Quote:
Originally Posted by Mattyk72
Tomlin stepped into a great situation in Pittsburgh and that undoubtedy has been a big reason for his success. How are things working out for Kiffin in Oakland? How about Mangini sitting at 1-8 in NY?
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Oakland Raiders 2006:
Points Scored: 168
Points Against: 332
Oakland Raiders 2007:
Points Scored: 152
Points Against: 177
With a very minor increase in offensive talent, Lane Kiffin has pretty much done in 8 games what it took the Raider offense 16 to do last year. Suffering a massive defensive regression, he's still managed to cut the 2-6 Raiders point differential to -25 over the first 8 games as coach, compared to the -164 it was last season.
It's too bad that the coach of the year award is really just the "surprise team award," because it's hard to make an argument against the job Lane Kiffin has done with an underachieving, talentless offensive unit. I'm not going to apologize for his inability to turn the Raiders into a world beater from the start, are you?
And in the case of Mangini, he inherited a team that's only asset was a good QB who was coming off a serious shoulder injury. He was every bit as bad as the worst teams last year, yet he beat them all, beat the f-ing Patriots on the road, and won ten games.
No coach is a miracle worker, but the younger coaches have recently had a great collective success rate, because they tend not to follow the bs coaching theories that are old and outdated and never worked in the first place. They are good coaches, because they tend to be ahead of the curve.
After all, isn't that how Gibbs got where he is?