Barry Tompkins: Fired NFL coaches can find their way again as coordinators

I remember sitting in a bar with the old quarterback George Blanda having a drink or 12 and talking about the evolution of the game of football, and how sophisticated it has become.

You can’t just be the fastest guy or the strongest guy on the planet and survive in today’s game. It’s now about technique and positioning.  About leverage and vision. About tendencies and evaluation; game planning and scheme; routes, cuts, angles and check downs.

And to the day he died, George Blanda would insist that despite all the verbiage, preparation and bells and whistles available today, the game still came down to “blocking and tackling and running and passing.”

George just had a way of making the game of football be something that anybody with an ounce of ambition and an outsized image of themselves as an athlete, could do. I, for one, am living proof that George was wrong about that.

What George was right about is that the game is still composed of those four elements. What he didn’t see back in the day was that the nuance of running and passing and blocking and tackling is now taught by a squadron of coaches who now have such titles as defensive quality control coach, or assistant position coach.

So, the aspiration of the defensive quality control coach is to be a defensive coordinator and eventually — with luck — a head coach. Football is now a game of specialization.

I bring all of this up because as of Monday, there are seven head coaching jobs available in the NFL. And I would venture a guess right now that at least five of them will end in failure. And it’s rarely ever because the person doesn’t know how to coach.

The problem is that the head coach doesn’t always get to coach.

Certainly there are exceptions, Kyle Shanahan being one of them. In only rare instances does the head coach really get to be a daily participant in coaching. The nitty gritty is done by the offensive and defensive coordinators, and the head coach either nods his head yes or no. A well known, and successful,  head football coach once told me, “My job is to coach the coaches and the coaches coach the players.”

The head coach, for all intent, is an administrator. My analogy has always been, just because a doctor is the best gastroenterologist and has a near perfect colonoscopy record, it doesn’t mean he or she can run the hospital.

Kyle Shanahan (and there are others) is an outlier in that regard. Kyle still is the offensive coordinator although he bestowed the title on Klay Kubiak this year. The game plan is still his and he has shown great faith in letting the defensive side of things be under the care of those who understand that side of the ball.

But generally speaking, the title “head coach” is very different than the qualifications that made the hiree a viable candidate in the first place. Coaches are hands-on guys who spend most of their days and nights between September and February pouring over tendencies of an opponent and watching so much video that their eyes are eligible to be blood donors on their own.

And then, when even the cockroaches are asleep, they create a game plan that they pass over to the hands-on guys to administrate. On game day most coaches (Shanahan, et al being exceptions) prowl the sidelines wondering why the hands-on guys can’t get it right. Then the press criticizes the coach, the coach criticizes the press, the fans criticize the owner, and ultimately the owner fires the coach.

Eventually the coach returns to where he should have been in the first place: coaching.

I have no doubt that Raheem Morris, Mike McDaniel and Kevin Stefanski — all shown the door as head coaches by their respective teams — will resurface as the highly proficient coordinators that they were. Then there’s Pete Carroll and John Harbaugh, two longtime head coaches who were fired this week. One by a dysfunctional organization, and the other by a misguided team in desperate need of a fall guy to explain its demise. Carroll will go kicking and screaming into retirement, and Harbaugh will have a job within two weeks — I promise.

The bottom line is this: Becoming a head coach in professional football is the epitome of the Peter Principle: Rising to the individual’s own level of incompetence.

In the case of professional football it’s not really about becoming incompetent. It’s simply that a good football mind does not necessarily equate to becoming a good head coach.

It seems to be a foregone conclusion that Robert Saleh will be a sought-after candidate for one of the vacant head coaching positions. And, I can see that happening.

You can’t blame Saleh for his being summarily dismissed by the New York Jets. The Jets define the word “dysfunctional.” The incompetency level in that organization way exceeds what might be the ability or inability of the head coach. So Saleh will be a desired candidate.

Perish the thought, but would the 49ers even remotely think about paying their defensive coordinator something commensurate with the salary of a head coach. Just because he’s so capable in a role in which he’s almost without peer? I hope they do. He’s worth the output.

Yet somehow I have this gnawing feeling that sooner rather than later, Robert Saleh might be the head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders, former 49ers offensive architect Mike McDaniel (fired by Miami) would be his offensive coordinator, and Raheem Morris (fired by Atlanta) would be his defensive coordinator.

After all, it’s an easy job. It’s just running and passing, and blocking and tackling.

Isn’t it?

Barry Tompkins is a 40-year network television sportscaster and a San Francisco native. Email him at barrytompkins1@gmail.com.