Infographic: Will the real Jeff Fisher please stand up?
A not so serious, evidence-based look into a commonly discussed narrative in football circles
Let me be very clear…Jeff Fisher is a better coach than I am an analyst. There are only 32 head coaches in the NFL at any given moment. Tens of thousands of college and high school coaches would love to reach the pinnacle of their profession, the NFL. Jeff Fisher has done this, and he has been good enough to coach a total of 22 seasons.
A common discussion that has come up on podcasts, sports talk radio and online forums is the legendary mediocrity of Jeff Fisher. The joke is that his teams are always 7–9 (7 wins and 9 losses in a 16-game season). Jeff Fisher didn’t help this narrative when he addressed his team in front of cameras before the 2016 season by saying “I am not f — -ing going 7–9 or 8–8 or 9–7, OK? Or 10–6 for that matter. This team is too talented. I am not going to settle for that, OK? I know what I am doing. We had some 7–9 bulls — — this morning…” He was right, he didn’t go 7–9, he ended up 4–9 and then got fired in mid-season. Part of the angst from the fans of his teams may be the fact that he just keeps coming back. He has a winning season only once every 3.5 years, but perhaps that’s enough for the management and ownership of the teams he has coached for (Oilers, Titans, and Rams) to keep him around. The reputation that he has been saddled with is really about the sustained, long-term mediocrity. Most average coaches don’t last 22 years in the league.
Is the Jeff Fisher narrative true? I decided to examine the data and find out for myself. Often, when facts and data are taken into account, many narratives end up being false. Of all the coaches in the 16-game schedule era (1978-present) who is the real Jeff Fisher? Is it Jeff Fisher, or are there other coaches who have consistently gone 7–9 but have flown under the radar of the sports talk community?
I’ll admit, there are more important topics to spend time on, but I was entertained by the research and visualization, and I thought the NFL fan community would enjoy this analysis. I’ll end this post by stating that I would be ecstatic if I could be talented enough to be one of the more average analysts out of arguably the best 32 analysts in the world.
Notes:
The data was researched using pro-football-reference.com
The infographic was created on infogram
About me
During my career, I’ve been an Analyst in the functional areas of Marketing, Sales, Operations, and Strategy & Planning. I’m also passionate about sports analytics and data visualization. You can find some of my thoughts, analysis and data visualizations on Twitter by clicking here.
