Why Coaches And QBs Should Divorce After Five Years Of Not Winning

[Hammock Parties]

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features...f-not-winning/

Call it The Five-Year Rule: No team has ever started the same quarterback under the same head coach for more than five years and seen that duo win its first championship. As you can see in the table, some really great duos just got their title together in the fifth year, but all 35 duos required no more than five years together.



This list raises a red flag for any quarterback-coach combination that has logged a lot of mileage together and not won it all — like Lewis and Dalton. If championship success doesn’t come within five years, things tend to get stale, and someone eventually has to move on from their position of power.

Plenty of great coach-QB combos have played together for longer periods of time without a Super Bowl, but even those pairs’ best years have tended to come early in their tenures. The great Don Shula coached Dan Marino for 13 years in Miami, but the duo reached only one Super Bowl — in 1984, Marino’s second season. Incredibly, some of the best duos to never win a championship had their best shot at one in their fifth season.

- John Elway and Dan Reeves (1987 Broncos): The pair reached three Super Bowls together, but the only one that looked optimistic was Super Bowl XXII in year five, when Denver opened up a 10-0 lead before an avalanche of points by Washington buried the Broncos. Elway would win his first title with Mike Shanahan in their third year together.

- Boomer Esiason and Sam Wyche (1988 Bengals): The high-powered offense was shut down by San Francisco in Super Bowl XXIII, but one more defensive stop against Joe Montana would have clinched a title.

- Jim Kelly and Marv Levy (1990 Bills): The Bills lost Super Bowl XXV after Scott Norwood missed a potential game-winning field goal. Buffalo lost the next three Super Bowls as well but never came closer to winning than the first shot.

- Matt Ryan and Mike Smith (2012 Falcons): The Falcons never had back-to-back winning seasons before Ryan was drafted and Smith was hired in 2008. Then they had five winning seasons in a row, but the peak was the 2012 season, when the Falcons blew a 17-point lead at home to the 49ers in the NFC Championship Game.

- And more recently, Carolina’s Ron Rivera and Cam Newton reached the Super Bowl in 2015, their fifth season together, but lost to Denver. Now in their seventh year, the two are 10-4 and have an opportunity to defy The Five Year-Rule by winning their first championship this season.

A couple of other duos have also recently seen their five-year clock expire. In Arizona, this season was Bruce Arians and Carson Palmer’s fifth together. But a championship was not to be as Palmer broke his arm in Week 7, derailing the Cardinals’ season. This season was supposed to be the sixth year for Chuck Pagano and Andrew Luck in Indianapolis, but Luck couldn’t even get on the field in his recovery from shoulder surgery. Pagano is unlikely to return in 2018, while fans just hope that Luck can return to action.

Finally, there is the intriguing case of Andy Reid and Alex Smith in Kansas City, who are in the middle of their fifth season together. Reid and Smith already have some history working against them: Reid is in his 19th season as a head coach, and Smith is in his 13th season. Only one quarterback (Elway, 15th season) and one head coach (Cowher, 14th season) won their first championship more than a dozen years into their careers.

After a roller-coaster season, Kansas City has rebounded in recent weeks, easily dispatching of the Raiders and Chargers to regain control of the AFC West. Smith is enjoying a career-best season, but this fifth try may very well be his last shot at leading the Chiefs to a championship.

If Smith and Reid can’t bring home the trophy, their tenure together may be over. The Chiefs are likely to obey The Five-Year Rule and give another combo a try — as the Bengals and Lewis probably should have done two years ago.