[Rain Man]

Here's another interesting analysis.

I looked at each coach's first 27 games and last 27 games, and how the index changed. (I used 27 games because that's how many games Todd has coached.)

If you compare a coach's first 27 games to those of his predecessor, you can tell if his regime represented a step up from the previous regime (setting aside some uncontrollable factors like retirements).

If you compare a coach's last 27 games to his first 27 games, you can see whether he had the team on the right track. A positive difference means he was on the right track, and a negative means he was dragging them down.

1st 27 games Last 27 games
Stram -2.99 -9.51
Wiggin -11.77 -16.74
Bettis x -15.63
Levy -8.79 -0.85
Mackovic -2.02 1.17
Gansz -9.25 -8.69
Schottenheimer 8.55 -0.90
Cunningham -2.82 -5.64
Vermeil -6.30 2.00
Edwards -3.24 -19.52
Haley -0.67 x

We can see that Hank Stram started out mediocre with a clean slate, but the team was in freefall in his final years. (Obviously he had some great years in the middle, though.)

Wiggin took a team in freefall and made it worse immediately (his 1st 27 were worse than Stram's last 27), and made it even worse as time went on. Wiggin was obviously unsuccessful, but not as bad as his record would indicate given what Stram had been doing at the bitter end.

Bettis didn't coach 27 games, but obviously the freefall continued.

Levy's immediate impact was to slow down the fall, indicating that he was a better coach than his predecessor(s) of Wiggin and Bettis. In fact, his last 27 games were almost at breakeven. He was pretty clearly moving the team in the right direction.

Mackovic was initially a minor step back from Levy, but his final 27 games were better than his first 27 games, so he was a positive.

Gansz then took a team that was trending positive and totally cratered it from start to finish. He was obviously a horrific hire. Arguments can be made for both him and Herm as the worst coaching hire in Chiefs history.

Marty then took a team that was in a meteoric nose dive and IMMEDIATELY turned them significantly positive. That was an amazing turnaround. But by the time he left they were trending slightly negative. His time had come.

Cunningham did worse with the talent than Marty did, and he was getting worse by the time he left. The team was sliding negative strongly.

Vermeil actually did worse than Cunningham starting out. However, his last 27 games were notably better than his first 27, and were back in the black.

Herm took a team that was trending positively and immediately turned it negative. He then proceeded to absolutely destroy the team in a manner not seen since Caligula named a horse to the Roman Senate.

Haley took over a team that was positively subterranean and, while still slightly negative, has immediately stopped the dive.

If you compare each coach's 1st 27 games to his predecessor's last 27 games, here are the changes you get:

Haley = +18.85
Schottenheimer = +17.24
Levy = +6.84
Vermeil = -0.66
Mackovic = -1.17
Cunningham = -1.92
Wiggin = -2.26
Stram = -2.99
Edwards = -5.24
Gansz = -10.42

I'm not sure if this means anything, other than whether a coach was better than the coach before him. While one can argue that Haley's turnaround is on par with Schottenheimer's turnaround in 1989, I think the real indication is that Schottenheimer and Haley are both good coaches who took over for horrendous coaches.

The more you look at it, the Schottenheimer and Haley situations are very, very similar. At this point, it looks like Haley may have just had a slower Year One but has otherwise done just what Marty did in the Great Miracle of 1989 and 1990.

Before Schottenheimer took over, the previous coach's last two seasons were 4-12 and 4-12. Schottenheimer immediately took the team to 8-8 his first year, and then 11-5 the second year. He did this with a new GM at the helm.

Before Haley took over, the previous coach's last two seasons were 4-12 and 2-14. Haley's first year was another 4-12, and right now he's on pace for a 10-6 or 11-5 second year. He did this with a new GM at the helm.

Kind of eerie, isn't it?