by Michael David Smith

Updated: January 18, 2008, 1:41 PM EST 72 comments

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When Mike McCarthy was named the head coach of the Green Bay Packers on Jan. 12, 2006, it seemed like a head scratcher. McCarthy was coming off a 2005 season in which he was the offensive coordinator of the San Francisco 49ers, a team that ranked last in the league in total yards, total first downs and passing yards. According to the advanced stats at Football Outsiders, that 49ers offense in '05 was the worst in at least a decade.

And yet, the Packers hired him anyway.

When Tom Coughlin was named the head coach of the New York Giants on Jan. 6, 2004, he was coming off a year out of coaching. The Jacksonville Jaguars fired Coughlin after three straight sub-.500 seasons, and there were widespread reports that the Jaguars' players hated Coughlin's dictatorial methods and had tuned him out.

When Norv Turner was named the head coach of the San Diego Chargers on Feb. 19, 2007, he was replacing the recently — and surprisingly — fired Marty Schottenheimer. The Chargers fired Schottenheimer following a 14-2 season in '06 and a divisional round playoff exit. Wanting to advance further in the playoffs, hiring Turner seemed like an odd decision, considering that he had never even come close to a 14-2 regular season and had not advanced past the divisional round in any of his previous nine seasons as an NFL head coach.

When Bill Belichick was named the head coach of the New England Patriots on Jan. 27, 2000, he was, unlike the other three coaches who will be working on Sunday, a highly sought head-coaching candidate whose services were coveted by both the Jets and the Patriots. But even Belichick had a less-than-impressive track record.

In five years as head coach of the Cleveland Browns, Belichick compiled a 37-45 record and was below .500 every year but one.

The point of all this? A coach's past résumé isn't a particularly good predictor of his future success. Much more important than a coaching candidate's past is for owners and general managers looking to hire a head coach to make sure the candidate has a clear plan for his team's future.

Looking at the four coaches whose teams are still playing, all four were the right men for their teams at the right time, even if they hadn't been successful in their previous stops.

Turner's laid-back approach wasn't right for the Washington Redskins, who were coming off a 4-12 season when he was hired in 1993, or the Oakland Raiders, who were 5-11 the year before he arrived in 2005. But it was right for these Chargers, who were already a good team.

Coughlin was the exact opposite. In 2004 he took over a Giants team that had completely quit on its season the year before and that needed a no-nonsense approach.

The Packers' front office correctly figured that just because McCarthy's offense didn't work with 49ers rookie Alex Smith in 2005, that didn't mean it wouldn't work with an established veteran like Brett Favre.

Belichick, more than any two-time coach in NFL history, learned from the mistakes he made in his first job and applied those lessons to his second.

Having the right coach at the right time is especially important in handling the most important position — the quarterback. It simply cannot be overstated how well the four coaches whose teams are still in the playoffs have worked with their quarterbacks.

McCarthy has done masterful work with Favre, who was a turnover machine before McCarthy arrived in 2005 but has cut down on his interceptions without any decline in big plays. Coughlin's reputation is as a coach who breaks his players down more than he builds them up. However, no matter how harsh the criticism of Eli Manning in New York, Coughlin has always supported him.

The one thing no one has ever questioned about Turner is whether he knows how to coach quarterbacks. There's a reason Troy Aikman chose Turner to introduce him at his Pro Football Hall of Fame induction. Turner has done good work with Philip Rivers this season.

And Belichick, of course, plucked Tom Brady out of the sixth round in the 2000 draft and has turned him into a pretty good quarterback.

A coach doesn't have to be friends with his quarterback. Super Bowl-winning coach-quarterback combinations with frosty personal relationships have included Mike Ditka and Jim McMahon with the 1985 Bears, George Seifert and Steve Young with the 1994 49ers, and Barry Switzer and Troy Aikman with the 1995 Cowboys. But if Ditka, Seifert and Switzer didn't get along with their quarterbacks, they at least recognized their quarterbacks' talent and allowed them to play the game their own way.

In my view, the only coach who ever won a Super Bowl while mishandling his quarterback was Brian Billick with the 2000 Ravens, a team with a defense so dominant that it would have been nearly impossible for quarterback Trent Dilfer to throw the Super Bowl away. Billick, despite a great résumé as an offensive coordinator, never did have his quarterbacks playing at a high level in his tenure as a head coach, and that directly led to Billick losing his job this year.

Billick's firing aside, this NFL off-season has been a slow one on the coaching carousel front. Only one coach other than Billick — Cam Cameron of the Miami Dolphins — has been fired. Two others, Bobby Petrino of the Atlanta Falcons and Joe Gibbs of the Washington Redskins, have left voluntarily. A couple retirements might be coming, perhaps with Tony Dungy in Indianapolis or Mike Holmgren in Seattle, but the NFL won't have as many coaching changes as it had a year ago, when seven teams hired new coaches.

As those teams look to hire replacements, they ought to remember that they don't need to hire a candidate who has a résumé showing an impressive past. They need to hire a coach whose approach is right for the team in the present.

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