In 2008, the Ravens hired a 45-year-old John Harbaugh to be their new head coach. A little over three months later, the Ravens gave the first-year head coach a quarterback when they selected FCS product Joe Flacco in the first round of the draft. Then, the rookie started right away.
Sound familiar?
Yeah, the Eagles’ situation this year seems to mirror — in a lot of ways — what the Ravens did in 2008. They hired a new young coach, drafted a strong-armed quarterback from the old Division I-AA and started him immediately.
The Eagles would be pretty lucky if Doug Pederson and Carson Wentz turned into anything like what Harbaugh and Flacco have been for Baltimore.
So what was it like for Harbaugh, as a first-year head coach, to be tethered to a rookie quarterback?
“Well, it wasn't too bad,” Harbaugh said on a conference call with Philly reporters this week. “He's pretty good. It'd be better than the alternative of not being tethered to a talented quarterback. That wouldn't be quite as good. I was just trying to figure out how to be a head coach and Joe was trying to figure out how to be a quarterback, and over the years, I think we've kind of developed a really close bond. We shared a lot of amazing experiences together and a lot of heartache. It kind of forms that combination.”
Harbaugh said there “probably was” a benefit of going through his first year at the same time Flacco was a rookie, but he wasn’t able to point out exactly what it was. And he also admitted he obviously doesn’t have anything to compare it to.
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“Maybe a little bit like Andy [Reid] with Donovan [McNabb],” Harbaugh said. “It was a good thing.”
Pederson definitely thinks there is a benefit of going through his first year at the same time as his young quarterback goes through his rookie season.
“I think so,” Pederson said. “As a head coach I'm learning every single day, every single week, and it's great for me because, No. 1, as a play-caller and managing the game and talking to your quarterback, a young quarterback, we kind of work through some of these situations together, so there's been a great benefit. And for me it's just heightened my awareness of the overall game procedure and the trust that I have in Carson and the offense. But I think there are a lot of benefits of definitely doing this together first year.”
It makes sense that an organization would hire a head coach and draft a first-round quarterback in the same year. If the team has gotten to the point where the coach needs to be fired, it’s probably time to clean house and get a new quarterback too.
Since the Ravens drafted Flacco in the first round of the 2008 draft, there have been 12 instances (including the Eagles this year) where a team with a first-year head coach has drafted a quarterback in the first round.
Here they are:
2014 - Browns (Mike Pettine, Johnny Manziel)
2014 - Vikings (Mike Zimmer, Teddy Bridgewater)
2013 - Bills (Doug Marrone, EJ Manuel)
2012 - Colts (Chuck Pagano, Andrew Luck)
2012 - Dolphins (Joe Philbin, Ryan Tannehill)
2011 - Panthers (Ron Rivera, Cam Newton)
2011 - Titans (Mike Munchak, Jake Locker)
2011 - Vikings (Leslie Frazier, Christian Ponder)
2009 - Lions (Jim Schwartz, Matt Stafford)
2009 - Jets (Rex Ryan, Mark Sanchez)
2009 - Buccaneers (Raheem Morris, Josh Freeman)
It’s pretty clear to see how closely related coach success is to quarterback success. For the most part, when the teams get the right quarterback, team success follows, which obviously reflects well on the head coach. When a quarterback fails, often it means the failure of the head coach.
But if a head coach and a quarterback are able to grow something for a long time, it can be pretty special.
“I think it's a big thing,” Flacco said on a conference call this week. “I think when you look at a lot of quarterbacks that have been around a long time, they've been with the same coach for a long time. It's been huge for me to have a head coach come in here that I've come in with, that's come in, had success and won. He's been able to be a familiar face and we've been able to build that relationship.
“At the end of the day, being the head coach and being the quarterback of an organization is a little bit different and it has its different challenges and I think if you can kind of go through that together, I think that helps.”