These Are the Coaches Who Got Jobs Todd Bowles Interviewed For

Todd Bowles has done a great job so far in his rookie season with the Jets. Coming off a 4-12 season, if the playoffs began today, the 8-5 Jets would be in the playoffs. After trouncing the Titans on Sunday, they’ve won three in a row.

Before this season, Bowles’ name often popped up amongst interviewees for head coaching vacancies, but he never broke through. On last week’s Pigsplosion podcast, Jason Lisk and I thought that it might be fun to look back at the list of coaches who got hired for jobs where Bowles was under consideration*. Here’s who they were, and how that all went:

It doesn’t totally end there, though. The New York Times indicates that Bowles also interviewed for the Chiefs. Though there’s no readily available transactional news story about that, it’s possible this happened in 2009 when Scott Pioli was widely presumed to have already decided on Todd Haley, and it was said that minority candidates understandably wanted no part of a sham process. Nevertheless, Fritz Pollard Alliance chairman John Wooten said that “several” minority candidates talked with the Chiefs, but declined to name names. In any event, Haley’s teams went 19-26.

When Bowles was the Eagles’ defensive coordinator in 2013, he interviewed at Temple, his alma mater. Matt Rhule, who has done a very good job in two years, got the call. Last year, Bowles interviewed with the Browns, but withdrew himself from consideration because he “simply did not want the job.” He made a similar withdrawal from Detroit, before a formal interview, for a job that ultimately went to Jim Caldwell. (Going further back, it’s amusing to take a look at the rationale of why, after Garrett got the head coaching nod, Rob Ryan got the Cowboys defensive coordinator gig over Bowles in 2011.)

The situation that stands out strongest in the table above is Miami. Bowles had taken over for a fired Tony Sparano late in the 2011 season. The team went 2-1, but opted to hire the ex-Packers coordinator instead. Reflecting back on the process this past October, Dolphins reporter Omar Kelly cited a league source as saying Bowles wasn’t a finalist for the position because team owner Stephen Ross “couldn’t sell that to his fan base.”

While it may seem a reasonable conclusion in aggregate, I don’t think there were many, if any, situations where Bowles was a token Rooney Rule interviewee. For example, in 2009, Bowles was a candidate to replace Mike Shanahan in Denver, where Raheem Morris and Leslie Frasier also interviewed for the job. In Oakland in 2012, Bowles was interviewing for a job where Reggie McKenzie was the decider. For the Vikings, Mike Zimmer faced a similarly frustrating path to getting a head coaching position as a defensive mind in a fantasy league.

In the aforementioned NYT piece, there is the suggestion that the disappointments helped drive Bowles to refine his interview skills:

“It was frustrating, sure,” said Mr. Wooten, the adviser who debriefed Mr. Bowles after interviews. “For all of us. But over all, the process has to help him. After the last round, we talked about making some changes in his approach, and to his credit, he did. He told me after his first interview with the Jets, he nailed it.”

One of the things that stands out about the Jets this season is that they’re accomplishing this with Ryan Fitzpatrick at quarterback. We’re constantly told that you can’t compete in the NFL without a cyborg quarterback, but the Jets are doing just that. Granting that they’re nobody’s Super Bowl pick right now, they’ve figured out how to minimize Fitzpatrick’s limitations and play to his strengths.

Fitzpatrick deserves lots of credit for elevating his own level of play as well, but it’s worth noting that he’s never reached the playoffs. The Jets acquired him from Houston for a conditional sixth-round pick, and are paying him just $3.25 million this season. Anybody in the league could have had him, and he’s performed markedly better than Brian Hoyer, Ryan Mallett, and TJ Yates (quite the three-headed monster) have for the Texans.

The Jets also got Brandon Marshall for a fifth-round pick. He’s fifth in the NFL in receiving yards; Chris Ivory is fifth in the league in rushing. There was also the decision to hire Chan Gailey, who many Jets fans were not enthused about, as offensive coordinator. Taking an offensive unit with other teams’ castoffs, who individually and collectively outperform expectations, is attributable to coaching, is it not?

On defense, which is Bowles’ specialty, there has not been a drop-off. The Jets’ unit ranks fourth in DVOA and in takeaways, and fifth in yardage. They’ve benefitted in aggregate from Darrelle Revis, but they also didn’t get a player who’s still an otherworldly shut down corner.

As much as any metric, though, there’s the intangibles. The official end of the Rex Ryan era came when IK Enemkpali broke Geno Smith’s jaw over a debt. Since then, there has been visibly immeasurable difference in the professionalism with which the Jets carry themselves. This can’t necessarily be quantified, but it’s nonetheless observable.

This could all look really stupid in a few weeks if there’s a losing skid, and Brandon Marshall starts berating teammates and coaches in the locker room and on Showtime, but right now it feels like the Jets have successfully caught the culture dragon. Jets Nation—from Woody Johnson to Fireman Ed to Larry David to Jason McIntyre—should be doing cartwheels that Todd Bowles got passed over for Jim Schwartz, Josh McDaniels, Joe Philbin, and Dennis Allen.

[*Sources on interviews: here, here, here, here, here, here; Photos via USA Today Sports Images and Getty]

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