to acquire quarterback Matt Cassel—who went 10-5 as the Patriots' starting quarterback, with McDaniels the offensive coordinator, the season prior—in a three-team trade.

At the time, the Broncos had 25-year-old Jay Cutler, who had been named to the Pro Bowl following his third professional season after passing for 4,526 yards, which ranked third in the NFL behind Drew Brees and Kurt Warner.

Jack Dempsey/Associated Press

When McDaniels inherited the Broncos, they ranked second in the NFL in total offense. He fired several offensive assistants, including quarterbacks coach Jeremy Bates.

And after the trade talks broke but a deal did not materialize, Cutler was said to have lost trust in his new head coach and wanted to be traded if the Broncos were not going to commit to him. He was traded to Chicago later that offseason.

Ed Andrieski/Associated Press

While McDaniels hit on some draft picks—Knowshon Moreno (No. 12, 2009), Demaryius Thomas (No. 22, 2010) Zane Beadles (No. 45, 2010) and Eric Decker (No. 87, 2010)—in his two-year tenure with the Broncos, he is best known for the failure which was trading up for quarterback Tim Tebow in 2010.

Some of his other misses include but are not limited to: drafting defensive end Robert Ayers (1.5 sacks in two seasons under McDaniels) at No. 18 and tight end Richard Quinn at No. 64 in 2009 and trading a future first-round pick—which ended up being safety Earl Thomas—to select cornerback Alphonso Smith at No. 37 in 2009 and then trading him a year later for a backup tight end.  

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McDaniels had no plan in Denver, trying to retool the Broncos on the fly and getting burned for it more often than not, such as trading running back Peyton Hillis to Cleveland (and watching him rush for over 1,000 yards the next season) for a backup quarterback only to draft Tebow a month later.

The Broncos finally let McDaniels go following a videotaping scandal upper management deemed “unforgiveable,” according to Mike Klis of The Denver Post, who also wrote McDaniels had fallouts with defensive coordinator Mike Nolan, wide receiver Brandon Marshall and tight end Tony Scheffler.

The videotaping scandal likely only expedited the Broncos' decision to fire McDaniels, given the multitude of inept decisions he had made in two seasons which resulted in just four wins in his last 21 games.

After his firing, McDaniels spent one season as the offensive coordinator for the St. Louis Rams (2011) and then rejoined the New England Patriots as an offensive assistant for their playoff run before taking over as offensive coordinator there for the 2012 season.

Elise Amendola/Associated Press

McDaniels has now been an offensive coordinator in the NFL for seven seasons, leading his teams to 11th, first, fifth, 31st, first, seventh and 11th finishes in total offense.

The outlier here is that 31st-ranked finish—in 2011, his lone season with the St. Louis Rams, when second-year quarterback Sam Bradford made 10 starts and veterans Kellen Clemens and A.J. Feeley both made three starts apiece.

In his six seasons (2006-2008, 2012-present) with the Patriots, Tom Brady has started 81 of a possible 96 games, and Matt Cassel was under center for the other 15 (all in 2008).

So is the Patriots offense a product of Josh McDaniels, or is Josh McDaniels a product of Tom Brady?

From 2009-2011, with McDaniels employed elsewhere, the Patriots finished third, eighth and second in total offense.

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You can ask similar questions or make similar claims of other head coaching candidates, of course. But the Patriots are a well-oiled machine positioned to run effectively under any offensive coordinator. Similarly, that 2011 Rams team, which finished at 2-14—tied for the worst record in the league—would have struggled to move the ball regardless of who made up the coaching staff.

Though it probably shouldn’t be, the coach's perception is most often based on team success, disregarding whether those teams are stacked or devoid of talent.

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Bill Belichick went 36-44 in five seasons with the Cleveland Browns from 1991-1995, including 5-11 in his final season there, despite being picked by some experts prior to the season to reach the Super Bowl. He landed his second head coaching job four years later—with New England, after the Patriots fired Pete Carroll.

Carroll went 6-10 with the New York Jets in 1994 and 27-21 with the Patriots from 1997-1999 and did not return to an NFL coaching position until the Seattle Seahawks hired him away from the University of Southern California in 2010.

McDaniels has a pre-existing relationship with Falcons general manager Thomas Dimitroff and assistant GM Scott Pioli, as all three have been with the Patriots. And with the 49ers, he would be wise to focus on the offense, while allowing Vic Fangio to run the defense.

If he is indeed looking to rejoin the NFL’s head coaching ranks, he will probably look to do so as 37-year-old Tom Brady approaches the end of his career. If not, he may not be a hot name for coaching vacancies after that and a second chance may never arrive.