Chiefs Hire Bill Muir as Offensive Coordinator
Chiefs have hired Bill Muir as offensive coordinator of the Kansas City Chiefs. Before I get to my thoughts I will provide a little background on Bill Muir. Muir was the offensive line coach for the Chiefs in 2009 and 2010, and before that he served as O-Line coach and Offensive Coordinator for the Tampa Bay Buccanneers from 2002-2008, a tenure which included a Super Bowl victory (2002).
Muir is what’s often referred to as a “football guy,” which ultimately means that he has been around the game of football all his life. Muir has a solid reputation around the league and is definitely a workhorse and someone who knows the game of football. With all that there are good and bad that go along with this hire.
The good is that since Muir agreed to come here two seasons ago, they know each other, they know how to work together and this should create a synergistic relationship that will benefit the team as opposed to the conflicting signals they were receiving from the previous OC/HC relationship. Muir was also in a situation previously where he had to have a good relationship with his HC who worked closely with the offense.
The bad is that his resume is underwhelming. While he did command an offense that won a Super Bowl in 2002, it is unclear how much of the offense was his doing and it was also unclear how much of the offense was his compared to Jon Gruden’s who was calling the plays at the time. His offense’s numbers for both points scored and total offense were underwhelming as well neither of which ranked higher than 10th and generally fell between 15th-25th in the league in each of his years.
The question that most have now is with this hire, who will be calling the plays? Well, in response to being asked that question by Kent Babb Haleys response was as follows: “We’re not there yet Kent” –This could not be more obvious that Haley is going to call the plays. Now, I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing. People point to 2009 as proof that Haley can’t call plays. I think those people need to take a step back on that.
First of all, this team was horrifically bad in 2009. They had no running game with Larry Johnson for the first half of the season, no receivers, Dwayne Bowe played awful and was suspended, the offensive line did not have Ryan Lilja or Casey Weigmann, and the team was generally in disarray. I highly doubt that anybody would be able to have coached that team to any offensive success. Not to completely exonerate Haley of all blame, he definitely stretched himself too thin that first year being HC, OC and QB coach.
However, I would like to note there is a distinction between being Offensive Coordinator and calling the plays. The OC has to develop the game plan, hold all the meetings, go over all the film, assimilate all the offensive game plan notes and the opposing defense notes. It’s not an easy job and doing that with being HC is quite a task. However, if you have an OC in place who can do all that for you, whom you are on the same page with, and you can just worry about calling the plays on gameday, it’s a different story. This setup has worked to success in Tampa Bay (with Muir), Green Bay (twice), Arizona, Seattle, and New Orleans and all to pretty good success. Each of the teams mentioned made it to the Super Bowl and three of them won. Haley was in the “OC” role in Arizona when that happened so he has experienced it first-hand.
I might be on the less populous side of the fence, but I don’t think this is an altogether bad thing. People keep screaming about how bad the offense was in 2009 as proof that Todd Haley can’t get it done in 2011 but I think that the situation is completely different, this team is completely different, and Haley has matured much since the low point of 2009. Todd Haley made his name calling plays and that’s how he got this job, so until he proves me wrong I have complete faith that he will get the job done in 2011 and beyond.
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