ESPN: Why Did Steve Spurrier Fail In The NFL?

[BigMike21]

http://espn.go.com/college-football/...er-failure-nfl

Alabama's Nick Saban and South Carolina's Steve Spurrier are the gold standard when it comes to head coaches in the SEC. Between them, they've won 10 SEC championships, four national championships and have had a profound impact on the way the game is played in this league. They're also the only two current head coaches in the SEC who have made previous head-coaching stops in the NFL, and neither had much success.........................But several games into his first season with the Redskins, Spurrier was playing rookie quarterback Patrick Ramsey even though he didn't want to. Owner Daniel Snyder had pushed to draft Ramsey in the first round. Spurrier has since said that he "knew it was over" at the start of his second season when he wasn't allowed to pick who was going to be his backup quarterback..................."Because Spurrier was so hands-off on defense, it got to the point where guys on defense were doing whatever the heck they wanted to do," Hasselbeck said. "You had LaVar Arrington freelancing and Jeremiah Trotter doing his own thing. I think they even tried to bench Bruce Smith at one point because he wasn't the same player, but [Smith] went above Spurrier and started the following week.

ESPN.com seems to be doing a lot of articles this week on American Football coaching. A lot of it seems to focus on the new idea of college coaches coming into the pros (Greg Schiano, Chip Kelly, etc.) and how the college gameplans have been trickling into the pros (RGII,Kaepernick, etc.) and I found this article interesting. I actually never knew Spurrier had such a hard time with the brass above him who I thought loved him.

Don,t get me wrong I was raised as a Spurrier hater due to my Dad's rabid FSU obsession and I was very upset when he became the Redskins coach. But was he set up for failure? Yes I know he had some, dare I say, lazy coaching habits it seemed but damn if those two rosters were not our worst two of the last 15 years...

[AlvinWaltonIsMyBoy]

Spurrier never left enough guys in to block. Ever. It cost Ramsey his career (not saying what kind of career he would've had, but he never got back from the beating he took). And then he brought in all of his washed up Florida players, and loaded our team with suckitude.

I'm not a Zorn fan, or a Vinny fan, or a Snyder fan. But I hate the Old Ball Sack more than all of them. Well, excpet maybe for Vinny.

[afkidd]

But was he set up for failure? Yes I know he had some, dare I say, lazy coaching habits it seemed but damn if those two rosters were not our worst two of the last 15 years...

most of the coaches since snyder took over has been set up for failure. but spurrier brought in a lot of horrible nfl players.

[jgbkab1]

How could you hate Spurrier after the rout he coached our team to in Okinawa?

[BigMike21]

How could you hate Spurrier after the rout he coached our team to in Okinawa?

Haha I'll admit....at that time on that night I was pretty siked.

[MartinC]

Spurrier may have had his hands tied - but that's at least partly his own fault for not setting out his terms on roster control, coaching and player matters etc. He had the juice to do that during the hiring process.

In terms if his offense he just did not put in the hours and work needed to adapt what had worked in College to the NFL. One glaring example is he never had hot reads in his offense - we sent 5 guys on patterns, the defense rushed 6, Pat Ramsey got plastered. Play after play after play. No adjustment in game or week to week.

[SkinSince87]

he wanted old gators and made his roster so he wasnt setup to fail he made it so he failed himself.

[Enter Apotheosis]

Arrington was outright freaking out about this on 106.7 this afternoon. Apparently he doesn't take the notion that he was a freelancer lightly (despite having ALWAYS had this reputation as a Skin) and was mighty insulting toward Hasselbeck.

I love it when LaVar is on his game, so to speak. He does a better job than anyone of making himself look like a clown.

[MartinC]

He does a better job than anyone of making himself look like a clown.

!

To be fair he has great raw material to work with.

[elkabong82]

When you think rolling with Wuerffle as your QB is a good idea then perhaps you don't deserve to be making draft picks.

[BRAVEONTHEWARPATH93]

When you think rolling with Wuerffle as your QB is a good idea then perhaps you don't deserve to be making draft picks.

this...his QB selection was piss poor

[MrJL]

The guys in the front office may have loved him at first, but I bet when his answer to line problems was "coach 'em up." they lost faith in him.

[DieselPwr44]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...hXTI_blog.html

One tidbit:

On the preseason success: “What was weird was I was starting, I started every preseason game that year in ‘02, and we were killing people. I was like, wow, we’re awesome, I’m awesome, life is awesome, this is fantastic. And then I realized wait a minute, we actually only have two pass protections, and the Steelers are laughing at us because they say they know what our protection is, and Shane Matthews and Danny are getting blown up, and our poor running back, there’s no hot reads, there’s no sight adjusts.

[LetThePointsSoar]

DP, I look like your sig when reading that blog....my how far we've come...

[MustangSteve]

This is a very simple answer, because he would send his entire offense out for a pass and let his QB get fed grass for 3 strait hours or until he started mooooing and thinking he was grazing in some pasture instead of playing and NFL football game. Add the fact his pick of QB's sucked and wah-lah folks, he and our beloved Redskins were a joke.