How to separate "talent" from "coaching"

[BengalChris]

Well this is an interesting topic.

I'm not sure there can be a set percentage or ratio. There's a third factor in play, which is the team's front office. For a guy like Andy Reid the front office is also him. Same is true for Belichick.

But in Cincinnati there's a distinct separation between the front office and the coaching staff and personnel. How do you count it when a coaching staff says they do not want player X, but the front office desires something that player X has and drafts him anyways. You can end up with a John Ross. What then? Yes, this would go down as lower quality talent, but we could all see that Marvin got blamed for Ross' failure early on. Of course, 3 years later an entire new coaching staff comes out and says they aren't sure Ross even cares about football.

Andy Reid saw something in Mahomes that Bengals staff didn't. Andy traded way up to snag him. We took Ross. Look at the gap that that one decision created between the success of each of the two teams. And who can say that Marvin could have gotten Mahomes to be the Mahomes we see today? No one. In fact, I don't think he would have, but he would have done more for the Bengals than Ross did.

I see guys like Belichick and Reid do more with less. I also see them acquire better talent to work with.

Van Noy plays great under Belichick, but not great elsewhere.

Belichick drafted Brady in the 6th round and Brady was only a part-time starter at Michigan. Then the two together became a great team. Does anyone see Brady accomplishing what he did all this time without Belichick? Yeah, he did here in Tampa last season, but the Bucs are loaded on both sides of the ball. Seriously what other coach would have started Brady in those playoff games when the team's franchise QB is coming back form an injury? Very few coaches, if any at all. Bledsoe was their guy. But for some years Marvin wasn't even allowed to make up his own game day roster. How does that work exactly?

The Bengals front office let Troy Blackburn send text messages to players in contract negotiations and we then all got to watch Whitworth say adios, which created a mess for several years. Marvin really thought Whit was coming back. Surprise, surprise, surprise as Gomer Pyle use to say.

An inept front office can really screw up your roster. I know this then shows up in the talent side of the equation, but an Ogbuehi playing LT is more like negative talent than just lessor talent.