By STEVE EUBANKS
FOXSportsTennessee.com
Jan. 26, 2011
Here�s what 17 years get you:
"The Tennessee Titans and Jeff Fisher have agreed to part ways and Fisher will no longer be the head coach of the team."
That announcement came out of the Titans' front office on Thursday night. Just like that, Jeff Fisher � the longest-tenured current coach in the NFL, loved by citizens of Nashville, loved by the assistants who worked for him, respected and genuinely admired by most of his players who played for him � was summarily shown the door.
In the process, Titans owner Bud Adams showed the world everything that is wrong with the NFL.
There are very few jobs with less long-term security than that of NFL head coach.
Look at a guy like Marty Schottenheimer, for example. In five years with Cleveland he went 44-27 and was NFL Coach of the Year in 1986. He was summarily fired. Then in a 10-year stint in Kansas City, he went 101-58 and took the Chiefs to the playoffs seven out of 10 times. Unfortunately, that wasn�t good enough, and Schottenheimer was told to turn in his keys. The trend continued. Marty took an awful Redskins team to 8-8, and was dumped by Dan Snyder after one year. Then he took the perennial bottom-dwelling San Diego Chargers on a 35-13 run in three years before getting the boot.
It is part of the job. No one even blinks.
"In terms of a head coach being able to stay around, the pressure is greater than ever," said legendary Dolphins coach Don Shula. "You have to win early and often and sometimes that isn�t enough. I averaged 10 wins a year for 33 years and in the end that wasn�t good enough."
Fisher's dismissal is just another in a long and disturbing trend as the NFL fast approaches a tipping point. The average tenure for a head coach in the 90-plus-year history of the league is 4.1 years. But that is down from 4.3 only six years ago.
The average career of a player is now 3.6 years and rising. With modern medicine and players preparing themselves for 10- to 15-year professional playing careers while still in high school, the day is fast approaching when an NFL rookie will rest assured that he could see two, maybe three, head coaches in his career.
When that day comes, the league will have a big problem on its hands.
"Everybody wants to win now," said former Jets and Chiefs coach Herm Edwards.
"There is definitely an instant gratification mindset now," Edwards said. "If you don't (win), the owner is going to find somebody else he thinks can get the job done. That's just the fact of life."
Gone are the Lombardis, Levys, Shulas, Landrys and Nolls, coaches who were more legendary than any of the players who worked for them, and names that now conjure images of the NFL�s golden age. Now, a franchise like Washington can have six coaches in 10 years and nobody bats an eye.
Bill Cowher, who spent 15 years leading the Steelers, believes economics also plays a role in the high turnover rate. "Owners are very successful people, and when they come into the league and don't experience the success they are used to, they feel as though they need to make a change to get to the top. Also, I think a lot of it is the amount of money people are paying for franchises, and the zest for having immediate feedback. A number of teams have been able to go from last to first in a relatively short period of time and that has lessened the patience of owners."
Patience is an overrated virtue to many of today's NFL owners. Adams is just the latest.
"I think the pressure is on the owners to say they are doing something to turn things around," Shula said. "They feel like they need to show that they're doing something and the coach becomes the victim of that."
It's a sad, sorry way to treat men who devote their lives to their teams. Fisher is just the latest. Unfortunately for football, once the day comes when the average playing career exceeds the average tenure of a head coach, the jig will be up.
Today, with the firing of the longest-tenured coach in the league, the NFL took one more step toward that same foreboding abyss.
