Andy Reid and The Role Of Luck In The NFL

In the ten years since he began his tenure in Philadelphia, Andy Reid's eagles teams have won five NFC East titles, been to five NFC Championship Games and have amassed more victories over that span than any other team except the New England Patriots.

Nevertheless he has come under plenty of criticism over the years and a vocal section of the fan-base is unhappy with the Eagles recent extension of his contract. I believe the Reid naysayers are mistaken.

While its true that he has yet to win a superbowl title, by every other measure, from winning percentage to number of playoff victories, the twentieth head coach in Eagles history has outperformed the nineteen other men who have held his job since 1933.

Of course to his detractors the lack of a Super Bowl championship is the only criterion that really matters.

I think however, that the Super Bowl or bust mentality is a highly flawed one. It ignores the fundamentally important role of luck in the National Football League.

No coach, no matter how gifted can guarantee a title. Reid skeptics hypnotised by the glitter of the Super Bowl rings adorning the fingers of coaching candidates like  Shanahan, Gruden and Cowher should keep one sobering statistic in mind. No Superbowl winning head coach has ever gone on to lead another franchise to a championship.

While teams may claim that winning a championship is the only goal every year, the reality is that an awful lot of stuff has to go right over the course of a season in order for it to end in a ticker tape parade. Many of those things are out of the control of both the players and the guys wearing the headsets.

Of all the major professional team sports the NFL is the most random. The shortness of the season, the frequency of injuries, and the one game and out nature of the NFL playoffs mean that seasons (and sometimes careers) turn on a single play more often than in any other sport. Sure, you get bad bounces and tough breaks in baseball. However when you play more than ten times as many games, they tend to even out far more than they do in Football.

More than in any other major sport, winning a championship in pro football requires a healthy dose of luck as well as talent. For more evidence of this, consider that none of the four previous Super Bowl champions have even advanced as far as the conference championship the following year.

The shocking loss of the New England Patriots in the superbowl ought to have forever disabused us of the notion that talent or coaching genius are some sort of guarantor of victory. 

The bottom line is that any team good enough to win eleven or twelve football games over the course of an NFL season is good enough to win the Super Bowl with the right breaks. With the wrong breaks or on a bad day even a juggernaut like the 2007 Patriots can stumble on the final hurdle.

Andy Reid has been winning long enough and with enough player turnover that we can be pretty sure it isn't down to luck.

Is Reid the perfect coach? Obviously not. I am as frustrated his aspects of his time management and play-calling as any other fan.

However the bottom line is that Andy Reid teams go to the playoffs a lot more often than not.  The more years the Eagles extend their season deep into January the more likely it is that at some point the stars will align and they will  end the year hoisting a Lombardi.

As long as he can keep producing those double digit win seasons with regularity there is no one I would rather have on the Eagles sideline.