Gase and the Coaching

[dolphins4life]

First thing I did not like was kicking the long field goal on fourth and short.  I think as a rule, it's better to go for in that situation anyway.  But I think you certainly need to go for it after your defense got shredded on the first drive. 

Second thing I did not like was the punting after the Ravens interception.  You need to take a risk in that situation down two scores. 

The play calling was suspect, too.  In the third quarter, on third down and 18, they went deep.  They should have been thinking in terms of two plays there, because unless it is fourth and really long, you HAVE to go for it there. 

Also, why did they leave Tannehill in after the game was out of reach? 

[Tenshot13]

I agree the coaching was bad, but for completely different reasons.

[fyo]

If you look at coaching historically, new guys have a win-ratio of 0.417 on average their first year in the league. That increases every year until about year 5 where it plateaus at around 0.54 (and then noise starts kicking in above about 10-15 years as there are not a lot of coaches who last that long). The moral of the story is that rookie coaches make rookie mistakes and do get better over time. Whether very young head coaches (such as Gase) are more or less susceptible to this is unknown.

If we limit our sample to post-1978 hires who lasted a minimum of 5 years, that removes a bunch of bad coaches who failed-forward-fast. The effect is still substantial even when removing those bad apples, with an increase from rookie to veteran corresponding to about 1 to 1.5 more wins a season. The effect does kick in faster, though, with a peak around year 3-4 and then a gradual decline to around 0.500 (likely do to coaches taking over good teams and regressing to the mean). Rookie coaches in this sample (my data is a few years old and has 49 coaches who match the criteria) average a full game less than year 2 coaches.