Bill O’Brien the Right Hire at Penn State

Penn State has hired Bill O’Brien as the program’s 15th head football coach.  O’Brien is currently the Offensive Coordinator for the New England Patriots, the top seed in the AFC playoffs.  O’Brien has had extensive coaching experience at both the college and professional level.  He has been a running backs coach at Brown, an offensive coordinator at Georgia Tech, a running backs coach at Maryland, and an offensive coordinator at Duke.  He coached for 14 years at the college level, and in 2007 moved to the NFL and has coached with the Patriots on the offensive side of the ball for the past 5 years.

The hiring of Bill O’Brien has brought upon the scorn and questioning of many in the Penn State community.  Many think that O’Brien wasn’t a big enough name and won’t make a big enough splash.  Others think that O’Brien’s lack of head coaching experience will hold him back.  Finally, some (including many former players) dislike the hire because O’Brien has no connection to Penn State.

However, O’Brien was the best hire for Penn State for several reasons.  First, and most logically, Bill O’Brien was the best commodity on the market.  Multiple coaches turned down the opportunity to interview for the Penn State job, most notably Chris Petersen and Mike Munchak.  In addition, Urban Meyer had just became the Ohio State head coach, and Al Golden extended his contract with Miami though 2019.  What other major candidates were available?  There was talk early in the search about Dan Mullen, the head coach at Mississippi State, but he appeared to be a very “vanilla” type of candidate.  Another strong candidate would have been Mark Richt, a very successful coach who has been unfairly criticized in Athens, but there is no guarantee or even rumor to suggest that he will lose his job at this point.  Therefore, Bill O’Brien is an experienced coach, both at the college and professional level, who brings stability to a program that has been as unstable as any collegiate athletics program in the past 3 months.

What will Bill O’Brien bring to the table?  Bill O’Brien is a well-spoken, no-nonsense, and very accomplished man of football.  He lives and breathes the game of football.  He is a work-a-holic in every sense of the word.  He is committed to the New England Patriots through the end of the postseason, but also will be talking with recruits, will address the team tomorrow, and will take on the rigors of both jobs for as long as the Patriots play.  Once his Patriots stint ends, one would fully expect him to continue working extra hard to make up for the head start that other college coaches have in recruiting and other coaching responsibilities.

In addition, Bill O’Brien brings the right combination of freshness as well as a commitment to Penn State tradition.  O’Brien has no prior direct Penn State connection, an element that is actually a strength and a benefit.  After all the chaos that ensued from the Sandusky Investigation, including how it specifically impacted members of the Penn State coaching staff, it is greatly beneficial that Penn State has a new face of its program.  However, there are certainly many elements of Penn State football that are important traditions, and many elements that can and will be retained.  O’Brien has pledged to hire “the best staff for Penn State,” whatever that takes and whoever that includes.  That could include every member of the current staff or a completely new staff.  O’Brien confirmed during his introductory press conference today that Larry Johnson, the Defensive Line coach, will return in some capacity next season.  O’Brien has promised that he will speak with every member of the coaching staff before making a decision on his new staff.  There is no confirmation on the future of former interim head coach Tom Bradley or defensive coordinator Ron Vanderlinden, but O’Brien has promised that he would speak with each of them before making any final decisions.

Bill O’Brien also has the perfect mindset for a head coaching position at a major college program.  He is very confident but only borders upon stubbornness.  He will not take undeserved criticism from fans or the media, and is confident that what he brings to the table will be successful.  He will stand up to big personalities and will not let players with attitudes and egos push him around, and he has shown a willingness to put any player in his place, including Patriots quarterback Tom Brady.  However, he isn’t stubborn because his offensive philosophy is dictated by his players, and his playcall isn’t fixed regardless of what personnel he has.  That element of his coaching philosophy, which he addressed specifically in his press conference today, is what should excite the fans the most.  O’Brien has pledged to run an advanced type of offense, but an offense that will be dictated by the strengths of the players instead of simply what the coach likes to run.  He has done this for years in New England, as the Patriots have been able to seamlessly transition from 75% passing at times to 60% rushing, depending upon injuries, weather, or opponents.  Bill O’Brien brings flexibility to his offensive philosophy, and Penn State fans will see that next season, as he will be calling all the plays next year.

There are several potential pitfalls to hiring Bill O’Brien at Penn State as well.  The first potential pitfall (in the short-term) is what was also described as a strength above, and that was his loyalty and commitment.  While those qualities and characteristics will be great when he arrives full-time on the Penn State campus, right now it means that O’Brien will continue his commitment as Offensive Coordinator of the Patriots and will not be on-campus full time until potentially February.  Penn State will continue to lose valuable time in a battle in which it is already behind, the battle of recruiting.  Penn State has nearly punted on its entire recruiting class, and with signing day arriving in less than a month (and before the Super Bowl) Penn State could lose out completely on the 2011-2012 recruiting class.  While this is a fair concern, it is far more important to look at the long-term impact of this hire.  Therefore, the argument that the program should have hired someone else just because O’Brien could lose out on recruiting for this season is an unacceptable argument and one that I will not endorse whatsoever.  Penn State needs a bottom-up approach to rebuilding this program, and Dave Joyner and the Penn State search committee saw Bill O’Brien as the best candidate to attain long-term success.  If that is truly the case, then the fanbase can wait an extra season for the success to happen and should be able to accept a loss of a few recruits in the 2011-2012 recruiting window.

A second concern about the hiring of Bill O’Brien is that he has not been a head coach at any point during his career.  However, this has not stopped Chip Kelly (Oregon), Mike Gundy (Okla. St), Jimbo Fisher (FSU), or John Harbaugh (Ravens) as just a few of many head coaches that have been successful in their first stints as a head coach.  Also, a man named Joe Paterno took his first head coaching job at Penn State in 1966.  If it wasn’t O’Brien that was hired, Penn State very well could have hired another assistant who would be taking his first job.  And if prior head coaching experience was required for every job, the sport of football would die out in about 70 years because there would be no more living head coaching candidates.  First-time head coaches get jobs and succeed all the time, and basing an opinion against O’Brien just because of this bias is narrow-minded.

A third concern about the hiring of Bill O’Brien may be the most inane of those mentioned.  Many people have a built-in bias against New England Patriots assistants as head coaches.  In recent years, multiple Patriots assistants have taken head coaching jobs and have not been successful initially, including Romeo Crennel with the Cleveland Browns, Josh McDaniels with the Denver Broncos, and Charlie Weis with Notre Dame.  However, this argument is unjustified and purely speculative for several reasons.  First, Bill O’Brien is “his own man and his own coach” as he said in his press conference today.  He learned many things from Bill Belichick in New England, but will also be his own man and will utilize his own strategies and strengths as head coach.  In the same way, it is unfair to assume failure because several coaches before O’Brien have failed as head coaches.  Because Bill Belichick is a great coach, and Tom Brady is a legendary quarterback, when coupled with the lack of success by assistants when they leave the Patriots, assistants like O’Brien face stereotypes when becoming head coaches.  Such biases create low expectations for these coaches, but Bill O’Brien has no intentions of perpetuating that stereotype.

In addition, the belief and stereotype that Patriots assistants can not succeed away from New England is a fallacy, and an easy punch line for people to utilize without any real research or perspective.  Many NFL and college football analysts rely upon assumptions that Charlie Weis, Romeo Crennel, and Josh McDaniels were all failures as coaches after they left New England, which could not be further from the truth.  For example, even though Charlie Weis was not as successful at Notre Dame as many would have hoped, he was extremely successful in Kansas City as the Chiefs’ offensive coordinator, was successful under Will Muschamp in Florida, and now has the opportunity to lead a struggling Kansas program back to prominence.  Romeo Crennel did fail miserably in Cleveland, but so have many other talented coaches, including Eric Mangini.  Since his firing in Cleveland he has been instrumental in the Kansas City Chiefs’ turnaround in the past two years.  As the interim head coach towards the end of this season he has injected renewed energy and passion into that organization, and may get another chance at an NFL head coaching position next season.  Finally, Josh McDaniels was angrily ousted from Denver by the fans after many believed that he sold the organization down the river.  He traded Jay Cutler, Brandon Marshall, and several others, while also making a bold decision to draft a young quarterback from Florida named Tim Tebow in the first round.  McDaniels was fired for these decisions, and many at the time would agree that the criticism was all warranted.  However, like many intelligent people who were not respected in their time, McDaniels’ decisions have since proven to be very smart and calculated, and John Fox is currently coaching Josh McDaniels’ team into the 2012 playoffs.  Therefore, the stereotype against New England Patriots coaches is incorrect and not well researched.  Nothing done by any former New England coordinators would suggest that Bill O’Brien can not succeed at Penn State.

Bill O’Brien is the right coach for Penn State.  And even if one may disagree with the reasons put forth for why he is the right  person for the job, it is the Penn State community’s duty to welcome Bill O’Brien into the Penn State football family.  Bill O’Brien may not have had any Penn State connections before he was hired, but now he does.  Penn State fans welcome new Penn Staters into the community each and every day, and there is no reason why fans can’t welcome Bill O’Brien as the newest member of the Penn State community.  And just like that, now Bill O’Brien has the desired Penn State connection that so many wanted the new head coach to have.