You are 100% right about Welker. Position coaching in the NFL and X and O coordinator coaching is very different. Position coaching is technique and the guys who did it best teach it best. Sometimes that's great players and sometimes that's players who didn't have talent but knew the technique perfect. X and O coaching done by coordinators (especially on the offensive side of the ball) is all about scheme.
And O'Brien is more than qualified to be an OC. If fired today he'd be an OC tomorrow if he wasn't given a HC job. He redesigned the offense on the fly last year and was more creative with Watson then any NFL HC has ever been with a mobile QB (which still amounts to below average creativity for a college coach). Then the league adjusted and we went backwards on offense this year when O'Brien/Watson didn't adjust back. We were middle of the road in total offense and top 1/3 in scoring. And that's with a serious lack of talent on the offensive side of the ball.
Here's the bottom 5 in cap spending on offense...
Cardinals $58 million
Dolphins $55 million
Bills $55 million
Texans $55 million
Broncos $51 million
Here's the same 5 teams in scoring per game.
Texans 25 ppg
Denver 21 ppg
Miami 20 ppg
Bills 17 ppg
Cardinals 14 ppg
There is a large element of you get what you pay for with our offense. We don't have talent outside of Hopkins and Watson. We're mediocre at RB, mediocre at OL, awful at TE, and bad at WR outside of Hopkins and Fuller. For O'Brien to get average performance out of bottom 5 talent is solid.
But we undeniably laid and egg in the playoffs and Watson took a step backwards under O'Brien's coaching this year. I have no problem with O'Brien being held to the fire for that. I just don't buy for one second it is connected to what he did as a college football player.
|