Calling new plays: the offseason featured a number of moves at the NFL's most important assistant-coaching position: offensive coordinator

Football Digest, Oct, 2005 by Barry Wilner

JIM FASSEL COACHED THE NEW York Giants to a Super Bowl. Norm Chow helped Southern California win two national championships. Both bring superb credentials to their new jobs as offensive coordinators. Fassel with the Baltimore Ravens--coincidentally, the franchise that beat the Giants in the 2001 Super Bowl--and Chow with the Tennessee Titans.

Those were two of a collection of moves made at perhaps the most important assistant's position on an NFL staff.

Chow wound up in Tennessee after the highly accomplished Mike Heimderdinger's contract expired and he was hired by the New York Jets to replace the befuddled and often beleaguered Paul Hackett. With head-coaching changes in Miami and Cleveland came new staffs: Scott Linehan was enticed by Dolphins coach Nick Saban to come to South Florida, and the Browns' Romeo Crennel hired Maurice Carthon away from Bill Parcells and the Dallas Cowboys.

Steve Loney was chosen by the Minnesota Vikings to replace Linehan, while the Jacksonville Jaguars replaced the fired Bill Musgrave with Carl Smith, who recently worked under Chow at USC. Ron Turner is back for his second stint in the job for the Chicago Bears. Mike Sheppard moves up from QB coach on the New Orleans Saints--even though Aaron Brooks hasn't shown much progress the past few years. Ted Tollner is the latest coach to leave San Francisco for the Detroit Lions, joining former 49ers boss Steve Mariucci. That left a chance for Mike McCarthy to leave New Orleans and take the coordinator's spot in San Francisco, and it cleared Sheppard's elevation with the Saints. Keith Rowen went from the Kansas City Chiefs' tight end coach to the offensive-coordinator job with the Arizona Cardinals. And the defending-champion New England Patriots lost perhaps the best offensive coordinator in the business, Charlie Weis, now the head man at Notre Dame. In fact, Weis must have been really goad, because coach Bill Belichick chose not to replace him at all.

"We don't have a game for a while," Belichick said during a minicamp. "But when we do, we'll get the play called."

Playcalling is only art of an offensive coordinator's job: He also must have a strong working relationship with the QB, almost to the point where they think alike. He must know the strengths of every player on the offensive squad. from which routes each receiver runs best (and worst) to which blocking schemes best fit the linemen to whether the starting running back is better suited for slashing, power, or speed runs.

Weis was a master of offensive methods, and his work with Tom Brady was brilliant, as good as anything Bill Walsh did with Joe Montana during San Francisco's heyday.

"Charlie was a great teacher," Brady says. "There's no question he'll be missed. He was a great coach. I think everyone else has to pick up the responsibilities he had. He took full responsibility for everything on himself. Everyone else now is realizing when a guy like that's gone, there are a lot of things that we lack. We're just going to have to be ready to pick up the slack."

Brady insists he is up to the challenge.

"In a lot of ways I feel I can coach, too," he adds. "I can coach those receivers, and I can learn from them and they can learn from me and the other quarterbacks. There's a lot of great input from a lot of places."

The situation in New England is very unusual. While many head coaches call the plays or have substantial input--Jon Gruden, Andy Reid, Parcells, Norv Turner, Joe Gibbs, and Mike Holmgren are some prime examples--all of them have someone to bounce ideas and impulses off of. Belichick might be doing that with his quarterback. Of course, that QB is 3-for-3 in Super Bowls in the past four seasons.

Far more common is the Ravens' setup. Indeed, in head coach Brian Billick and his close friend Fassel, the Ravens have what might be the ideal mix. Fassel joined the Ravens last" season as a consultant when he couldn't line up a head-coaching position after the Giants canned him. He was on the short list for a couple of top jobs this year but didn't land any, so he accepted Baltimore's offensive-coordinator job.

There already is a comfort zone between Billick and Fassel. More significantly, there's one between Fassel and quarterback Kyle Boller, who didn't develop too quickly under Matt Cavanaugh. The Ravens expect a leap in productivity from Boller in his third pro season, with Fassel as the mastermind.

"This is all orchestrated for Kyle--this playbook, this offense," Billick says. "He has to be successful, and we have every confidence he can be--not only with the people we brought in, but the structure we've wrapped around him. I think he's very comfortable with what we're doing right now."

Baltimore was very aggressive in attempting to upgrade the offense, from adding first-rate wideout Derrick Mason as a free agent to drafting a hot receiving prospect in Mark Clayton of Oklahoma to hiring another offensive guru, Rick Neuheisel, as quarterbacks coach.

"I know I'm a big chunk of it." Boller says. "This year, we have the talent around me. I'll put the ball in their hands and let them make the plays."