This is also the time of year when managers of football clubs here in the UK come under pressure - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/leagues/premierleague/liverpool/6418869/Liverpool-v-Manchester-United-Rafael-Benitez-is-told-facts-of-life---beat-Manchester-United.html.
Fifty years ago, a first-year NFL head coach was having a tough time. His team had a five-game losing streak. He was shuffling quarterbacks, seemingly unable to decide on a starter. His players did not care for him, and the fans of his team were unsure about him. His name was Vince Lombardi. Today, the Super Bowl trophy bears his name. But he had his share of difficult moments during the 1959 season, his first as the Green Bay Packers’ coach.
That is worth remembering this season because almost half of the NFL's 32 head coaches are in their first or second seasons on the job. Some are faring better than others. The Jets’ Rex Ryan won his first three games this season, but Tampa Bay’s Raheem Morris and Kansas City’s Todd Haley lost their first five. As a rookie coach in 2008, Baltimore’s John Harbaugh led his team to the American Football Conference championship game.
But the lesson of Lombardi’s first season - which is equally relevant here in the UK - is that first impressions can be wrong.
Lombardi, who eventually coached the Packers to five N.F.L. championships and victories in the first two Super Bowls, got off to a great start in 1959. The Packers won their first three games at home after a 1-10-1 season under Ray McLean, Lombardi’s overmatched predecessor. Then the Packers stumbled. They lost a home game by 39 points to the Los Angeles Rams, then went on the road, losing to the Baltimore Colts, the Giants and the Chicago Bears by a combined 45 points. Green Bay’s defense could not stop anyone, and the offense looked lost.
The Packers had not had a winning season in a dozen years, and players and fans wondered if Lombardi was the right person to turn them around. A Brooklyn native, he had been an obscure assistant with the Giants before going to Green Bay. He did not possess a commanding national reputation. The Packers tried to hire Forest Evashevski, the University of Iowa’s high-profile coach, before seeking Lombardi. Told who was given the job, one member of the Packers’ board responded, “Vince who?”
Seven games into his first season, Lombardi did not seem to be engineering a remarkable transformation. He had improved the team’s fitness, fundamentals and discipline during a grueling training camp. And he had built a run-oriented offense around Paul Hornung, a college quarterback who had been floundering as a professional, and a young fullback, Jim Taylor. But the team was on a losing streak, and players were weary of Lombardi’s authoritative style.
But Lombardi firmly believed his hard-boiled tactics would eventually pay off. He decided to start Bart Starr, a polite, studious reserve quarterback who had struggled in his first three seasons. Lombardi’s assistants did not think Starr had a future as a starter, and Lombardi also had doubts. He had picked Lamar McHan over Starr out of training camp, and when McHan struggled, he gave the second-year quarterback Joe Francis a shot. But Starr was a quick learner who worked hard, and Lombardi gave him an opportunity.
Starr performed well in his first start for Lombardi, passing for 242 yards as the Packers lost their fifth straight. The next week, with Starr again at quarterback, they defeated the Washington Redskins, 21-0. Then they finished the season with three road victories, each more impressive than the one before. Starr was a starter after all, it seemed, and Lombardi was a coach whom players and fans could believe in.
Returning home from a season-ending victory in San Francisco, Lombardi and his team were met at the Green Bay airport by 8,000 fans on a rainy night. Although the Packers had finished tied for third in their division with a 7-5 record, their future suddenly appeared bright.
The Packers went on to play in the N.F.L. championship game the next year, then collected their first title under Lombardi in 1961. “We realized in his first season that we were going to be a very good team,” Fuzzy Thurston, an All-Pro guard, recalled years later. “Lombardi wasn’t going to stand for anything less.”
Today’s new generation of N.F.L. head coaches can only hope to endure their inevitable difficulties and persuade their players that their way is right, as Lombardi did a half-century ago.
For more on the Vince Lombardi story, see John Eisenberg's new book, That First Season: How Vince Lombardi Took the Worst Team in the NFL and Set It on the Path to Glory
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