Coach of the Year

Here is another award that is surrounded by ambiguity and rewards the whole trend of "winning is everything" and ignoring accomplishmnets of other coaches. 

First off "Coach of the Year", what does that even mean?  I don't even know how you can gauge this.  A lot of times it doesn't have a lot to do with the coach.  Take Green Bay for example.  People are upset McCarthy didn't win COTY, but I understand why he didn't.  True, the Packers had 16 guys on IR, a guy suspended, and a guy from last season who couldn't get healthy and was cut.  But a majority of those guys were on defense.  McCarthy is clearly the offensive mastermind of the team, but his major injuries came with Grant and Finley.  Without Grant, there was no rushing game until Starks.  McCarthy couldn't figure out how to utilize Brandon Jackson effectively.   He attoned for the absence of Finley, though, with calling on Greg Jennings who answered quite well.

The much larger occurance of injuries happened on defense, an area in which McCarthy has little control.  Come in GM Ted Thompson and DC Dom Capers.  Thompson has an uncanny ability to scout smaller school players and comb through the undrafted guys and find capable replacements.  Just this season, Thompson secured guys like Frank Zombo, Erik Walden, and Sam Shields as undrafted free agents or street free agents.  Once Thompson gets the pieces to the puzzle, Dom Capers puts it together.  The offense and defense were both effective and both sides of the ball won games (see: playoffs).  So that begs the question, can you give ALL the credit for winning to the Head Coach?   My view is no.  They are the glue that holds everything together, but it's difficult to tell whether a team's success is due to a Head Coach, Offensive Cooridinator, Defensive Coordinator, GM, ect.  If a coach does ALL of that, you can say it was them.

Now I know another side of this is player morale, but once again this is a very hard thing to prove.  Not every voter in the AP covers one particular coach.  You can't tell me that every person who has a vote knows each coach well and knows how they coach and what kind of leader they are and the support they have from their players.  It's based off of asuumptions and number of wins.  I think all voting for awards needs a reform if they want any credibility. 

Does Bill Bellichick deserve to be coach of the year because he took an already good core of players and maintained the good record the Pats are known for?  Or does Raheem Morris deserve to be coach of the year because he took a terrible team and made them a winning team in the span of one offseason.  How do we, as fans, know who should win the award?  It can't be both or you'll always be screwing someone over.

This is a recurring trend that the NFL is going through.  Why can't things be more clear for the fan?  From rules to awards, the NFL has done a good job at keeping the fans in the dark.  You can't even get a rule book on the NFL's website.  How do they expect fans to educate themselves?