Research shows Cardinals buck NFL success trend by hiring coach with defensive background

If the Arizona Cardinals are trying to tank this season for the No. 1 overall draft pick, General Manager Monti Ossenfort has been playing the odds — literally from the moment he hired a head coach with no experience calling or designing offensive plays in the NFL.

According to a wide-ranging research paper co-authored by Filipp Velgach and Adam Ziv-el, there is a “massive chasm” separating the success of two types of NFL head coaches hired in the last decade: those with and without experience calling or designing offensive plays in the NFL.

“It’s not the only variable that matters,” Ziv-el said, “but it does seem to be an extremely powerful one.”

Velgach teaches a course called “Sports in America” at Lake Forest Academy, an elite college prep school in suburban Chicago; Ziv-el is a data scientist for an education tech startup in Massachusetts. Their research might be of significant interest to fans of the Cardinals and Indianapolis Colts, who start the 2023 season led by the defensive and offense coordinators, respectively, of last year's Super Bowl runners-up, the Philadelphia Eagles: Jonathan Gannon and Shane Steichen.

Head coaches hired in the past 10 years with experience calling or designing offensive plays in the NFL, often as an offensive coordinator, enjoyed higher winning percentages, deeper playoff runs and superior records in head-to-head matchups against coaches hired in the past decade without commensurate offensive experience at the NFL level, like former defensive coordinators and college coaches, according to data from 2013 to 2022.

The advantage only grows as the stakes of games are raised.

In the past six years, since 2017, nearly two-thirds of the head coaches hired with offensive play-calling or design experience in the NFL have a regular-season record above .500, while only 15% of the other coaches hired in that span have winning records.

Coaches with experience calling or designing offensive plays in the NFL were also more than twice as likely to make the playoffs, while those without were far more likely to have objectively bad seasons.

“My sense is that the NFL does know about this,” Velgach said. “Because it was pretty obvious to us. We didn’t dig for too long to discover the trend. … The data is too striking and too easy to find to not be known by the guys who are paid a lot of money to do these data dives for the league.”

'A clear distinction and deviation'

The “offensive strategist” archetype, in their study, excludes NFL coaches hired with experience calling or designing offensive plays solely at the college level, like former Cardinals and Texas Tech coach Kliff Kingsbury.

This subset is grouped with what they term the “NOPE” archetype, the coaches who have no experience calling or designing offensive plays in the NFL. This includes the Cardinals' Gannon, who was Philadelphia's defensive coordinator from 2021-22. Interim coaches were excluded from the study.

Thirty-one of the 72 head coaches hired by NFL teams in the last decade, 43%, had no experience calling or designing offensive plays in the NFL, according to the research, and produced diminishing returns compared to their 41 counterparts.

The NOPEs accounted for just 25% of this group’s playoff appearances, 17% of its conference title game appearances and one Super Bowl appearance, compared to 10 Super Bowl appearances and six championships won by teams that hired the offensive archetype.

“There’s definitely a statistically significant difference in regular season record, and then even more of a clear distinction and deviation as we get later and later into the season,” Ziv-el said. “And that’s when we really started getting excited. Oh, man. It’s actually increasing, the importance of this variable. Especially in the last five years, this trend has emerged where the offensive coaches just seem to be absolutely dominating the defensive coaches in the postseason.”

To be sure, head coaches with offensive play-calling experience in the NFL are not guaranteed success, and account for a sizable portion of bad coaching hires.

And the modern NFL has its share of Super Bowl-winning defensive gurus, including Bill Belichick, Mike Tomlin, John Harbaugh and Pete Carroll (hired in 2000, 2007, 2008 and 2010, respectively), which the researchers dubbed the “Big Four.”

But their success has not been replicated by a NOPE hired in the last decade.

“In the last 10 years, there hasn’t been another Tomlin hired. There hasn’t been another Belichick hired,” Velgach said. “(Sean) McDermott is probably the only guy that comes close. And (Mike) Vrabel. But they flame out in the playoffs.”

'Something there that is relevant'

Ossenfort, the first-year Cardinals GM, previously worked in New England with Belichick, the most decorated coach in NFL history, and in Tennessee with Vrabel, a Belichick disciple with four winning seasons in five years (and a 2-3 playoff record) with the Titans.

Given his background, it’s reasonable to expect Ossenfort would attempt to mold the Cardinals in a similar vein and hire an up-and-coming, defense-minded coach in Gannon, who spent two years as the defensive coordinator in Philadelphia.

Last season, Gannon’s defense led the NFL in sacks and rated among the best in the league in yards allowed, points allowed and takeaways, helping the Eagles reach Super Bowl 57 in Glendale, where they surrendered a season-high 38 points in a loss and allowed the Chiefs to score on every possession in the second half.

Both the Eagles and Chiefs are led by head coaches Nick Sirianni and Andy Reid, respectively, whose previous job included calling or designing offensive plays in the NFL. And Steichen, the Colts' first-year head coach, has been an offensive coach for three NFL teams since 2013, the past two seasons as the Eagles' offensive coordinator.

“Holistically, our take was that by having this experience,” Velgach said, “it’s kind of like management experience or experience as a CEO, where they know how to facilitate and help gameplan in a way, even if they aren’t literally the one calling the plays, there is something there that is relevant.”

In the nearly three decades since Arizona first hosted the Big Game — Super Bowl 30 between Dallas and Pittsburgh in 1996 at Sun Devil Stadium, featuring a clash of NOPEs in Barry Switzer and Bill Cowher — 14 Super Bowls have been won by offensive strategists and 14 have been won by NOPEs, an even split.

Belichick has won six, all with Tom Brady at quarterback.

Pete Carroll was the last NOPE, other than Belichick, to lead his team to a Super Bowl victory, when the Seattle Seahawks crushed the Denver Broncos to cap the 2013 season.

Belichick last lifted the Lombardi Trophy to close the 2018 season, besting offensive wunderkind Sean McVay and the Los Angeles Rams 13-3 in Super Bowl 53.

Offensive-minded head coaches hired in the last decade who won the Super Bowl: Gary Kubiak, Doug Pederson, Andy Reid (twice), Bruce Arians (with Brady in Tampa) and McVay.

“There is so much more that you have control of, as a coach, when it comes to offensive play-calling versus defensive,” Ziv-el said, comparing the inherent advantage of playing offense to having the first-move advantage in chess. “You get to dictate the structure of everything that’s going to unfold, whereas on the defensive side, it’s so reactive.”

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‘When it really matters'

The research study found no statistically significant advantage between coaching archetypes in head-to-head matchups during the first two-thirds of the regular season. But beginning in Week 13, offensive strategists beat NOPEs 65% of the time, covered the spread in 59% of those matchups (a sample of nearly 180 games) and won a larger share of close contests, triumphing in 60% (45 of 75) of the games decided by a touchdown or less, foreshadowing their playoff success.

“Offensive coaches maybe aren’t showing their hand, they’re getting to learn their offense early in the season,” Velgach said. “But when it really matters, when those wins are at a premium, that’s where the difference shines.”

In the past three years, more than half of NFL franchises replaced their head coaches, some teams doing so multiple times.

Last year, 10 teams hired a new head coach. Nine of these 10 finished with a better record against NOPEs than against offensive strategists.

Seven of the 10 had experience calling or designing offensive plays in the NFL. This group went a combined 35-19-1 (.648) against NOPEs during the 2022 season, but just 15-30 (.333) against veteran offensive coaches, perhaps demonstrating the value of head coaching experience.

Four of these seven nevertheless led their teams to the playoffs.

Two advanced beyond the wild card round.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Todd Bowles was the only newly-hired NOPE to make the playoffs. The Bucs had a sub-.500 record and lost in the first round.

“If you want to have a successful coach, you probably shouldn’t hire a defensive guy,” Velgach said. “I’m a huge Steelers fan, and I actually love the idea of these defensive, hard-nosed coaches. It’s just that all the data is pointing to the fact that they make kind of lousy head coaches. With some exceptions, of course.”

Frequency of achieving success, by coaching archetype

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Cardinals buck trend: Study shows NFL coaches with offensive resume win more