It was not long after the NFL regular season was over that seven of the league’s 32 teams were in search of a new head coach.
Counting Wednesday’s hiring of Bengals offensive coordinator Hue Jackson by Cleveland and the Giants’ plan to hire offensive coordinator Ben McAdoo on Thursday, four of those coaching jobs remain open. And for those still open and those just filled, uncertainty lingerings.
How does a team know whether it has hired — or will hire — the right man?
It is a question Giants ownership was asking itself, a question that faced every one of those seven teams with openings.
Three years ago, the Cardinals were in that same position, having fired Ken Whisenhunt after the 2012 season and taken a chance on a longtime journeyman assistant named Bruce Arians.
Three years later, the Cardinals’ hiring of Arians looks like the best business decision the league has seen in a long time.
All Arians has done is win 34 of 48 games and make the playoffs the past two seasons. He went 10-6 in 2013, his first season with the Cardinals, and didn’t make the playoffs. But he led the Cardinals to the postseason last year at 11-5, despite losing quarterback Carson Palmer after Week 6, before being defeated in the wild-card round at Carolina.
This year, with the No. 2 seed in the NFC, he hopes to take the next step — win multiple playoff games, beginning with Saturday’s 8:15 p.m. divisional-round game against the Packers at University of Phoenix Stadium.
Riding Arians’ unique, honest, swashbuckling coaching style, the Cardinals went 13-3 this season, the most successful in the 96-year NFL history of the franchise, which won 11 games four previous times.
“What you’re seeing is a guy that’s taken all his years of experience and become one of the top coaches in the National Football League,’’ said CBS studio analyst and former Steelers coach Bill Cowher, who worked with Arians in Kansas City, then brought him to Pittsburgh as his receivers coach from 2004-06. “What you see with Bruce is a guy who’s got a great offensive mind and has a great feel for people. He holds everybody accountable, but does it in a manner that’s not disrespectful.’’
Phil Simms, a CBS game analyst, said he’s “not surprised’’ to see Arians have success as a head coach because of his coaching style.
“He has that rapport with players,’’ Simms said Wednesday. “He’s very direct. When [a coach] tells you the truth, at first it kind of knocks the player around a little bit. But then they learn to accept it and deal with it and realize it’s a great thing. He’s tough on everybody, and particularly tough on his quarterbacks.’’
Palmer has thrived in his three seasons with the Cardinals under Arians. Palmer is 29-9 after going 54-67 as a starter in his previous nine seasons. His 35 touchdown passes this season are a career high, to go with just 11 interceptions.
“He’s fearless, and that’s what I like about him,’’ CBS analyst Dan Fouts said.
Arians was supposed to be “retired’’ at age 59 when the Steelers fired him after the 2011 season. He had spent eight seasons in Pittsburgh, during which the team won two Super Bowls and went to a third. He was called into head coach Mike Tomlin’s office after the season, thinking he was getting a raise, but instead got a pink slip. The Steelers termed it a “retirement.’’
“I was not retired,’’ Arians said with a laugh. “I was re-fired.’’
A week into his forced “retirement,’’ the Colts hired him. After he did a remarkable job filling in for head coach Chuck Pagano while Pagano was undergoing leukemia treatments in 2013, the Cardinals finally made Arians a head coach for the first time since he was Temple’s head coach in the 1980s in his 30s.
Now the 63-year-old is a perennial candidate for NFL Coach of the Year.
“There are so many assistant coaches that are truly capable of being good head coaches in the NFL,’’ Simms said. “But the hard thing is selling them to the writers, the public and all the other people that don’t believe some of these assistants can turn into great coaches.’’
Of those four teams still searching, and the Giants, Browns and Dolphins — who have filled or are close to filling their spots — every one of them hopes to be as fortunate as the Cardinals turned out to be for hiring the right man.