Ten Years is More Than Enough to Coach in NFL

Dick Vermeil was the first NFL coach to use the term “burnout” when he quit the Eagles in 1982. That was after seven years in Philadelphia.

That was not the term used by Marty Schottenheimer when he quit this week. It was not the term used by Jimmy Johnson when he decided to leave the Dolphins, then reneged. Nor was it the term used by Mike Holmgren when he took off from Green Bay to Seattle 10 days ago.

But it should be.

“I think most of us think that 10 years is about the maximum,” says Marv Levy, who retired after 12 seasons with the Bills last year at age 72.

At the start of next season, the coaches with the longest terms with any one team will be Bill Cowher of the Steelers and Dennis Green of the Vikings, each with seven seasons. “And I feel like I started over when Red McCombs bought the team,” Green says.

That’s almost what’s needed to keep coaches fresh--a change of scenery or a change in ownership.

Dan Reeves and Bill Parcells, who will be coaching in championship games today, are each with their third team. Parcells could become the first coach to lead three franchises to Super Bowls and Reeves could become the third to lead different teams to two (Parcells and Don Shula are the others).

When next season starts, nine coaches will be in their first season with their teams and 22 of the 31 will be in their third season or less, an incredibly high turnover ratio. The only ones with coaches in longer terms are Pittsburgh, Jacksonville, Tennessee, Denver, Miami, Minnesota, Arizona, Tampa Bay and Washington, where Norv Turner’s future is uncertain with new ownership taking over.

It was almost 10 rookies until Johnson, shaken by his mother’s death and upset with his team’s inability to progress beyond the second round of the playoffs, quite. But he was talked into changing his mind about leaving the Dolphins.

Losing is the main reason coaches leave. If you don’t win, owners pull the trigger quickly, as Georgia Frontiere and John Shaw did with Rich Brooks, now Atlanta’s defensive coordinator. Brooks was 13-19 in two seasons in St. Louis; the higher profile Vermeil, who replaced him, is 9-23.

But there are other factors.

Schottenheimer had the best winning percentage of any active coach entering the season. But he was 5-11 in the playoffs and this year he went through his first losing season ever with one of the favorites for the AFC title.

“Over the long haul, we didn’t get it done,” says Schottenheimer, who now goes to the head of the class for filling next year’s coaching vacancies.

Parcells left the Giants in 1991 for health reasons, but he was ready to go anyway, squabbling with management and looking for a job where he could let his ego run rampant. He got it in New England, then his ego clashed with owner Bob Kraft’s. Parcells landed with the Jets, where owner Leon Hess stays deep in the background.

Reeves spent 12 seasons (too many!) with the Broncos, clashed with the front office and John Elway, then moved on to the Giants, where he was particularly upset with Tom Boisture, the personnel director, and ran into a stubborn (and successful) general manager in George Young.

Now he runs the whole show in Atlanta and has been successful.

Holmgren got the whole show in Seattle.

But friends say another reason he left Green Bay after seven seasons was for a change of scene. Green Bay’s a wonderful place for a while, but Holmgren, who grew up in San Francisco, needed something more cosmopolitan. And some of his players suggested perhaps they needed a change of coaches, too.

That happens quite often, too.

“I should have left earlier,” Jim Mora said after quitting the Saints midway through his 11th season in 1996. Now he’s got a new start, rebuilding the Colts from the bottom, and is somewhat calmer than he was in New Orleans.

There is something about coaches that makes it hard to keep idle.