The 2016 NFL Draft is still three weeks away, and with Pro Days coming to a close and free agency down to just crumbs, NFL Network has to come up with content. Monday evening, they put together a mock draft of NFL head coaches. Elliott Harrison and Maurice Jones-Drew each put together their mock drafts, and it got a little bit interesting.
Harrison went first, and his bottom 5 were (starting with worst) Mike Mularkey, Doug Pederson, Gus Bradley, Ben McAdoo, and Jeff Fisher.
MJD then put his bottom 5 as follows: Chip Kelly, Adam Gase, Ben McAdoo, Jay Gruden, Mike McCoy. In describing Kelly, he said "Chip Kelly, what he did in Philadelphia, deserves to be 35. No disrespect. But there's only 32 [head coaches]."
MJD's reasoning was all over the place for different coaches, and it is hard to take some of this seriously. When Harrison rated Fisher No. 28, he said that was "so disrespectful" and tried to suggest that because Fisher can consistently go 8-8, he should be ranked higher. Of course, Fisher has never actually coached an 8-8 team with the Rams, peaking at 7-8-1 in his first season. His last team to go 8-8 was in 2009 when he coached the Tennessee Titans, and was last above .500 the year before when his team went 13-3. Fisher has this reputation that seems entirely undeserved, particularly given the defensive talent the Rams have.
The only thing I can think with MJD's ranking of Kelly is that he is close with some of the players who don't like Kelly, or just buys into the negative publicity surrounding Kelly. Whether some of that is true or not seems to actually be besides the point for purposes of this "analysis" given his thoughts on some of the other coaches. I get if you want to keep new head coaches outside of your rankings, but this was something different entirely.