Rich Kotite Was Ahead of Bill Belichick and Pete Carroll in Head Coaching Rankings 20 Years Ago
By Jason Lisk
As a writer, you hope the things you write stand the test of time. In a world where predictions, rankings, and lists are valued highly because of shareability, sometimes those things are better left buried in the ether. They are popular and get read; they are also dangerous. Hey, I once espoused the virtues of Derek Anderson among a litany of things, so I am not immune.
I found a ranking of NFL coaches from the 1994 season-twenty years ago. Bill Belichick and Pete Carroll are showing that it is not just a young man’s game, as the two coaches were both in charge of teams that season as well (Belichick in Cleveland, Carroll with the Jets). How were they viewed then?
Dom Amore of the Hartford Courant endeavored to rank the NFL coaches from 1-28 then (yes, it’s so long ago that four franchises weren’t in existence).
"How do you really know when a coach is doing a good job? How can you judge how a coach stacks up? The record is only a start. To rank a coach, it takes a subjective mix of his current record vs. expectations; his accomplishments; potential for success; tactical/technical expertise; personality and presence. And, most important, personal opinion."
That mix of criteria led Amore to rank Dave Wannstedt (#6) and Rich Kotite (#8) ahead of Bill Belichick (#11) and Pete Carroll (#25).
Of Wannstedt, he wrote, “Can you believe Steve Walsh is 7-2 as their [Bears] starting quarterback? You’ve got to believe Wannstedt will win his Super Bowl within five years.”
To be fair, neither Belichick nor Carroll won their Super Bowl within five years either.
On Kotite: “The five-game losing streak has put his playoff hopes, and his job, in
jeopardy, but despite his tripping over a quarterback controversy, few are as
respected as Kotite in NFL circles . . . If owner Jeff Lurie does fire him, Kotite will get a new job quickly.”
Kotite was fired after that season, and quickly hired by the Jets . . . where he went 4-28 in two seasons.
On Belichick: “. . . but Belichick needs work on quarterback decisions.” Finding Tom Brady took care of that.
On Carroll: “[his] enthusiasm was refreshing, but his players did not respond to it.” Carroll, like Kotite, would be fired after that season. He was “enthusiastic” then, notably having given a choke signal to Pete Stoyanovich in a game when he was defensive coordinator (only to have Stoyanovich hit the game winner a few minutes later). Lest you think Amore’s view was abnormal, the Jets fired Carroll after only one season specifically to hire Kotite.
I asked Amore–who still works for the Hartford Courant now covering Connecticut basketball as the beat writer, and who was selected as the Connecticut Sportswriter of the Year from 2011-2013, if he had any recollections about the process, response, and whether there was anything particularly controversial to that ranking.
" It was an editor’s idea, as I recall, and I was reluctant. As a beat writer, I’m not much for rankings and lists, not then or now. Of course, the concept of lists has been done to death by today, it was relatively novel then. It was a different world, the internet was in its infancy, so very few people outside of Connecticut, the Courant’s print readers, saw it. It was picked up and distributed on what was then the Times–Mirror wire so some other papers around the country ran it. I don’t remember getting any email or letters about it at all. I do remember going on a radio show in the Midwest somewhere, maybe Milwaukee, where they saw it and wanted to ask about it. I have no recollection of who I ranked where, but as I remember it basically reflected consensus opinion at the time, including perceptions of these two coaches, so it didn’t create much buzz. "
As that shows, a lot of things have changed in the last twenty years. A list like that would be sure to find the eyeballs through social media that would be most likely to complain (How could you rank ___ so low?). Among those things is the perception of these two coaches. Belichick was fired a year later, Carroll was fired just a few weeks later, and now here they are, better than ever.