Matt Loede
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If there was ever a ‘sure thing’ in the National Football League coaching circle this offseason, it was that Kansas City Chiefs OC Eric Bieniemy was finally going to land a head coaching position.
When the regular season ended, it seemed like teams like the Texans, Chargers, Eagles and Falcons were lining up to get the chance to chat with Bieniemy.
Instead, the Texans hired surprise candidate Ravens assistant David Culley as their new coach, thus ending another offseason of coaching changes that again left Bieniemy out in the cold.
So what is it? Why is Bieniemy not getting to the finish line of a head coaching position when all we seem to hear every year is how great of a football mind he is and how much he has to do with the success of the Chiefs’ explosive offense?
One person who is flat out stunned that Bieniemy hasn’t been plucked away from the Chiefs is franchise quarterback Patrick Mahomes, who made an appearance on Thursday on The Dan Patrick Show.
Mahomes said via PFT that he thought Bieniemy’s leadership in the locker room and his input on plays would be enough to get him a head coaching job.
“If you look at his track record, the way he’s able to coach us, the way he’s able to lead men, to be able to lead a locker room of people from every different background, every different race, everything like that, and to be the leader of a locker room is a special talent,” Mahomes said.
“He’s able to do that. And the way he’s able to go about calling plays throughout the game. We have Coach Reid, and Coach Reid calls plays. But there’s a ton of input from Coach Bieniemy, and he calls a ton of plays in our game plan and it gets overlooked.”
Maybe it will take Bieniemy leaving Kansas City for a job that includes an assistant coaching title to finally convince someone to give him a head coaching job.
For whatever the reason, Bieniemy is a bridesmaid in the coaching circle of the NFL yet again this year, but winning another Super Bowl a week from Sunday could probably take a lot of that pain away.
Maybe Bienemy isn’t as good of a head coaching candidate as the media portrays him to be. He interviewed for 6 jobs this year and has interviewed in past years. No one has pulled the trigger.
Because there is a difference between the best person for the job and the best person to satisfy cosmetic diversity.
Exactly. Other black coaches were hired this offseason. So what is it about Bienemy that doesn’t land him the job? Some of it is fit, but a lot of it is the interview.
See also Matt Nagy. Nagy is Bienemy, except he coaches quarterbacks, which is a probably the most important offensive coach nowadays after coordinator. Nagy was supposed to bring all this offensive innovation to the Bears and basically was Brian Billick. Billick won earlier because of great defense, once the DC left both offense and defense regressed and ultimately team failed, where Bears are heading. I think Pederson was the only Reid disciple who is as innovative, he just got fckd by a poor job by the GM. Bienemy must not be that great a salesman if he couldn’t get the Texans job but the guy who coordinates the Ravens PASSING game could.
and 65 years old to boot.
He isn’t landing jobs because of his rap sheet, specifically the “grabbing a woman by the neck” charge. He also was banned from the University of Colorado for 1 year. He’s had a DUI, etc. However, most of these things happens in the 1990s and early 2000s. He has been clean for the last 10 years to my knowledge. He is a catch-22: teams are accused of racism if they don’t hire him, but hire him and your team endorses battery of women.
You know what. Maybe people are rethinking coaching trees, like Bill BendAKneeAChick’s. Bill’s tree doesn’t have the track record, like a Bill Walsh, and with Brady’s success in the NFC, it’s only going to wither more. Andy Reid’s may lead in the same direction…
Considering the coaching hirings over the past few years, his resume is equal to or better than most of these hires.
Maybe we have to begin to think that his past trangressions of bad behavior may have come back to haunt him and the owners of these are bunch of hypocrites and cowards.
They will sign players that have bad behavior, but will not hire a coach with bad behavior.
I mean Andy Reid is probably a lot of the reason why his assistant coaches are propped up…then they get exposed when Andy’s out of the picture and they get the head job.
I’m sure Bieniemy deserves a lot of praise and all the love he’s getting from KC for his locker room leadership, but game time…just look who’s got the laminated card up over his face calling plays. And who goes and sits with Patrick on the bench to discuss strategy.
What we see on TV is Eric shuttling players, talking to them, sometimes a sheet of folded paper in his hand.
Remember back when the whole mask thing started and how Andy Reid’s face shield was fogging up while he had the laminated card in front of his face trying to call plays?
KC is to be congratulated for the PR campaign to get one of their guys a HC job, but the GMs and team presidents he’s talking to, they all know who the OC is in KC.
I agree with everybody that says there’s been a ton of bad hires over the last decade, but most of them were legit OCs and DCs, and most crapped out when they stopped doing what they were good at and decided they wanted to run the whole show and turn off the lights at night.
You’ve got to believe Teams hire, sign, or draft who they “believe” give them the best chance to win. They don’t care what you look like if you’re talented, can coach, play, work hard, stay out of trouble and win. Obviously looking at how many players are arrested each year they don’t really even care if you stay out of trouble. Personality? Belichick has the personality of a wet sock. Teams don’t care. These teams want proof you can coach, that you have a clear plan laid out to win for the team you’re going to, know who your staff will be, what changes you’ll make and why, and commitment. Period. That’s it. I don’t believe it’s some big political thing.
Here’s the catch. Obviously, some teams’ have no clue what makes a winner, and wouldn’t know it if it bit them. They continue to lose because they can’t recognize a winner, so you can’t expect them to make good personnel decisions. These teams often have ownership with a lot of $ who don’t know what on earth they’re doing, or management who just aren’t good at identifying winners. I believe if your truly that good at this level someone’s going to come after you.
Teams would hire my dog if they thought he was the best choice to win games with. EB apparently interviews terribly in additional to having some issues in his past. A job is not a right, you have to win the interview to get the job.
Let’s see. Big time operations like an NFL team, rely on more than just interviews when searching for a candidate. Of course, bad choices are made all the time. However, in this day in age, we outside the realm, do not know what NFL insiders know about EB’s past incidents. Maybe every quote or victom account has been publicly released to protect the victim. The allocations could be far worse than we all know? If PETA will surround a stadium because of Michael Vick, we do not think the “me too” crowd will use EB’s hire as a way to garner attention? Sure, M2 could picket KC now, however, EB is not the management face of the franchise. Just as if a punter had the same charges as Michael Vick, I doubt you would see the protests. On top of all that, EB may not be head coaching material. EB may go into the interviews and come across as a loosy goosy players coach with no dicipline. Of coarse, Andy Reid and KC players will back their guy up. There’s people who think Kaepernick could still be Tom Brady #2, forgetting Colin’s failure the final two seasons in SF.
Has he even interviewed? Maybe he isn’t interested in the available jobs?