Junc we agree on something! Football is very often decided by fumbles, mistakes, etc. but most of the time the best teams make it through to the end. Once they're in one game elimination the most talented team doesn't always win. I think the Rams may well have been better than the first Pats SB team just like I believe the Bills were better than the Giant team that beat them in the SB. In both of those cases the lesser opposition was still a very fine football team, arguably top 3 talent in the league and in both of those cases the difference in the coaching game plan, was the difference in the win. Both of those teams still had the horses. Like you I happen to believe the Pats other than their first SB have had the most talent in football, in fact last year when the playoffs began I thought they had the best team in football. Shanahan actually outcoached BB in the playoffs last year.
There has never been a super bowl won by a team without topflight talent. The QB might have been a journeyman, there might have been a runningback by committee, but somewhere on that team there were three or four supremely talented game changers. Coaching alone will not get you by the New England Patriots and Pittsburgh Steelers in the playoffs. You need to have some game changers playing for you also. On the Jets the players who might qualify at this point are Chad Pennington, Jonathan Vilma, Laveranues Coles and Kerry Rhodes. Whether that will be enough to go far remains to be seen.
The 'talent' that you are see is perceived talent is accentuated by the coaching and the system. Reasonably speaking, everyone in the NFL has talent, some have it to greater degrees than others. The point is that it does not matter how much talent you have if the system is poor is the discipline is lacking. If you took Norv Turner and put him in NE, I can guarantee you within 2 years or sooner they become losers. There are plenty of supertalanted teams/players that never win. It does not matter if you have 2 or 5 probowl players on your team it the rest of the guys or 'normal' talent are not in shape, cause penalties, are out of position, or for whatever reason do not perform there function. Further when you have a supporting cast or normal talent that do not proform their dutites as the system would require you DON"T have many probowlers on your team. Brady is not a pro bowler is the receivers drop his passes and the if the offensive line does not pass block...etc..etc. Coaches that insist that things are done correctly (conditioning, lack of penalties, execution) and can install and intelligent scheme win...period. You an put a bunch of pro bowler together and have some flunkie coach a al Kotite, Turner, Coslet run it into the ground. It was often said that Bill Parcells could take his and beat you and then take yours and beat you. The point of my post is not to argue who is a great QB and who is not. The point of the post is more of a contrast of coaches and systems that win vs those that don't. We just came from a regime that tolerated players who dropped passes and missed tackles and missed assignments, and wasted timeouts and did not demand conditioning and that had poor game planning and poor adjustments and poor clock mgt...etc. With Mangini already we have seen many of these things vanish already. Whether he will be able to deliver a winner remains to be seen. But I will tell you this. Teams that are run in a disciplined, organized fashion have a huge advantage over those that are not regardless of the perceived talent of the teams.
The talent difference between the best team and the worst team in the NFL in this generation isn't much. Sure, there are some keys - having a QB, a dependable RB, etc. Overall though - as the Patriots have proven - in the salary cap era - coaching is more important than overall talent. The job of a coach (as I posted back in Herm's first year in NY) is to maximize the ability and talents of his players, and to put them in a position to succeed. I think that Mangini is the kind of coach who goes by that philosophy, and therefore will be successfull in the NFL of today.
You hit the nail on the head. He puts them in a position to win and insists that they do all the little things necessary to succeed. It is a reason for Jets fans to be optimistic.
Herm did that, he took a team that hadn't been in the playoffs in 3 years and just twice in 14 years and guided us to 3 in his first 4 years.
Team vs Talent: The USA just sent our "NBA SuperStars" to the world basketball games and they got their asses kicked by Greece. The excuse was TeamUSA had the worlds best individual talent, but lacked team unity. The Greece team, while no match talent wise, had been playing together for several years and played as one efficient "unit" vs individuals trying to make the highlite reals. In this case, "team" beat "talent".
Herm obviously did some things right. Unfortunately it did too many other things wrong to acheive his ultimate goal.
Team vs Talent yes but the thread really was about coaching vs talent. I'm betting that if team USA with the same coaching had played together for 4 years and Greece with the same coaching had been playing together for a few months the results would have been somewhat different. To argue that the Greek coaching staff got more out of lesser players in this case doesn't really make the argument for me. You think the Bulls would have won all those Champoinships without Michael even with Phil? I don't buy it.
Well it is the coach that establishes everything about the team isn't it? His point was a good one in a different sport. It goes to prove that when players are not on the same page (regardless of the reason...time, dicipline..system...etc..) that talent gets diminished and that is really the point of this thread. Maybe it is a function of time, system, or whatever. The point still remains that talent can easily be deminished by lack of orgnaization and discipline and that talent is always enhanced by a good system and a good manager will insist that the good system is executed properly.
You take out Rodney Harrison and Tom Brady and BB can't coach them to SBs. The Patriots were probably one of the most talented teams for the past 5 years, with injuries doing them in last year. The Pioli/BB system works because they get players to take paycuts, so they wind up with better talent than everyone else.
As for Herm, about 20 other coaches in the league probably could have achieved the same or better results than he did with the Jets the past 5 years. Do you really think BB or Parcells would have done worse than Herm?
You remove the supporting cast that the coaching staff forces to do everything right and Harrison and Brady get maginalized.
I do not see how this helps your position of coaching being more important than talent. It looks like you concede that these two are important. You've taken a very difficult position to defend. In essence, do you think BB could go and coach the Raiders, Titans etc to SBs? On paper they do seem to have talent, but they're missing it in probably the most important position.
I think if BB went to the raiders or the titans they would be better teams, yes. It is easy to defend. Do you not agree if there are two teams of equal talent that the better diciplined, organized, intelligent team is the better one? The logic is pretty simple on this one.
Yes, I do, but that doesn't hurt my position at all. Your argument is that coaching overrides talent, whereas my argument is talent is still necessary. Do you see how my position is not hurt at all with my acceptance of this statement, whereas yours is hurt as soon as you admit Brady and Harrison are necessary components? If you want to talk logic, well, you basically admitted you lost here. But to drive the point home, if a coach that has no talent is a bad coach, then that means coach's abilities are not static, but rather swing wildly year to year. How else do you explain dramatically different records for Gruden for example, Parcell when he is rebuilding, etc.? How can a coach be good one year, and then somehow forget everything that made him good the next? If talent is really "overrated" and "a coach that complains about having no talent is a bad coach" then that means coaches become bad overnight, and then also magically become good. Their coaching ability, if it was the same, and talent didn't matter, would leave them with roughly the same win totals consistently. Here's the part where you backpedal and try to claim you meant something else, if you take winning arguments on the internet seriously. Or you can man up, and admit you misspoke and take what all of us have been saying into consideration.
First, there is nowhere in the post where I say that talent is unimportant. You are trying to stretch the argument to the absurd to make your point. Parity in the NFL today allows there to be a small differential between the best team and the worst teams talent. Where did I admit this? Who ever said a coach that has no talent is a bad coach? Nowhere in this post does it say that talent did not mater. Coaches need time to develop talent. NFL teams are transient the players move in and out. The systems are complicated and they are not mastered over night. It takes time to develop their talent pool. So if enough players are lost for whatever reason it will take time for a coach to develop his players to a high level no matter how good he is. Don't lose the point on this though. The better coaches with the better systems don't fall as hard and they come back much faster. Parcells took what was thought to be a talentless team in 96 and flipped them into a contender in 97 and into a championship game in 98. Belicheck did it in his second year. Again the NFL is a transient league now. It is not like the 70s or 80s when you had players that were tied to the team for life. You have to have a system in place to deal with these issues. BB has utterly dominated the NFL since 02 and there have been times like last year when they were decimated by injury. But you never hear them complain because that is what losers do. They have a seemingly endless supply of players that they can "plug in" to the system and they make it work. IT IS NOT A COINCIDENCE. It is all part of a plan. The plan is similiar to the one which seem to be installed here where Pete Kendall can go down and we can "plug in" Norm "nobody" Katnik and not miss a beat. When you have a coach that plans for contingency and works with his back ups and insists that they are prepared and ready to play at a high level at all times, as we have seen in NE you minimize you down time and maximize your uptime and you are always competitive. Not exactly, ball is in your court tiger
I think you really need to read your first post, and the other posts you made in this thread. It is fairly clear to everyone that you devalue talent on a team. I even quoted some of your language, only for you to claim you didn't say it... Are you even reading the same thread as the rest of us dude?
I have been consistant and clear on my point form the get go. If there are disccrepancies list them otherwise case closed.
