Hey everyone,

We made it! It’s Super Bowl Friday; time to celebrate the end of the work week and the start of a super drinking weekend.

We’ve got a couple more trees to look at before we get there, though. These won’t be as long as the others, mostly because I’m not looking at old men anymore, but young, virile examples of what the modern NFL is becoming.

Also, I believe I’m supposed to get to the Sexy.

But before I do that, I really shou–

Fine. Let’s do this!

Sean McVay

^{I’m not sure which one to call him}

I can’t believe he’s been with the Rams since 2017. He spent six years in Washington prior to that, under both Mike Shanahan and Jay Gruden, and is generally given the credit for turning Kirk Cousins

into either a franchise quarterback or a multi-million dollar fraud, depending on which fan base. But that seems like a lifetime ago. The speed with which he turned around the Rams – taking them to the Super Bowl in his second season; winning it in his fifth – is what has helped transform the NFL into a young coach’s game.

On that point, if i might play the “old man” card for a moment,

When I was younger, coaches needs to have a little thing called “experience”. It was something you earned over a long coordinator and assistant’s career. The head job,

was a reward for those years of dedication. Just look at this Bill Walsh… I’ll call it a “spectrum”:

Most of the guys on this list put in their time. But the further you get out from the origin, the more tenuous the lineage becomes. Also, never forget that Jon Gruden won his Super Bowl with Tony Dungy’s team. Claiming Super Bowl lineage through the Grudens is like calling yourself 1/32nd Cherokee, but somehow less racist.

Nonetheless, thanks to McVay’s success, and the relative lack of success famous college guys like Urban Meyer encountered, the new trend in the NFL is to sign young (under 40) coordinators and have them grow into the job. Naturally, the trend has been given his name, and the Wikipedia entry about the “Sean McVay Effect” covers how quickly the youth movement has taken over the NFL. The tree pictured here,

does and doesn’t tell the whole story. Zac Taylor is a direct descendant of the McVay tree, as the Rams were Taylor’s first pro stop, even though it was only two years. Most of the others, like LaFleur, actually worked with McVay at other stops and under McVay for only a short period of time. Hell – when LaFleur was hired by the Packers, he’d most recently been the offensive coordinator under Mike Fucking Vrabel. By the Law of Transitive Relation, he’s now also a Belichick disciple! Others, like Brandon Staley, get claimed under McVay even though he was there only a year and had spent the previous three working for Vic Fangio, putting him more under the Brian Billick tree than the McVay tree.

To quote Bill Barnwell from ESPN, it seemed that “anyone who has ever worn a polo shirt around [Sean] McVay is now an NFL head coach.” It’s the Belichick rub, but without all the loathing and torn sleeves.

One unintended side effect has been to actually worsen the hiring opportunities for black coaches. Hiring practices between 1990-2015 showed a 2-1 ratio in hiring offensive-minded head coaches, and stretching that data to 2021 shows that over 86% of the league’s offensive coordinators have been white. To make it sound even worse, of the 16 black head coaches hired after Tony Dungy, half of them were his former assistants. And of those, most survived a shorter time in the role than their white counterparts. To steal the thesis point from the Post, “in essence, the NFL has decided it’s okay for Black men to be quarterbacks — just not to coach them.”

I guess we’ll find out down the road if that’s his true legacy.

Dan Campbell

The thing about Dan Campbell is that he kind of followed the Tom Landry model. He had an 11-year NFL career that ended in 2009 and then he transitioned straight into NFL coaching by becoming an intern & then tight ends coach with the Dolphins. He got a taste for head coaching when he filled in after the Dolphins fired Joe Philbin in 2015. He took that hot garbage to a 5-7 record, and his reward was to see Adam Gase hired instead of him. That led him to sign with the Saints, where he worked under Sean Payton between 2016-20 as their assistant head coach and tight ends coach.

It’s also where he first worked with Aaron Glenn, who would leave with him to go to Detroit in 2021.

When it comes to Dan Campbell, the theme of constant departure has come full circle. Much like Jim Lee Howell, Dan Campbell has lost his two prize assistants to other teams, and he’ll probably be the worse for it.

^{The one on the left is pretty; on the right is informative.}

That is quite the talent bleed. The star of the steal was Aaron Glenn, who, like Dan Campbell, missed out on a Super Bowl ring with the Saints in 2009 – Campbell because he was on IR; Glenn because he retired in 2008. It’s a bit of a homecoming for Glenn, as he spent his first eight years as a player with the Jets, and was involved in one of the most infamous plays in team history – Dan Marino’s fake spike in 1994 (he was the corner that got beat on the throw). An obvious defensive specialist, he’s expected to be hands-on in trying to fix that half of the Jets. To help deal with their peyote-laced quarterback, he brought two others with him. Ben Johnson was in such demand, especially after the Lions got bounced, that he had interviews with the Bears, Jaguars, Raiders, and Patriots for their vacant head coach positions. And did the same thing as Glenn, bringing offensive coaches with him to Chicago to try & right the Caleb Williams barge.

You never want to say out loud that a team’s window is closing, but this exodus is a pretty good harbinger of that. It would be very, very funny that the Lions accidentally fell into a one in a lifetime hire only to somehow watch it all fuck itself up.

^{Because it’s never happened before.}

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To wrap all this up, I’m going to refer you to this article by The Power Sweep‘s Jon Meerdink. He says this about the whole concept itself:

… a “tree” is just a poor metaphor. Branches from a given tree trunk are always going to be the same as the trunk itself. You will never find a branch of an apple tree that suddenly starts producing cherries.

A more apt metaphor would be a herd. You can engage selective breeding, or try alternative types of feed, but in the end – most of the time – all you get is shit.

Alright, you’ve waited long enough…

Pareidolia is the tendency for perception to impose a meaningful interpretation on a nebulous stimulus, usually visual, so that one detects an object, pattern, or meaning where there is none. Pareidolia is a type of apophenia.

So, for all you dendrophiliacs out there, it’s time for some wood!

What can I say? I’ve been to some terrible places this week,

Tonight’s sports:

NHL:

• Pittsburgh Penguins at New York Rangers – 7:00 PM – NHL Network; Sportsnet
• Dallas Stars at Los Angeles Kings – 10:30 PM – NHL Center Ice; Sportsnet

NBA:

• Philadelphia 76ers at Detroit Pistons – 7:30 PM – ESPN; TSN4
• Toronto Raptors at Oklahoma City Thunder – 8:00 PM – NBA League Pass; Sportsnet1

NCAA:

• Men’s:
  • Virginia Commonwealth at Dayton – 7:00 PM – ESPN2; TSN2

That’s it for Hate Week everyone. Once again, I hope you’ve enjoyed this year’s edition. I’ve enjoyed bringing it to you. before I sign off, one final shout-out to my Hate-y confrere Low Commander – “Die Dean Spanos Die!” forever.

I’ll see you all Sunday in the comments.