GunnerBill

He was. Although he was under Ray Rhodes first. There are a few guys who feature in both the Walsh tree and the Parcells tree as I said in the post: Payton, Daboll, Campbell being the three main ones.

Great for Kelvin. Helped I think by the fact the Dline coach who was "next in line" had already been poached by Vrabel to be DC in New England. The Lions staff being plucked. EDIT: Ben Johnson has nicked Antwaan Randle El as his receivers coach and JT Barret as his QB coach too. One presumes Mark Brunell will take the Detroit OC job.

In that scenario? Easy call. Go for 2. Josh Allen from the 2 yard line or Pat Mahomes having the ball again? Easy. The harder call is same situation, 30 seconds left. Where I think it is really tricky to call. I'd lean kick I think because I want the Chiefs to come out playing more conservative and certainly in their own half only having 3 downs not 4. I think 30 seconds, a couple of timeouts and 4 down football your chances of stopping them are next to nil.

Great news.

Coaching staffs were just much smaller generally.

I'm not that old.

I knew the Carter story. Wasn't aware of the extent of Brown's tree. Weren't Lombardi and Landry on the same Giants staff at one poin too?

Similarities in that he liked to use dime in particular but he was blitz heavier.

Seattle is on there. MacDonald from the Harbaugh branch of the Reid/Holmgren branch.

Of the five "branches" of the tree, three are sourced from offense and Seifert and Rhodes are sourced from defense. And what they both ran were 4-3 schemes that played zone coverage on early downs and then lots of heavy nickel and dime on 3rd down. I think that is pretty influential on the defenses you see in the league today. It was the basis of the 4-3 under Pete Carroll won a Superbowl with in Seattle and heavily influences a lot of the schemes you see. There is more variance on D than on O though, because there is still a strong 3-4 contingent of defensive coordinators around.

I was actually prompted to think about this in the odd "Reid disrespects McDermott" thread yesterday. I started thinking about the Reid tree, which is really the Holmgren tree, which is really the Bill Walsh tree.... and then I went down the rabbit hole and.... OH WOW! We are living in a Bill Walsh world. Of the 31 NFL Head Coaches currently employed only one - Mike Vrabel of the Patriots - has no link to the Bill Walsh tree. There was a time when the Walsh tree and the Parcells tree were seen as somewhat equal and while it is true that there are guys on the Walsh tree who also feature on the Parcells tree: Payton, Daboll, Campbell (and his guys) you can't get to anything like 30/31 for Parcells. This league is now fully under the influence of that lineage. Talk about leaving a legacy! Anyway, the image below is my visual representation of it (apologies for image quality it wouldn't upload in higher res, will try and fix) Link to clearer version of image

The Bills did expect Josh to handle it but a big part of the signing of Morse after his rookie year was to help Josh with protection calls. Think Mitch did a lot of the heavy lifting those next couple of seasons in that regard.

Yea he was pretty famous for it. But being 73 soon to turn 74 and having been out a year I think the odds are firmly against him still being that guy. Father time is forever undefeated. I bet he lasts no more than two years, has no season above .500 and all this does is delay the restart the Raiders actually need.

I am worried about will happen year 1. Carroll's biggest strength was his energy and his ability to energise a locker room. That was what made him special. Not Xs and Os, certainly not discipline, it was energy. He is 74 in week 2. I seriously doubt his ability to be the guy he was in 2010/2011 when he was stabilising and turning around the Seahawks.

McDermott was seen as Reid's guy, even moreso than some of the other assistants that came through there (Sean started as assistant to the Head Coach before getting a quality control gig). I don't buy the "he was firing Sean to shield him" he was firing him to try and save his own skin, the worm definitely turned those last couple of years in Philly. But I do genuinely think it was a wrench for Andy to have to do it. Rivera obviously already knew McDermott having been on that staff as well at one point but I don't doubt Reid's sincerity in making that phone call. I think he hated having to fire McDermott but at that point he was flailing around a bit for things that might work - as evidenced by the Castillo decision.

He was only an area scout then. Likely had zero say. Impressive that he has worked his way up from intern to assistant GM but he has only worked in the Broncos organisation. Which may not be a great thing.

In fairness to the Texans some of the games I watched of theirs this year the playcalling was downright weird. It was like they were been chosen at random. But they did have major injuries at receiver and the oline regressed. My worry would be, and it is a worry of most guys off that Shanny tree, how good is he at adjusting when the defense takes away the thing he wants to do? But overall I think he is unfortunate to lose his job. Wouldn't surprise me if he winds up doing okay somewhere else.

You mean throwing for like 127 yards and winning?

You did!

He never interviewed with the Raiders, nor has he with Cowboys. But he is a finalist for the Saints job. That was always the job I was most worried about with him I'd have been surprised if he'd ended up in any of the other vacancies.

I think Pete is a terrible hire. Not because he can't coach, he likely ends up in the HoF.... but asking a 73 year old to come and completely turn around the culture in a building is asking a LOT

Hiring Liam Coen.

Damn, I should be consulted!

And other than cover the kick off he was rough last week

Yea but what about refs uniforms???? We need to know what fans think!