The talk on the college football forum about Orgeron and the USC situation kind of put this in mind.

Who would you say are the biggest surprises as far as coaches being successful or failures in the big leagues (or college, but I don't feel like duplicating this thread on three different boards) based on either their previous work, reputation, whatever.

That talk of an interim coach coming in and being pretty successful right away made me think of Bruce Arians. With the Steelers, it was hard to find any of us fans overly praising his playcalling as the OC (yeah, Haley might make us remember him more fondly, but at the time, we bitched about him a lot).

Then, he goes to Indy, becomes interim coach after Pagano's cancer, has a great season and parlays it into the head coaching job at Arizona, where he's having a solid season. A game out of the second wild card spot and, if he was in the AFC, he'd be a game up on anyone for that spot at 7-5 on a team that was 5-11 last year.

Not an all-time huge surprise, but the one that entered my mind. So, what other past/present coaches really exceeded or underperformed expectations?

Jason Garrett is currently underperforming. Suppose to be a mastermind and I just don't see it.

Pete Carroll has preformed better than I ever expected him to.

I agree on Jason Garrett

Pete Carrol. Just amazing what he did in college and pros combined. Hardly ever see that, and I NEVER thought the "rah rah" style would work with grown men.

Mike Brown is one who has sucked the big one, and while an assistant (I know him from Indiana days) I thought he would be great.

Carroll's a good one. Particularly now in the NFL, as he'd been mediocre in two previous stints in the league.

Ron Rivera's turn around from well on his way to getting fired after week 4 to having a 9-3 team. Essentially the whole turnaround is because he started going for it on 4th down in key situations he would have otherwise kicked (punt or FG).

Pete Carroll is another as well.

Jim Schwartz. I did not think that would be the guy to turn around the Lions

I don't think Schwartz has really turned the lions around.

sportchampps;1547281 wrote:I don't think Schwartz has really turned the lions around.

I would disagree, granted they aren't great yet, but if they make the playoffs for the 2nd time in 3 years I would. Still a very young team

Classyposter58;1547370 wrote:I would disagree, granted they aren't great yet, but if they make the playoffs for the 2nd time in 3 years I would. Still a very young team

Right now, I'd say he's more in the Marvin Lewis group, where you can take a horrible program into being respectable, but still has to show he can take that next step towards being legit good.

I was surprised that Larry Bird was as good as he was coaching, and then walked away after a few seasons.


How about some coaches who were successful when they took over for a coach, only to struggle when he got his players into the program. Randy Ayers at OSU had good seasons and if I remember right it was mostly Garry illiams players, and Mike Davis at IU. took them to the FF or finals with BKs players, and then when he got his guys in, man that teams SUCKED to watch.
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