Judy Battista, the New York Times national NFL correspondent, just did an article titled Coaches Take More Risks, but Perhaps Not Enough. I helped do some of the analysis for the piece. David Romer is also interviewed.
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Ha. I was just about to point this piece out to you. Should have known you were involved!
Wow. Two in the same day. Don't miss this piece on Romer:
Romer Says Go For It
Don Coryell may have been risk-taking and imaginative on offense, but his Chargers teams that Fouts waxes nostalgic about were historically dreadful on defense.
Over the five years 1981-1985, of 28 teams in the league, they ranked on average...
Points allowed: 25.4
Yards allowed: 26.4
Net yards/Pass attempt: 25.8
In none of these D categories over the five years (15 chances) did they ever rank above 24th.
And that was after taking over a good D that ranked 2, 5 and 5 in these categories in 1979.
I'd nominate this as a candidate for the worst 5-year defensive record by any head coach ever, if only because it's hard to imagine that a coach producing a D record this bad could survive five years unless he had that Fouts offense.
I mean, I really enjoyed watching that Charger O, but D is part of the game too.
It's no surprise Fouts "felt like a failure whenever the field-goal team came on the field" -- he knew he needed a TD to stay even.