Here’s something worth thinking about seven weeks into the season, as we approach a period of time when I’d bet we start pivoting from “final fumes of hope” season to “I think we need a fresh start” season. Look at the top six teams on this list. Sean McDermott is a defensive head coach. Andy Reid is a 64-year-old West Coast devotee who spent most of his career before becoming a head coach as an offensive line coach. Nick Sirianni spent a lot of his formative growth years under Frank Reich. And Brian Daboll was an offensive coach who has been almost everywhere, from New England to Alabama to Cleveland under Eric Mangini to Kansas City under Romeo Crennel, the year the Chiefs went 2–14.
The point is that none of them, you would argue, were from some kind of trendy system at their point of hiring. They all had ups and downs. They all had a breadth of experience. They all arrived at their teams, where they are having success, by doing something markedly different from the team they were hired from as a coordinator.
Which is a long way of saying: it doesn’t have to look a certain way, as long as the talent, the knowledge and the humility are there.
