#team-turnaround

#team-turnaround

Although he became the frontrunner later in the season, Vrabel had some stiff competition in the category, most notably Liam Coen, who helped lead the Jaguars to the playoffs, and Mike Macdonald, who will be coaching the Seahawks against Vrabel in this weekend's Super Bowl. They were certainly impressive with what they accomplished, but none more than what we saw from Vrabel in his first season with the Patriots.

Macdonald and Vrabel are two of the 37 full-time head coaches hired over the past five years, not including the eight hired so far this month and the handful of interim coaches who didn't earn full-time jobs. I want to sort through those hires. Which coaching hires worked out best? Which ones were disasters? Was it better to hire offensive wizards, as many teams prefer, or go against the grain to hire defensive-minded coaches?

"It was like this new era had come. I wasn't sure if I would ever feel that again. I think back to 2013 and 2014 and all the newness of what that felt like, and all the excitement around that. I didn't feel I'd ever have that again -- and I had it again last year. It was really fun turning up to work every day and working with the staff and the players was really, really fun. And that was credit to everybody involved in the environment we tried to create."

Cam Thomas returned to a Nets team that no longer needed saving. His job was harder than that: fit in and lift it. He did exactly that Saturday night, scoring 30 points on 9-for-15 shooting with three rebounds and four assists in just 20 minutes off the bench as Brooklyn pulled away for a 123-107 road win over the Minnesota Timberwolves.

Walking into the New England Patriots this offseason meant there was a lot of work to be done for Mike Vrabel and the new coaching staff. Besides the five years of dwindling relevancy straight to the bottom of the league, the franchise appeared to be in more trouble from a roster standpoint, as the team seemed disjointed in a way that would take a while to fix.

Over the last few weeks, listening to the Ireland players and coaches outlining why they are confident that the game-plan is very close to coming together, we have been reminded of a similar scenario shortly after Andy Farrell took over as head coach in 2020.

If only Henry Slade had managed to stop Ben Donaldson getting that offload away, if only Ollie Sleightholme had been able to make that wrap-up tackle on Len Ikitau, if only Marcus Smith was able to catch Max Jorgensen. But Slade didn't, Sleightholme couldn't, Smith wasn't, and Jorgensen scored in the corner. This time last year the Wallabies beat England 42-37, their first victory against them at Twickenham in nine years, and it was, the players will tell you themselves, the moment when everything changed.

"I'm really looking forward to being part of this amazing football club. We want to win, we need wins because we want to turn around the position at the moment," Rohl said during his unveiling. "I am looking for an ambitious club, a club that is wanting more. This club has everything for all these goals. My job is clear. My focus is on my person, what I can bring to this football club."

The Dodgers didn't just fall short of lofty expectations during the regular season. For a large chunk of it, they were basically mediocre. They began with a 23-10 record and ended, after a well-timed meeting by their manager, with 15 wins in a stretch of 20 games. But in between, from May 4 to Sept. 7, the Dodgers were 56-54, a mere two games above .500 in a 110-game sample.

Derwin Henderson was not intending to coach this season. He hadn't been a head coach since 2019 at Hawthorne. But he lives in the Inland Empire, and Rialto High kept asking him to take the open position. He finally relented, and big changes are already taking place. Rialto is off to a 3-0 start with wins over Ontario, Temecula Prep and Indio. That's notable because the team was 0-10 last season and 1-9 in 2023.

Me, Casey and even Jimmy weren't doing the stuff we were asking him to do, making checks at the line, getting people in places. He managed the game well. He did a really good job getting us in and out of the huddle. The game was not too fast for him.