Coordinator of NFL’s best offense cannot get NFL head coaching job for, er, some reason
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After his second come-from-behind Super Bowl win, Andy Reid went out of his way to praise his coaching staff for playing a huge role in coming up with the gorgeous play designs that made the Chiefs offense essentially unstoppable in the second half. But in a league in which being Aaron Rodgers’s kombucha pourer can get you a head coaching job and then an offensive coordinator job immediately after spectacularly failing in the head coaching job, Eric Bieniemy cannot get hired as head coach:
With the Arizona Cardinals announcing Tuesday the hiring of Jonathan Gannon as head coach, the 2023 NFL head-coach hiring cycle ended.
Last we saw Gannon, he was the Philadelphia Eagles‘ defensive coordinator, and his unit gave up 17 fourth-quarter points in a 38-35 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl. The Eagles barely got a hand on, let alone sacked, Patrick Mahomes, who played with one good ankle.
Yet the man who has been credited over and over as being a significant part of the Chiefs’ offensive success, the one who found and exploited — twice — a flaw in the Eagles’ defense, is essentially jobless at the moment.
It’s clear at this point that Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy will never be an NFL head coach. But that shouldn’t stop anyone from repeatedly pointing out how absurd it is that he isn’t, especially when a man he just went toe-to-toe with and beat got a head job.
Look, some of you might be tired of reading stories and columns like this, and in a lot of ways, there’s fatigue for all parties involved. But for all of the interview mandates, draft pick rewards and accelerator programs, nothing has changed. It’s frustrating and sometimes enraging to watch year after year as good, smart leaders who have devoted their professional lives to climbing up the NFL ladder get passed over or flat-out ignored.
Unless and until something changes, you’re going to keep seeing headlines about it.
The fact that Bieniemy can’t get a head coaching job but the much less experienced coach whose head Reid and Bieniemy just spent an evening dunking in a toilet on a prominent international broadcast quickly can really does say it all. This is particularly striking in light of the fact that Reid’s coaching tree had been relatively successful.
…I know the body of work is better than this, although you have to be concerned by how much of Philadelphia’s defensive success this year came against bottom-tier QBs, but still I’m kinda thinking Gannon could maybe use a little more seasoning:
You can’t pass up on this kind of defensive mastermindhttps://t.co/ihLmylUkkR— Stephen Mann (@themann1086) February 16, 2023