The team never openly said it. Nobody began the introductory news conference nearly 22 months ago by identifying new Washington Redskins coach Jay Gruden as the quarterback whisperer. But everyone in that organization knew it, including the quarterback himself.
The Redskins hired Gruden, in large part, to fix Robert Griffin III.
"I see every trait that a quarterback needs to be successful," Gruden did still proclaim on Jan. 9, 2014. "Why wouldn't you want to coach a guy like that?"
While not intending to knock Gruden's overall ability as a head coach, we can most certainly deem the Redskins' belief that Gruden could extract Griffin's potential as a complete failure.
The question becomes: Is this sudden trend really the way to go?
The answer isn't very clear just yet -- but it appears we soon will have several more case studies to evaluate. That's because, in NFL circles, Falcons offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan and Bengals OC Hue Jackson are climbing quickly to the top of the coaching food chain, thanks to their valuable abilities to put Matt Ryan and Andy Dalton, respectively, in favorable circumstances.
Think of this, in a sense, like other previous hiring trends that overwhelmed the NFL landscape. But this is not to be confused with another previous tendency to simply snag the top offensive coordinator in the league. That hiring concept was driven by statistical production of an offense as a whole.
This development, instead, feels very different. It is squarely about the QB position.
One day after the Colts fired offensive coordinator Pep Hamilton and the Titans canned head coach Ken Whisenhunt, the chatter both inside league circles and publicly centers on two names: Andrew Luck and Marcus Mariota. And in the wake of Colin Kaepernick's benching in San Francisco, we're wondering which coach can get him back on track, too.
But why is that happening? Perhaps this is the result, at least in part, of the organic corporate ladder. The best quarterback coaches generally become offensive coordinators, and the best offensive coordinators generally become head coaches. Every industry works in similar fashion.
But just as we're learning with Gruden and the Redskins -- and really, just as we learned with Joe Philbin and the Dolphins -- this might be a flawed way of thinking as it applies to coaching. Yes, a head coach has his fingerprints on everything. But a head coach very simply doesn't have the time, on a day-to-day basis, to work with one position.
Instead, we really should be thinking about football head coaches more like baseball managers. And that begs the question of whether ownership groups would be better suited trying to take another approach to these quarterback-coaching issues: Why not use money rather than job titles?
If you covet a coach's ability to fix a quarterback, the way Jackson has fixed Dalton, then perhaps it would be best to pay a major chunk of coin to get him in the building to do exactly that. After all, you wouldn't hire a great chef to oversee an entire restaurant, only to have him picking out placemats rather than cooking the food.
No doubt, this wouldn't be easy in a league overrun by big egos. It makes sense, in a competitive environment, that men like Jackson and Shanahan would prefer to be head coaches. And perhaps Jackson isn't a good example himself, since, at 50 years old, he is at a place where he should probably be managing a franchise again.
But for many others, for those capable of checking their egos at the door, it might not be such a bad deal. Your value will only continue to rise while your wallet only continues to grow. And teams will benefit by putting their money (which wouldn't impact the salary cap, by the way) into coaches who can maximize far more expensive player investments (which do impact the salary cap).
So why are we so focused on talking about which head coaches would be the right guy to fix a quarterback, rather than searching for solutions that could work better than the very example we've witnessed over the last two years between Gruden and Griffin?
It's one thing to talk about an offensive system. (Could Chip Kelly's scheme help Mariota prosper?) It is an entirely different conversation to talk about a mentorship. (Can Gruden help fix Griffin?) And the latter could be a dangerous road -- especially when it comes to hiring a head coach.
Follow Jeff Darlington on Twitter @jeffdarlington.
