Is Nolan Gonna Get 'Em Rollin'?

Thought I'd share this entire and un-edited e-mail I got from regular contributor, Patrick.  I think he makes a good argument in a sort of devil's advocate role in regards to Miami's new defensive coordinator, Mike Nolan.  I'm just going to cut and paste and leave my response to the comments section.

Hey Tin, Patrick from your blog… I thought you might find this interesting and maybe of some use.  I was curious about Mike Nolan as a DC.  I get the impression everyone thinks the guy is great but I don’t really see any in depth analysis of what he has actually done in the NFL so I compiled his stats from his years as a DC.

It’s interesting in that his stats are pretty much average even before pulling out the 3 years he coached with really excellent talent.  My thoughts would be that it’s easy to be a good coach when you have great players but the great coaches tend to stick out when the talent is a little wanting.  Nolan’s stats under those circumstances do not stick out to me as being special and I think that is played out when he made the jump to HC and was less than successful.

It’s kind of a smoke and mirrors thing to me… He has the look, he has the pedigree (Dick Nolan a long time NFL coach was his father) but the actual product on the field has been purely predicated by the talent he has had to work with.  Now maybe this isn’t bad thing and maybe all great coaches are simply a product of the talent they have but I don’t think that is true.  Certain coaches go past good into great because they can take players beyond their talent level or lack thereof.

Knowing the game is only one aspect and I think Nolan’s knowledge level is right up there with the best of them, but I don’t see any great innovation here, there is no Dick LeBeau or even Buddy Ryan for that matter.  So I think the folks out there expecting to see some exotic blitz style defense are way off base.  Nolan will use traditional schemes and rely on his talent, which if lacking will lead to a mediocre defense, but if certain players reach their potential then the defense will reflect that as well.

One other thing comes to mind when looking at great defensive or offensive coordinators, they like being coordinators.  They are not looking at the job as a stepping stone to a head coaching position or if they have and were not successful, they realize their limitations and concentrate on what they are good at instead of looking over the fence at what they had proved to be unsuccessful at.

In either case I don’t think we will see anything incredible or even much different from what we saw last year.  What I will ask Nolan to do is to understand what is happening during the course of the game and make the adjustments needed to force the offense out of what they are doing successfully.  In other words, dictate the game more than being dictated to, self scout to understand our own tendencies and then change those from game to game to keep teams off-balance.  Last year I felt our defense was very predictable and was incapable of making adjustments during the course of the game.  If Nolan is smart enough to do make these things happen then it doesn’t matter whether he has some exotic scheme or crazy blitz packages, it will keep teams honest and that is all we can really ask.

As the stats clearly indicate, Nolan isn’t the greatest innovator in the world, but given the proper talent he understands the game well enough to put those players in a position to win.  Those expecting captain fantastic will probably be sadly disappointed but I think Nolan will provide the in-game adjustments that were lacking last year.