Look, I think Mangini's a douche like most every Pats fan, and from what I hear, I believe it could very well be true that he might not have the character composition to be a successful head coach in the NFL. Then again, a lot of the same things were said about BB after his tenure in Cleveland, about his demeanor, his communication skills, and his ego. Oh, and some of his blow-outs w/ Parcells were legendary.
I think there's also a lot of "post hoc" speculation going on, retrofitting our perception of past events to come up with a narrative that jibes with our perception of the present. That kind of reasoning just leads to premature conclusion-jumping.
I mean, remember after Saban and Mangini's first years with their respective teams, when the media were dubbing them geniuses and saying that BB might not be the best coach in the division anymore? And then how quickly the conventional wisdom turned when they couldn't reproduce their success in the following years?
The problem is that there are so many factors that go into a team's success on the field that any attempt to connect correlation with causation is going to be uselessly reductive. Yes, we know that in 2005, Mangini had his playcalling duties stripped, and that in the 2nd half of the year, the defense improved. But there were also some key personnel changes the corresponded with the turnaround -- notably, the return of Bruschi, and him and Vrabel replacing Chad Brown and Monty Beisel at ILB. We also achieved some continuity in the secondary at that point, with Artrell Hawkins, though an unexceptional physical talent, bringing some stability and discipline to the S position.
So was it the play-calling or the personnel, or both, or perhaps a weaker 2nd half schedule, or the natural tendency of a BB team to play its best football down the stretch? We'll never know. We do know, however, that despite BB having taken over the play-calling, he had no intention of replacing Mangini as DC after the season, and tried to talk him out of taking the job w/ the Jets.
And it's funny how in the end, a team's performance establishes the context in which we see everything else. BB brought success to the Patriots franchise, so his oft-mystifying personnel moves, his obsessive secrecy, and steadfast refusal to be a communicator, to try to "sell" his idea of the team to the fans, all become part of his legend. But if Bledsoe's injury doesn't clear the way for Brady, if the Pats don't catch the week 17 breaks that have them home in the snow vs. Oakland, if there's no tuck rule, and, most germainely, if Kraft wasn't such a great, hands-off owner, and started interfering after BB's initial 5-11 season, those same qualities of BB would be part of the conventional wisdom of why he never made it as a HC.
