Hue Jackson is the Worst Head Coach in Modern NFL History

Ever since the massacre in Las Vegas was dubbed “the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history” there’s been a bit of a fuzz about what “modern” history actually refers to.  Since apparently the semiautomatic handgun is the ultimate arbiter of what makes American society tick, does “modern” history refer to the time period following its invention in the 1890’s? Or do we push it farther forward, so we can avoid including the Greenwood Massacre in Tulsa in 1921?

All right.  Now that we’ve got the hot take engine revving, let’s talk about how one might define “modern” history in the NFL.  I’m going to keep it simple: “modern” NFL history refers to the Super Bowl Era, which began in 1967.  And Hue Jackson is the worst head coach of it.

The Cleveland Browns, surprising no one, have started out this season 0-6.  Added to last year’s dismal 1-15 finish, the Browns have only pulled off a single win in their previous 22 starts.  All of this has been under the tenure of former Raiders head coach and Cincinnati Bengals offensive coordinator Hue Jackson.  Only one team has amassed as bad of a record in a similar time span; an honor reserved for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers who entered the league as an expansion team in 1976 and proceeded to lose their next 26 games (before winning a pair to close out the 1977 season).

As a Raiders fan, I’m familiar with Hue Jackson as a head coach from his year leading the team to an 8-8 record in 2011, an improvement of zero wins over Tom Cable’s tenure the previous season.  Hue was a solid offensive coordinator for the Raiders, with the team finishing 6th in the NFL with an average of 25.6 points per game, along with 355 total yards and 156 rushing yards per contest.  But as head coach he went mad with power, mortgaging the team’s future to sign Carson Palmer after the latter had retired rather than play another down for Cincinnati.  To this day, Raider fans still drive me insane by insisting that Hue was a spectacular head coach, despite the team finishing 1-4 down the stretch and missing the playoffs.

What I remember most about Hue as a coach was his propensity to gamble, to swing for the fences, to keep his foot on the gas around every tight corner, to go all-in on every single fucking hand.  Fans bitch and moan all the time about coaches who are “too conservative” and “too predictable” and “call too many screen passes on 3rd and forever”.  These fans are stupid.  You can’t win football games on a single big play*.  But of course, that never stopped Hue from trying.

The following clip shows Hue at his worst.  The Raiders had a 14 point lead over Cleveland, and were facing a fourth-and-one from the five yard line.  From this distance, a field goal is basically the equivalent of an extra point.  To this point in his career, Sebastian Janikowski had made 313 of 316 attempts.  That’s a conversion rate of 99%.  A lead of 17 points with less than five minutes remaining in a game is a pretty safe lead.  Your opponent is going to have to score three times – they’re going to have to recover two onsides kicks.  It’s a no-brainer.  Unless…

Now the Raiders didn’t end up losing this game.  But they sure did a hell of a job making it look like they might.

The real harm came later in the season, when the Raiders were clinging to a six point lead against the Detroit Lions.  Having lost two in a row after starting the season 7-4, the Raiders needed a win at home against the Lions to right the ship.  They played a solid game, holding a 13-point lead in the fourth quarter before letting the Lions close to within 6 with 4:59 remaining.  Their drive following the kickoff was exactly what you’d hope for; five Michael Bush runs that ate up all of Detroit’s timeouts, netted 37 yards and left the Raiders facing a 3rd and 3 at the Detroit 48-yard line.

It’s obvious that the run game is working.  There’s a decent chance another run gets them the first down.  More importantly, another run eats up the rest of the clock before the two-minute warning.  In the case of a run, the worst-case scenario is that they get stuffed, punt, and Detroit is left trying to drive the length of the field with less than two minutes and zero timeouts.  The last thing you want to do is throw a pass and have it fall incomplete.  So what does Hue do?

That play call is Hue Jackson in a nutshell.  The swing for the fences when all you need is a sacrifice bunt.  The Raiders went on to lose that game 28-27.

Now at this point this might seem like all I’m doing here is airing old grievances about Hue’s time as a Raiders head coach.  This is true.  I don’t really watch Cleveland games, so I’m not sure what he’s doing to make them stink so badly.  But I don’t know that he’s lost 21 of his last 22 games, and only a pair of miracle misses by Josh Lambo gifted him the single win, and that he’s the worst coach in Cleveland Browns history.  And if you’re the worst coach in Cleveland Browns history, is it really that much a stretch to say that you’re the worst that the NFL has ever seen?

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*Unless you are Aaron Rodgers, apparently, and defenses decide to have tea parties with their stuffed animals in the end zone instead of, you know, trying to cover any receivers.