Lets all welcome Cowher, Gruden, Shannahan, or Holmgreen to the 2010 Texans!

So is it Cowher or bust for you guys?

It is for me...

 

Very true. Also, look at teams that make the switch to 3-4. We are afraid to switch to the 3-4 because of the Texans experience with it previously. What we fail to remember is that was with Capers and Casserly picking players and Vic coaching them. Other teams haven't had such a hard time making the switch.

 

Cowher is the only coach I'd be eager to give up on Kubiak for. If nothing else, Kubiak has done a good job bringing talent to this team via the draft. I don't want to dump him to experiment with another rookie coach.

 

I agree - though I'd probably stick Gruden/Dungy in that mix. One issue right now is no one knows where the problem is. Do the players make mistakes because they are not very good? Are they not well coached? Are we coaching scared? Is it bad playcalling or bad execution? Are they properly motivated? Is it just a series of flukes?

Getting one of these high end coaches let you take all the coaching questions out of the equation: you know you have good coaching. So if there are still problems, you can narrow down the list of culprits. With Kubiak, I think he's good at the gameplanning and talent-finding, but I have no idea how good he is at all the other things a head coach is responsible for: managing the mental side of the game, keeping players focused, even-keeled, knowing how to push the right buttons, etc. It's impossible to say because we don't have a comparison point with any of these players - none of the core guys have played in any other system under any other coach.

 

I'd prefer Dungy.

My list follows

1. Dungy
2. Cowher
3. Depends on the interview but I rank Shottenheimer, Shanahan, Gruden and keeping Kubiak together here. It will take a great interview from one of these three to overthrow Kubiak. I mean great.

 

Man, if we got Dungy the "where's the passion/fire, Gary?!" crowd would throw him out on his butt after week 2.

 

Dungy is a classy guy, but I have no interest in him.

 

Lacking passion and appearing to be a deer in the headlights are two different things. I can accept the cool calm/never rattled approach long as as I don't get the complete deer in the head lights feeling every time I see you in a crucial situation. At any critical moment they show Gary he appears to want to be anywhere else in the world at that moment, it has nothing to do with fire or passion.

Using Gary's own quote, I've heard this attributed to him at least twice when talking about players.

He'll say that the game isn't too big for a certain player; this year Cushing and last year it was Slaton, well, the appearance I get is that the game is in fact too big for our current head coach, that has nothing to do with passion.

 

That isn't what I've been hearing about Gary for the last 4 years.

It is usually centered around "passion" and "desire" and *barf* "fire".

 

Someone here even suggested his problem was he doesn't give good enough speeches.

 

I don't want a yeller and a screamer or a Cable coach knocking out people guy just cuz but anytime they pan over to Gary at a crucial point, what is he doing?

I'll tell ya, he's got his face buried so far in that laminated play sheet you'd think it had a picture of Megan Fox with two in the pink and one in the stink.

You can almost hear him thinking to himself, just keep looking at it, soon the cameras will have to go back to the on the field action. It's his precious, his protector from actually having to do the things a head coach does.

It's a shame too because he has improved the talent level and often says the right things but his on field approach leaves a lot to be desired.

I would love him as a coordinator but as the head coach, meh, no thanks, he looks like a bit player and not the star.

 

Gruden is too busy slobbing VY's jock to coach at this moment.

My choice would be the chin, or Holmgren.

 

May I ask why? I'm pretty impressed with that winning record, also with what people around the league say.

 

not to mention the fact of how he built up tampa bay and then took the colts to the promised land.

I also think he'd make the fewest changes to personnel and assist in further developing DD's favorite qb (and i don't mean colt the unreal mccoy)

 

The thing that I like about Cowher is that he had his success while he shuttled players in and out. Dungy has been successful, but his winning teams came as a result of having Hall of Famers the entire time. What did he do in Indy that you can point to as something he achieved? Peyton is one of the greatest QBs ever, and other than a stretch of a few games, Indy has only ever won a damn thing because of Manning. I find it hard to evaluate Dungy because of that.

Cowher on the other hand was the head coach of a team that ran a system. Under his watch coordinators on both sides of the ball came and went; didn't hurt the team. Players left for big money FA deals; no impact on the team. I think he has proven that he plays a part in his team's success, where I'm not sure Dungy has.

 

And Casey Hampton stated in an article a few days ago that if Cowher were to be the coach of the Texans next year, he'd take a hometown discount and come with him...

That's our NT right there in a 3-4. He's been pretty good this year, and barring injury, would have a couple of good years left for us. We need a veteran anyway.

 

Agreed! But, I asked you about Dungy?

I think it's even less valid to penalize a coach for having that. You're also ignoring the very, very strong unit he built up in Tampa Bay. Gruden came in, rode it to the SuperBowl the first year, then rode it into the ground.

How on earth is it a discredit to a coach that his team stayed together for a decade? That they *wanted* to play there? Seriously, I don't understand that line of reasoning at all except that of course the talent on the field certainly gets most of the credit for all of the winning.

But he did a superb job, to say the least.

Oh, no disagreements at all here. I didn't ask why you thought Cowher is better (as in fact I agree with you completely on this). Just wanted your thoughts on Dungy.

Truthfully, neither of those guys would disappoint me. I have higher confidence in either of them than Kubiak at this point.

 

I don't discredit Tony that he won with great players, but it makes it harder for me to evaluate his actual ability as a head coach when he is winning due to those great players. I'm not a believer that head coaches inspire teams to win, so I don't just look at records to determine whether a coach is good. I want to know how they do at clock management, how do they handle free agents leaving their team, how are they at fitting players into their systems, etc.

Tony Dungy was a defensive coach that won big in Indy because of an offense that he had nothing to do with while his defense was consistently pretty bad. How much credit does he get for that? I'm not saying I think he's a bad coach, because I don't believe he is. What I do think is he's a very good guy who players like to play for that has been very fortunate in his head coaching career.

I would take him over Kubiak if that was my choice, but to me there is really only one candidate out there that I would be excited to go get and that is Bill Cowher.

 

Regarding the Dungy/Gruden thing in Tampa. I saw it happen. And for the most part, Gruden came in and tweaked a couple of things on the offense and took them to the Super Bowl. Dungyball as it pertained to this team was keeping the other team under 17 points and hoping the offense/special teams could muster up enough to win the game. This generally involved a turnover in the opponent's territory for some quick points.(Usually a FG)

He took the team to the NFC title game and had an impressive day against the Rams. 11-6 was quite the accomplishment for them. But the following seasons of going 10-6 and 9-7 and losing (in bad fashion i might add) in the first round of the play-offs was what cost him his job. He got them to the hump, but could not get them over it.

Dungy's close to the vest defensive mentality can take a team with a solid defense to a play-off berth. I am just not sure how far past that he can get them, without a HOF QB. When your focus on offense is running the ball and not making mistakes, you arent going to beat yourself. Most of the games Tampa won the other team helped by being the team that made mistakes. It seems the only team Dungy would take the reins off against was the Rams. I used to get league pass to watch Tampa play. It was very frustrating watching the offense. If you UT fans think their offense was predictably bad before VY got there, they got nothing on Tampa.


The Dungy/Manning marriage was a match made in heaven. Think about what Dungy needed in Tampa, and then think about what Manning needed in Indy.

They say Gruden took Dungy's players to the Super Bowl. Well, why didn't Dungy take them?? They even added a Stud WR to the team in 2000 but that didnt help much.

 

Your post is everything I think about it Bucman.