Coaching 101: Rhules of success

Plenty of people are drawing the wrong conclusions on the reasons for

Well, it does not appear that the Seattle Seahawks are the worst team in the NFC West. That position is occupied by the Arizona Cardinals whose offense failed to find the end zone on Sunday against a Seattle defense that had been something less-than-formidable heading into the game.

I’ll have more on whether that game is a sign of defensive improvement or offensive ineptitude later this week, but first, I wanted to explain an uncomfortable discovery I made in reading about the end of Matt Rhule’s tenure in Carolina. More specifically, a cringy, three-page paper that he wrote in his first year running that franchise sounded an awful lot like the guy in Seattle who resembles Willy Wonka in khakis. It was kind of jarring, honestly, and it did get me thinking how we tend to oversimplify the difference between success and failure among NFL coaches and in doing so miss the larger part.