Tag: coaching tree

Mike Shanahan’s impressive coaching tree continues to bear fruit

Mike Shanahan’s coaching staff in Washington included Kyle Shanahan, Sean McVay, Matt LaFleur, Mike McDaniel and Raheem Morris, now all HCs.

Mike Shanahan’s coaching tree continues to branch out, and each branch is bearing fruit.

As has been well documented, Shanahan built an impressive coaching staff in Washington in 2013 that included Kyle Shanahan, Sean McVay, Matt LaFleur, Mike McDaniel and Raheem Morris.

Kyle Shanahan, Mike’s son, was Washington’s offensive coordinator in 2013. The younger Shanahan is now the head coach of the San Francisco 49ers and he has reached his second Super Bowl since 2019. The 49ers have also made the NFC championship game in four of the last five seasons.

Matt Lafleur (Washington’s quarterbacks coach in 2013) has served as the Green Bay Packers’ head coach since 2019. He has reached the playoffs four times in his first five seasons, including two appearances in the NFC title game.

Sean McVay (Washington’s former tight ends coach) has been the Los Angeles Rams’ head coach since 2017. He has made the playoffs five times in seven seasons and won Super Bowl LVI in 2021.

Mike McDaniel (Washington’s wide receivers coach in 2013) has served as the Miami Dolphins’ head coach since 2022. Miami has qualified for the playoffs in each of McDaniel’s first two seasons.

Raheem Morris (Washington’s former defensive backs coach) was hired by the Atlanta Falcons as their head coach this offseason.

A sixth assistant coach from Shanahan’s tree, Bobby Slowik, was also a head coach candidate this offseason, but he will remain an offensive coordinator with the Houston Texans in 2024. Slowik was a defensive assistant with Washington in 2013.

And before Shanahan went to Washington, his coaching staff with the Denver Broncos included Gary Kubiak, who later won a Super Bowl as head coach with the Broncos in 2015.

Shanahan won three Super Bowls, including two titles as head coach in Denver. Shanahan’s final season as a head coach did not go well in Washington as his team went 3-13, but elements of his offense are still seen across the NFL today and his coaching tree continues to have success.

Shanahan has been repeatedly passed over by Hall of Fame voters in the coach/contributor category. He should already be in the Hall of Fame. Here’s a quick list of Shanahan’s assistants who went on to become head coaches.

Marty Schottenheimer gave Cowboys’ Mike McCarthy his first NFL job

The legendary NFL coach has passed away, leaving behind a legacy of great coaches who learned under him, including Dallas’s current skipper.

Longtime NFL coach Marty Schottenheimer has passed away at the age of 77 after a years-long battle with Alzheimer’s disease and a recent stint on hospice care. The man who racked up 200 regular-season wins over his 21 seasons as a head coach leaves behind a remarkable football legacy that is perhaps most striking when one considers the young coaches Schottenheimer hired and mentored who went on to themselves be listed among the game’s greats.

Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy is among them.

McCarthy’s first NFL gig came on Schottenheimer’s staff in Kansas City in 1993. Both Pittsburgh guys, Schottenheimer hired the 29-year-old, most recently a graduate assistant and collegiate wide receivers coach at Pitt, as the Chiefs’ offensive quality control coach. It’s a position that David Moore of the Dallas Morning News says didn’t even exist.

After two seasons in that role, McCarthy was promoted by Schottenheimer to quarterbacks coach in 1995. He helped develop Rich Gannon, Elvis Grbac, and Steve Bono for Kansas City before moving to Green Bay to oversee the progression of Brett Favre.

McCarthy went on to win a Super Bowl, as have several Schottenheimer proteges. Bill Cowher, Tony Dungy, and Bruce Arians were also assistants on the Schottenheimer coaching tree.

Schottenheimer himself served as an assistant with the Giants, Lions, and Browns before taking over in Cleveland in 1984. After five seasons with the Browns, he was head coach in Kansas City for 10 years, Washington for one, and San Diego for five.

But he was nearly the man who followed Tom Landry in Dallas.

Cowboys broadcaster Brad Sham told SI’s Peter King:

“Either 1987 or 1988, in the spring, Landry had a press conference. [Cowboys general manager Tex] Schramm had Marty Schottenheimer in town, looking at houses. He thought he was going to hire Marty Schottenheimer to replace Tom Landry, who was going to retire. Landry comes and has a press conference, and that’s when Schramm finds out that Landry is not quitting.”

Even as recently as 2010, as the Wade Phillips era was coming to a disastrous end in the middle of Dallas’ season, rumors were rampant that Schottenheimer was being considered to replace him.

But a Cowboys stint was never to be. Schottenheimer ended up taking his teams to 18 postseason games, yet none of them made it to the Super Bowl. As a head coach, he endured just two losing seasons. His regular-season win total ranks him eighth all-time among NFL coaches.

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AFC playoffs an exhibition of Chiefs HC Andy Reid’s coaching tree

Each of the three head coaches remaining in the AFC playoffs all got their start in the NFL under Chiefs HC Andy Reid.

The roots of the coaching tree in the AFC playoff race run straight back to Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid. In fact, each of the three remaining head coaches got their NFL starts under Reid.

In 1998, Baltimore Ravens HC John Harbaugh joined Reid’s coaching staff in Philadelphia as a special teams coordinator. In 2001, Buffalo Bills HC Sean McDermott became Reid’s personal assistant with the Eagles. In the summer of 2005 at Eagles training camp, Cleveland Browns HC Kevin Stefanski was a coaching intern for Reid.

For Reid, how he’s managed to create so many branches of his coaching tree, all goes back to his upbringing through the Green Bay Packers system as an assistant coach.

“I think it’s kind of a neat process as it works out over the years,” Reid said on Wednesday. “I’m part of that process because of Mike Holmgren, so I’ve lived this and it’s kind of a neat deal to be a part of.”

Harbaugh knows as well as anyone that Reid is just as good of a scout for coaches as he is for NFL talent. He became the first of two former assistants in the Reid coaching tree to go on and win a Super Bowl during his career. He also realized just this past week that each of the remaining coaches in the AFC playoff race all got their start under Reid.

“Remarkable. I guess I realized that when it was pointed out to me in practice to me today,” Harbaugh said on a conference call with Buffalo media. “You kind of take a moment and think about it, it’s pretty amazing. I think it speaks really highly of Andy (Reid). The kind of coach that he is. We all learned so much from him.”

But what makes Reid such a success when it comes to finding good coaches? Beyond the football of it all, Reid is just a good judge of people and it starts with that.

“The idea, they’re just good people,” Harbaugh said. “I look back on those years with those guys… just a bunch of great people who are just tremendous friends to this day. I don’t know how to explain it but it’s pretty amazing.”

Even as the Chiefs prepare to face the Browns and HC Kevin Stefanski in the divisional round, both coaches recall Stefanski’s days as a coaching intern. Stefanski would say that it wasn’t exactly a glamorous job, he called it an “anything and everything job.” He would do anything and everything asked of him, be it football tasks or otherwise.

“I knew who he was,” Reid said of Stefanski. “He was a heck of a football player right there at Penn, so I followed Penn, I had a couple of assistants that had been there and coached there, so I knew about it. I was with the head coach there and it’s a neat program. It was right there by our facility, and the tradition is phenomenal. Anyways, all that said, yeah, I knew who he was, and yes, I did see him.”

Not every head coach knows their coaching interns, yet Reid has a way of making all of his assistant coaches feel important. He’s a great delegator, allowing each and every one of them to play a part in the success of a team.

Stefanski certainly learned a lot from that experience and it influenced his path as a coach. Now, what Stefanski admires most about Reid is his offensive genius.

“He’s obviously somebody that I admire a ton,” Stefanski told reporters of Reid on Wednesday. “Just watching how he’s done it over the course of time and just the various ways that he’s structured his offense to the strengths of his team. Then, he’s a great play-caller. I love to watch the great play-callers and how they mix it up, how they call different things situationally as well with Coach Reid.”

At the heart of what Reid does for coaches is to show them to be teachers and mentors. He’s a football empath of sorts, able to relate to players and coaches and put them on the best possible path for success.

“These guys work their tail off and they work all the areas of what you need to be a good football coach,” Reid explained. “It’s not all X’s and O’s. That’s a big part of it, but it’s not all X’s and O’s, it’s how you deal with people and take care of your players and at the same time, try to give them whatever they need to be the best they possibly can be. So, you see guys go through this and you see their players mature, you see them mature, and you go, heck, they sure deserve a job to have an opportunity to run their own building and then teach others how to do the same thing.”

We’re seeing Reid’s development of coaches play out now with the current Chiefs’ coaching roster, just as he says. Assistants like Eric Bieniemy and Mike Kafka both receiving interest for head-coaching positions.

In his 22 years as a head coach in the league, perhaps the greatest testament to Reid’s success has been the coaches that have come through his doors and gone on to succeed elsewhere. That will be Reid’s lasting legacy in the NFL, just as it was with Bill Walsh, Marty Schottenheimer, or Bill Parcells.

Over the weekend when the Chiefs face the Browns and the Bills face the Ravens, his legacy will be on full display for the world to see.

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This look at Bill Belichick’s scouting tree is an incredible testament to his success as a GM

His coaching tree may be questionable but his scouting tree is remarkable.

It’s no secret that Bill Belichick is one of the most respected figures in the history of football. From his time working with Lawrence Taylor as the linebackers coach and defensive coordinator of the Giants to the six Super Bowl victories as the head coach of the Patriots, Belichick has seen his fair share of success.

At this point in his career, there’s not much left for him to accomplish. He’s still looking to pass both George Halas and Don Shula in career wins. And, he probably would like to win a Super Bowl without Tom Brady even if he won’t admit it.

What must be rewarding is seeing his scouts move up the ranks and hold some of the most sought-after jobs in football. With former Patriots scout Pat Stewart becoming the Panthers’ director of player personnel, Belichick’s legacy grows by one.

As the MMQB’s Albert Breer pointed out today, is that Belichick has done a solid job preparing his scouts for front office roles, and that’s something that may have gone overlooked in his career.

Those are a lot of guys in high-level front office positions. And, if you want to further back than 2007, there are even more.

That’s 15 men who have some of the most sought-after positions in football today. Many of them have helped turn around franchises and given their teams a sense of future and purpose. Some of been on the brink of championships and have made the playoffs numerous times. Others are new and are looking for the opportunity to make a name for themself. And, it all stems from the brains of Belichick, former Patriots general manager Scott Pioli, and Nick Caserio.

11 teams now hold a former Patriots’ employee in their front office. Four hold general manager positions and six are either their teams’ director of player personnel or the vice president.

Belichick’s scouting tree is loaded which may finally take away some of the critiques of his coaching tree. The list isn’t an impressive one.

Romeo Crennel, Nick Saban, Eric Mangini, Josh McDaniels, Bill O’Brien, Matt Patricia, Brian Flores, and Joe Judge have all coached under Belichick for at least three seasons and have gone on to become NFL head coaches.

In total, these coaches have a 153-213-1 record in the regular season, and O’Brien is the only one with a postseason victory. While Judge and Flores are entering their first and second seasons respectively, the past doesn’t bode well for them.

The scouting department should be getting the proper recognition that it deserves. They deserve to be talked about more often than those who have gone on to coach after leaving Belichick’s tutelage.

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The Bill Belichick tree is expanding around the league

For all the jokes made about coaches from Bill Belichick’s staff not exactly doing well – we may have contributed here as well – it sure seems like that tree is expanding at a rapid pace. In 2019 the following Belichick acolytes held head coaching …

For all the jokes made about coaches from Bill Belichick’s staff not exactly doing well — we may have contributed here as well — it sure seems like that tree is expanding at a rapid pace.

In 2019 the following Belichick acolytes held head coaching gigs: Bill O’Brien, Matt Patricia, Brian Flores, and Mike Vrabel — and yes we are counting Vrabel because he played under Belichick and cut his teeth in the pros under O’Brien. This doesn’t even count general managers who learned under the Patriots head coach and de facto GM which include Bob Quinn (Lions), Jon Robinson (Titans), Thomas Dimitroff (Falcons) and Jason Licht (Buccaneers).

That joke about Belichick’s assistants being failures may be going by the wayside. Yes, Charlie Weiss didn’t live up to expectations at Notre Dame. Romeo Crennell was probably not cut out to be the head guy — and that’s fine neither was Norv Turner and they both had pretty good careers. Eric Mangini has been excommunicated from anything to do with Belichick at this point. Even Josh McDaniels struggled in his first go-round as a head coach in Denver.

Speaking of McDaniels, he’s under consideration for the Browns head coach position. Others getting interviews include Brian Daboll and Jim Schwartz. Daboll worked under Belichick in New England and Schwartz did the same for the Browns when he was starting his career. That’s three Belichick coaching tree members shooting for the same job. Add that to Joe Judge — the new Giants head coach — and that means that 19 percent of the league could have someone from the Belichick coaching their team. So much for a failure of Belichick assistants.

Even if Patricia is fired — he’s the only person on the list who is even on the hot seat — it’s insane to imagine that so much of the league comes under Belichick’s influence which only seems to be growing.