Defending Andy Reid

Last Friday, ESPN's Bill Simmons chose to use the following question in his mailbag:

Q: On behalf of every Eagles fan, can you please be the one media guy who doesn't suck up to Andy Reid and point out all the reasons why he sucks and needs to either resign or start smoking? The man either needs more oxygen or more nicotine. Thanks in advance.
-- Randy, South Philly

We'll get to his answer in a minute, but first some background.  Nothing else written about the Eagles since I started this blog a few years ago has ever generated as much reader mail.  Even my LA-based brother-in-law -- decidedly not an Eagles fan, not even really all that much of an NFL fan -- emailed me about it.  

I'm sure that's primarily due to Simmons' own popularity.  He's easily and deservedly the most influential sportswriter of his generation.  Everyone reads him. 

On the other hand, the Sports Guy has written many things before about the Eagles, both positive and negative, that never came close to provoking this kind of response.  I think that's partly because of the over-the-top nature of what he wrote, but more so because this is kind of a soul-searching time for Eagles fans.  Even those of us who have supported McReid since the beginning are finding ourselves wrestling with at least some doubts about where things are headed these days. 

None of that changes the fact that Simmons is dead wrong about Reid.  As are many other lines of attack against Reid that he doesn't even use.  But we'll start by going line by line with Simmons.

- - - - - -

Q: On behalf of every Eagles fan, can you please be the one media guy who doesn't suck up to Andy Reid and point out all the reasons why he sucks and needs to either resign or start smoking? The man either needs more oxygen or more nicotine. Thanks in advance.
-- Randy, South Philly

First of all, Randy, you're not speaking on behalf of every Eagles fan.  In fact, not even most.  I'll give you the "majority of people who have some financial connection to WIP," but anything else is stealing way too many bases.

Secondly, I'm getting tired of this new trend of local sports fans whining to national columnists about their teams, how bad they are, and why everyone connected with the organization should be fired.  Here's a quick test:  if you're looking for empathy because the team of your childhood has just been stolen away to some podunk craptown in the middle of nowhere, okay, fire away.  If instead you're writing in to complain about suffering under a coach who has the highest winning percentage of any coach in team history, has more wins that all but two other coaches in the League this century, and has twice been named coach of the year, then it's hard to take you seriously.

I miss the days when sports fans would argue tooth and nail over their teams amongst themselves, but would defend them to the death when talking to fans of other teams.  I guess that was back when fans were actually men (or women).

SG: I'd be delighted! Reid is like Art Shell with a better PR staff.

Art Shell really had two separate coaching careers.  The kids likely only know him for the 2-14 debacle in 2006, when he'd been out of coaching for many years, inherited a dysfunctional team, and hired an offensive coordinator who probably wasn't even qualified to be coaching at a major college level any more.

Art Shell's first run as a head coach was actually much more successful.  He compiled a record of 54-38 (.587), won one division title, and made the playoffs three seasons out of six.  He won two playoff games (out of five) and never got past the conference championship game.

However, Andy Reid's career winning percentage (before today's win) was .604, he's taken his team to the playoffs six times in nine seasons, and he has five division titles, eight playoff wins (out of 14), and one Super Bowl appearance.  There is no measure by which Reid is not a more successful coach than Shell. 

Of course, he's just using Shell to make a point about Reid's game-day coaching:

He makes terrible decisions at the worst possible times.

And there it is.  This goes too far in terms of being some sort of all-encompassing statement/indictment, but of all the complaints about Reid, it's the most legitimate.  He is not one of the league's best game-day coaches.  Agreed.  But if that one thing makes someone a terrible coach -- throwing out all other results and overall won/loss records -- why does Simmons write the following later in the piece:

"You're never going to find a perfect manager or coach. That person just doesn't exist. So if you had your druthers (love that word), you'd want your manager's biggest weakness to be, 'makes some occasionally boneheaded decisions that rarely come back to haunt the team because of the horseshoe that was surgically inserted into his rear end during the '04 playoffs.' He's certainly the best Red Sox manager of my lifetime."

Wait wait wait.  Isn't this Andy Reid?  Except that instead of "horsehoe" you could write "black cat"?  That's basically the difference here, right?  Andy Reid does all the other things well -- assembling a team, motivating his players, developing schemes and, uh, winning games -- but because he hasn't had the same luck, his boneheaded decisions mean he "sucks and ... needs to resign"?  That's the ultimate confusion of process and results right there.

Or maybe you think he hasn't gotten that unlucky.  Well what would you call:

• Losing Donovan McNabb to a broken ankle for the last six games of the 2002 regular season so that when he did come back in the playoffs he was anything but sharp.
• Or losing Brian Westbrook in the final game of the 2003 season, costing the team its one legitimately explosive playmaker heading into the playoffs.
• Or losing Terrell Owens in week 15 of the 2004 season, and having him not at full strength for the Super Bowl.

That's three years in a row when the Eagles had ridiculously bad injury luck during the immediate run-up to the playoffs.  Now do we know that anything would have changed in those situations if the players had stayed healthy?  No, we don't.  But you can look at the three-point loss in the Super Bowl or the team's record with and without Brian Westbrook or McNabb's performance the first time he played the Bucs versus the second time and understand that with a little bit more luck, Reid's coaching career could look a heck of a lot different.

So there you go, he's basically the unlucky version of Terry Francona.  Except if the Eagles could massively outspend all but a couple other teams in the league when assembling their roster.  Throw that in too.

His players make boneheaded mistakes (like the DeSean Jackson spike, or McNabb's pathetic eight-minute drill in Super Bowl XXXIX) and nobody ever blames him.

First of all, I guess this means Reid is the only coach whose players ever make rookie mistakes.  I'm actually surprised they even call them "rookie mistakes" rather than "Andy Reids."

Secondly, that drive took less than four minutes.  It ended with a touchdown.  And it was run by a quarterback who was clearly having physical problems after getting the crap kicked out of him all game.  Sadly, this is what happens when your best receiver isn't 100 percent and can only run underneath routes.  But the Eagles a) could have recovered the onsides kick and b) got the ball back with 48 seconds left.  This proves only that it sucks to be down two scores to a team as good as the Patriots with 5:40 left on the clock.  Stupid Reid.

The last part is the real howler, however.  Try spending a day or two in Philly, Bill.  You'll find that plenty of people blame Reid for everything from bad play calls to global warming.

He doesn't seem to understand the strengths and weaknesses of his players even remotely, as we witness every week when poor David Akers is forced to try 50-yard field goals with a 43-yard leg and their crappy offensive line is forced to keep ramming it down someone's throat on third-and-1.

See, here's the problem with national sportswriters.  They catch five minutes of a game here or there, watch the highlights, listen to the TV bloviators, then call it a day with their analysis.

• If Reid doesn't understand the strengths and weaknesses of his players, why is he so good at creating favorable matchups in the passing game?  
• If David Akers has a 43-yard leg, why have all his misses hit the net approximately 50 feet in the air?  Why is he ranked 7th in the league in terms of kickoff distance?  It's not leg strength at all, it's his head.  (If Simmons had written: "when poor David Akers is forced to try 50-yard field goals when the goal posts look two feet wide to him at that distance" he would have been right.)
• Finally, the offensive line is not crappy, nor does it make sense to leave out salient facts like both starting wide receivers and the starting tight end being out with injuries.  Maybe that had something to do with his thought process.  Or the fact that a few possessions before the Eagles actually had tried to to pass the ball into the end zone with zero success.

Most importantly, if Reid is really that terrible at coaching his guys on the field, why has he had so much success?  It's sure as hell not just because he's got the most talent running around out there.

His clock management has always been horrendous -- always -- even back when the Eagles were going to the NFC title game every year.

This is true.  It always has been.  Also timeout usage.  The latter is much improved this year, but it took about nine seasons to get the play-calling process figured out.

Of course, it's also true that the Eagles had a four-year stretch where they went to the NFC title game every year.  I don't think that happened in spite of the coach.

Here's how much Reid has slipped as an NFL coach: During the Skins-Eagles game, Antwaan Randle-El threw an option pass TD that Reid challenged even though Randle-El was clearly behind the line. There was no debate. I watched the play live and didn't even know what Reid was challenging until Troy Aikman guessed it correctly. ("You're exactly right, Troy!") So we wasted two minutes watching replays of Randle-El throwing the pass from two yards behind the line of scrimmage, then Philly eventually losing a timeout on one of the five dumbest challenges of this decade.

Here's how much LaDanian Tomlinson has slipped as a player:  he fumbled a couple weeks ago on a play he shouldn't have... 

Here's how much Bill Belichick has slipped as an NFL coach:  he actually thought he could win games with Matt Cassel...

Here's how much Manny Ramirez has slipped as an MLB player:  he actually chased a pitch out of the strike zone to ground out the other day...

Sure, it's fun to poke fun at what will absolutely win the prize for dumbest coaching challenge of the 2008-2009 NFL season, but it was one play, one decision.  And we don't even know how it happened.  Did Reid have a bad angle?  Did a coach upstairs tell him to challenge and he didn't have a great view?

Stupid decision, yes.  Proof that Reid has somehow lost his ability to coach?  Not hardly. 

And I was sitting there thinking that we needed some sort of "Coaching Boners" stat to capture the following things …

1. Calling for inane challenges that have no chance of getting overturned.

Coaches don't have the same view we do and this happens every week, but ok.

2. Horrendous goal-line plays that cause fans to start booing even as the ball-carrier is getting tackled.

I'd give more credence to this if not for the fact that for years Eagles fans have complained about Reid's unwillingness to run the ball down by the goal line.  After a couple of ugly goal line missteps, many of those same fans are now screaming about Reid running the ball so many times, again conveniently forgetting what happened earlier in that game.

I get it.  What they tried didn't work, so doing the opposite thing would have.  And you knew that ahead of time, too.  Cool.  Meanwhile, how about the players actually blocking the guys they're supposed to?

3. Egregious and indefensible brain-farts by a player.

Do we also blame the players for coaching brain farts?

4. Any needlessly counterproductive decision along the lines of "David Akers couldn't make a field goal of more than 50 yards right now unless we injected him with enough cocaine, Red Bull and HGH to kill a thoroughbred horse, but screw it, we're trying this 52-yarder anyway."

Again, it's not a leg strength issue, which Simmons would know if he'd watched more than 15 minutes of the Eagles this year because he had them involved in some kind of complicated teaser. 

They still should have gone for it on fourth-and-one, however.

5. Screwing up the clock management in the "Two minutes to go and we need two scores" scenario.

Pretty sure the Eagles haven't done that this year.

6. Screwing up your three timeouts when there is less than four minutes left, you're trailing and you need to save as many seconds as possible.

Ditto.

When you think about it, we could easily keep track of those six categories. And if we did, we'd find that Andy Reid has doubled the total of any other coach for 2008 coaching boners through five weeks. I am convinced.

Coaching boners that have been far more damaging than anything Reid has done this season:

• Thinking Tarvaris Jackson was a starting-quality quarterback.
• Not kicking a field goal in the third quarter facing fourth-and-four from the 10-yard-line
• Tomlin not kicking a field goal needing two scores at the end of the Eagles game (same link)
• Romeo Crennel kicking that field goal against the Cowboys when his team was down 28-7 in the 4th
• How about the Cardinals calling that timeout to "ice" the kicker today when the clear move is to not give a disorganized Cowboys' kicking unit more time to settle down (called this one before the block, btw)

And those are just the ones I've seen and can remember. 

- - - - - -

You can definitely pick at the flaws in Andy Reid's game.  I do it here all the time.  But if he's truly such a terrible coach, how is it that he's won so many games? 

I mean, seriously, look at the guy's resume:

• Has the highest win total and winning percentage of any coach in club history. Here's a breakdown: Regular season: 90-59 (.604) ... vs. NFC: 69-43 (.616) ... vs. NFC East: 36-26 (.581) ... Playoffs: 8-6 (.571) ... Overall: 98-65 (.601)
• Since 2000, Reid has engineered 93 overall wins, ranking him third in the league behind Bill Belichick and Tony Dungy.
• His 8 playoff wins are most in team history and tied for 18th in league history. Of the 20 coaches who have won eight or more playoff games, only Vince Lombardi (10), Tom Flores (11), Jimmy Johnson (13), and Mike Shanahan (13) have manned the sidelines in fewer playoffs games than Reid's 14.
• Owns a 59-33 (.641) mark (including playoffs) in games in November and later and a 44-30 (.595) regular season road record.
• Earned NFL coach of the year honors in 2002 and 2000.

- - - - - -

And let's knock down that idea that the only reason he has had so much success is because the NFC East was so weak for so long.  Here's a look at the division during the run of 2001-2004:  

Yes, the Eagles dominated that division.  But notice how those teams fared against the rest of the league (two lines of yellow numbers, i.e., in 2001, the NFC East lost 75 percent of its games to the Eagles, but only 55.4 percent of its games to other opponents.)  If the Eagles had just been an average team beating up on poor opponents, they wouldn't have done so much better against those three than the rest of the league.

I think people also have a skewed sense of just how good most divisions are.  The truth is that most divisions aren't that good after the top team.  Take a look at the winning percentage of teams in each division, NOT counting the division champion:

 

And here's probably a better measure of division toughness (since the champion should handle the 6-10 teams just as well as the 4-12 ones):

   

The four-year numbers get a little screwy (due to realignment and varying numbers of teams/division), but take a look at those results.  From 2002-2004, the NFC East was actually one of the stronger divisions in terms of sending in wild card teams.  It wasn't just the Eagles and the three weak sisters every year (although it was in 2004).

I'm not trying to argue that the Eagles didn't benefit from some weaker schedules back them.  But to suggest that the four-year run was just a product of a weak division is revisionist history and patently false. 

(And for more on this topic, check out this Eagle Scout post from 2007: http://blog.nj.com/eagles/2007/07/clearing_up_another_misconcept.html.  Dave continues the analysis forward a few more years and puts the division in the context of the conference.)

- - - - - -

Here's the bottom line.  In Reid's nine full seasons, the Eagles have won eight playoff games.  In the rest of the franchise's history, they've won a total of nine.  In the Super Bowl era, just five.

Yeah, I'll keep taking my chances with Reid.   

Comments

[Tracer Bullet]

Bill Simmons is talking out his ass?! The hell you say.

[C]

Dude,

i'm sorry sg ragged on your boyfriend

[BallHawkDawk]

I see your points Derek, especially the overall point of Simmons watching about 15 minutes of Eagles games and then making broad assumptions about Reid. However, I think you are giving AR a little too much credit in some areas.
For one, when Simmons said Akers has a 43 yard leg I took it to mean that he's only capable of making 43 yard kicks. His accuracy sucks past that; it has nothing to do with distance. So I agree with Simmons that AR needs to start game planning around that.
As far as his clock management goes, I still feel that Reid's teams are always amongst the worst in the league. He pisses away timeouts with little regard and his players never seem to be able to get into a rhythm in the closing minutes of a close game on the final drive. And I don't mean a scenario like "down by 4 with 28 seconds left, ball at your own 20". I'm talking in one-score games, just over two minutes left, the McReid era teams never seem to be able to go into that no-huddle, shotgun offense and take it all the way downfield. Many times they seem to be one timeout short of making something happen, and that missing timeout happened to be used carelessly earlier in the game.
I know AR is the all-time winningest coach in franchise history, and you can't fake your way to that record. But the mistakes this man has made (failure, until recently, to call a balanced offense; refusal to get after a true #1 WR; his clock management) have been committed over and over again for ten years. No matter how good I may be at my job, if I kept making the same mistakes over and over again I'm not sure my customers or my boss would still want me around.

[Derek]

No, look at the words he uses:

"David Akers couldn't make a field goal of more than 50 yards right now unless we injected him with enough cocaine, Red Bull and HGH to kill a thoroughbred horse."

He's talking about leg strength.

As for the timeout problem, right there with you. The problem is that SG is arguing that Reid is a worse coach than he used to be, when in fact the timeout situation seems to (finally) have been taken care of this season. They're not blowing those away every half like they used to.

As for mistakes on the personnel side, that's not Andy the coach, that's Andy the GM. There are legitimate questions there about some of the moves the last couple years -- punt returners and fullbacks, for sure -- but that's not a case Simmons is trying to make.

[Eric]

I've never really respect Simmons much.

Another bone-headed coaching incident this year comes from Romeo again. In the Steelers game they were down 10-3 with 3 minutes left and he kicked a field goal to cut it to 4. It was 4th and 7, certainly not great, but manageable.

But the problem was, at that time, they were in good field position. After the field goal they kicked it off and made their defense try to stop. Even if they did, their field position wouldn't be as good and they'd still need a touchdown.

On another note, I was po'd at Reid yesterday for not going for it on 4th and 1. I think someone needs to email him the stats on 4th and 2 or less. I know CHHF.com posted those stats before.

Anyway, I won't be critical of him on the end of the 1st half FG. People are being overly critical of him for that and that was just the lines problem. I didn't expect Akers to make it anyway and if he did, more power to him. It was just a fluke thing that happens once a year.

[Eagle Scout]

Derek,

In the same vein - I did a little analysis a while back debunking the myth that the NFC East was weak when the Birds were winning it every year. In fact, it was the best division in the NFC - by far.

http://blog.nj.com/eagles/2007/07/clearing_up_another_misconcept.html

[Me]

I'm sticking that up in the piece. That's good stuff.

[Tom G]

I would say the NFC East really was weaker in the "glory days", however, that would only explain a good regular season record, it wouldn't explain marches deep into the playoffs.
I would also agree that Reid has had terrible luck with injuries. It's happening this year too.
I guess if I have a criticism, it is more towards Reid the GM rather than Reid the coach. No FB? At all? C'mon. I'm all for thinking outside the box, but it seems like at least once a year, Reid the Coach finds out in training camp that Reid the GM didn't give him the necessary tools.

The only other thing I would add is that I think every town thinks their coach has to be the worst there is. I always noticed that about Charlie Manuel, fans failed to realize how bad other managers could be sometimes, and I think the same thing is happening in regard to Reid.

[bigmyc]

Derek, you will simply conjur ANY excuse for McNabb's shortcomings, won't you? No ridiculous attempt at apoligizing is too over the top, huh?

So, McNabb got worked over in the Super Bowl...so he did. It's about conditioning, man. McNabb is and was plenty strong but didn't have the wind to make it through that drive at the end of the game. That doesn't come from getting knocked in the dirt unless it's over and over again.

And to suggest that was because Owens wasn't 100 % and not because Reid and McNabb weren't recognizing what Bruski was doing is laughable.

...with all due respect, of course.

[Derek]

Right, our QB was just out of shape. Makes perfect sense given his history. The three INTs were a much bigger problem then the four-minute touchdown drive.

None of which has anything to do with Reid's coaching.

[Paul]

Ok, first off, there is a difference between being able to kick it far enough for a 52 yard field goal, and kick it accurately far enough for 52 yard field goal. From my perspective, it looks like Akers is having to put more effort in kicking the ball the necessary length for a long field goal, which anyone who has kicked a football or soccer ball in the past knows takes away from your accuracy. I'm not saying his head has nothing to do with it, but his kicks seem to have more movement on them than they did in the past which is a sign of him having to put more effort into kicking.

6. Screwing up your three timeouts when there is less than four minutes left, you're trailing and you need to save as many seconds as possible.

They did do this in the Chicago game. Sorry but if you're looking at 2nd and goal from the 1, you then have 2 plays to decide a) if you're going for it on 4th and goal from the 1 and b) what play to call. To take an important timeout just to decide to go for it and to call the same play you called in the previous 2 plays is horrible clock management.

"I get it. What they tried didn't work, so doing the opposite thing would have. And you knew that ahead of time, too. Cool. Meanwhile, how about the players actually blocking the guys they're supposed to?"

I for one am frustrated when we pass 3 times inside the 5 on one series, and then run 3 times inside the 5 on the next. There's no defending Matt Schobel in regards to what could be the most boneheaded (non) block in Eagles history, but some blame has to be put on Andy for not knowing his teams strenghts and the other teams strengths. You don't run 3 times at Brian Urlacher and Lance Briggs, ESPECIALLY up the middle, and EVEN MORE ESPECIALLY without your best run blocker, and EVEN MORE MORE ESPECIALLY without your best runner/receiver/decoy/threat/player in Westbrook.

I do like Andy Reid. I agree that he has turned this team into a yearly contender and we as fans owe a TON to him. Unfortunately, it is incredibly frustrating when you could be 4-2 or 5-1 if your coach made the right decisions. Maybe we would be 1-5 with a different coach, but that still doesn't take the sting away. All we want as Philly fans is accountability and for our sports coaches/stars to LEARN from their mistakes, which is something Andy seems to have a hard time doing.

[jay]

I don't think anyone, Bill Simmons included, would dispute that Andy Reid is a winning coach, and has been successful. But at the same time, Don't you think a better coach would have gotten us a Super Bowl or two in the McNabb era? Not just through better gameday coaching, better offensive staffing and adjustments, but by overall better draft picks and smarter use of his players? This is totally subjective, of course. But I hate when people act like Andy Reid is objectively an unbashable coach. He's fucked up a lot, to put it bluntly. And he repeats the same mistakes a lot, which in my opinion takes him out of the running as an all-time great coach. And I still say the Eagles either should not have gotten TO, or should have put more effort into making things work with him. Andy Reid is often the shill for a really shitty, ineffective front office that is fucking cheap and refuses to pay what it costs to win a Super Bowl, and in my opinion, that is his most shameful quality - a company guy who does not stand up for the best team, and therefore does not deliver a team that can win what we can all agree is the #1 most important game of the season - the last game.

[Richard]

I don't think anyone, would dispute that Andy Reid is a winning coach, and has been successful. But at the same time, Don't you think a better coach would have gotten us a Super Bowl or two in the McNabb era?

[Eagles Fan in San Fran]

The main problem with AR is that he is one of those over-organized control freaks who doesn't handle "change" very well and believes in "his way", never mind the facts or others opinions.

I can readily picture him late at night in his office (deep in the bowels of the stadium), alone, hunched over his desk with just a small desk lamp on, peering through his half-glasses over all his "books" (all duly cross-indexed with neatly-hand-written notes in the margins), looking for just the right formations and plays to beat the upcoming opponent.

Problem is, much like a student studying every fact and figure for an upcoming test and then the professor throws a curve by asking an open-ended question with no clear right or wrong answer, AR cannot cope very well with the chaos that is your average NFL game, which requires both split-second decision-making and adjustments on the fly. In baseball terms, too often he lets the ball play him on gameday, rather than just playing the ball.

His control freak nature does serve him (and the team) well from Monday through Saturday (keeps the team on an even keel, etc.), but it too often leads to problems on Sunday - the most conspicious being the heavy emphasis on the pass, no matter what the actual circumstances of the game may be.

And as far as the downfall of the "my way, facts be damned" attitude goes, the most conspicious example is the illogic behind being pass-happy, yet ignoring the sub-par quality of the WRs he employs.

Is/has AR been overrated? In my opinion, yes, because his butt has been covered thus far by three things:
1) JJ and the defense. Even before AR, people have always focused on the offense with this team, but to me, the real strength has been (and continues to be) the defense.
2) Donovan. I'll defend this guy to the death because no one has been asked to do more with less (and has actually succeeded) than #5. And as we saw with TO, real receivers make 5 that much better.
3) BWest. This guy has quietly been near the top of the list in terms of RBs for awhile now.

Bottom-Line: In my ideal world, AR would be GM and Gruden would be HC.
Reality-wise, however, I think AR is on a leash as long as his mentor's, Mike Holmgren, in Seattle, which is to say he's not on any leash - he's go only when he decides to go.
And if we do ever win the SB, it'll be more in spite of his coaching than because of it.

[Jeff]

Derek,
Great analysis, but better served up as a defense against foreign interlopers. Local fans know better. Reid's record against playoff AFC teams is the one stat that is irrefutable: 1 - 13
And the 1 is from beating Pittsburgh Week 3, and assumes the Steelers make the '09 playoffs like we think they will.
We thank AR for many exciting and fun years filled with success, but what has he done in the past three seasons?
Jeff