Is Warren Buffett the best investor of all time? Available evidence certainly says yes. If you needed to entrust your money, is he definitely the best guy for the job? Maybe. There are probably numerous others who are very good at managing and growing your money. Every decision they make is based on incomplete data; every choice has an actual and perceived chance of success and actual and perceived probably payoff. The good ones minimize the difference between perceived and actual risks and payoffs, then make the moves that actually have the least risk or the best expected growth.
Even so, no move is 100% and Buffett probably benefits in the pantheon of great investors from some additional good fortune. This is why we think he's the best. His record is the only thing we can measure, but he benefited from his plays actually working out the way they were 'supposed to'. In a similar vein, the good poker player who gets sucked out on the river never gets to show us how good he really is. The winner of the WSOP Main Event is likely a very good player, but they are rarely one of the consensus "best" because a great deal of fortune also goes into winning over such a long stretch of decisions.
Why am I talking about this on a football blog? Because football teams, operations and coaches are all subject to this same phenomenon. For example, if a new coach/GM misses on replacing their aging quarterback, they're likely doomed to a few bad years, thus a bad record, thus a perception they are a bad coach, thus getting fired. But, replacing a quarterback is tough. They are hard to scout, hard to map their skills to NFL defenses, hard to project to an existing offensive system. Even 1st round draft choices are equally likely to be stars, be busts, or wander the league. Staff choices are similar. Some coaches are established commodities: for example by now we can be sure that Wade Phillips is a fantastic defensive coordinator and Bill Belichick is probably the best head coach in the league. However, Phillips did not achieve success as a head coach, and Belichick was sub-500 in a 5-year stint in Cleveland. The point is, there are a lot of variables outside the coach's control, and a lot within. It's hard to separate them all, but we can use the Buffett phenomenon as a more insightful way to think about a coach than just their win-loss record.
Andy Reid is this off-season's hottest available coach. He has a great record in Philadelphia, but made some questionable moves in the last few years. He invested heavily in an aging and fragile Michael Vick. He promoted former offensive line coach Juan Castillo to defensive coordinator. He has not built well through the draft in recent years. Is he slipping? What's going on? Is he good and just having moves not work out? Or was he mediocre but hit on a couple big ones that anyone should be able to prosper with?
Reid started with the Eagles in 1999, and brought Jim Johnson with him to be the defensive coordinator. This was clearly a great move, Johnson was a fantastic coach. In that year, the Eagles also hit the quarterback lottery and drafted Donovan McNabb, who was a great player for 10 years. With these 2 vital pieces in place, Reid performed very well. 2009 was a pivotal year. McNabb was deemed too old and was traded away while they could still get value for him. It was the right move, and the combination of Kolb/Vick looked positive going forwards. Let's keep in mind that there was no guarantee either way: we couldn't know that Vick would have one great season and no more, or that Kolb would keep getting hurt. In this case, the decision to go with Kolb/Vick did not work out the way Reid hoped. Was he wrong to hope that Kolb would build on his promising showings? Probably not. Was he wrong to think Vick would continue to perform well after his miracle comeback? Probably not. In addition to the quarterback situation, longtime defensive coordinator Jim Johnson died. Reid made a curious choice to replace him. Again there was no guarantee it would succeed or fail, but this one didn't have "high probability" written all over it. In the last couple years, the Eagles made some splashy free agent acquisitions. Since Reid had major say in the roster, this one is on him as well. Those moves didn't work out, either due to chemistry or lack of performance from the defensive coordinator spot. Again, since that staffing was Reid's call, it's ultimately a move of his that didn't work out.
Hiring Johnson was a good move, though Johnson had not been a coordinator before. Thus there was less track record by which his success could be known than if Reid had hired a known commodity. This doesn't mean Johnson was a weak candidate, some guys clearly have tremendous upside. However, it's unlikely that the expected odds of success were super high. Even if we give Reid credit for selecting McNabb, history says there was no more than about a one-third chance he was making the right call at the time. Looking back at draft performance over the last 5 years, we see the Eagles doing significantly less than average with their 1st and 2nd round picks. Since Reid had personnel control, this fault falls on him. He's a chronically awful late-game manager. He definitely did well to get value for his own players and/or move on from them before the rest of the league realized they were, in fact, declining. He took the Eagles to numerous NFC Championship games, suggesting he made good use of the roster he'd assembled. Critics will point out he never won the Super Bowl, and perhaps this is an indication of inconsistency. To win the Super Bowl, a team has to maintain a high level of play against good opponents. Perhaps the Eagles never achieved that, perhaps they were outperforming their roster, who knows. Very few teams enjoyed the level of success the Eagles had from about 2000-2008, which suggests that Reid was doing many things well with the guys he did have.
My take is that Reid is great at evaluating and using the guys he has, but is not good at evaluating unknown quantities. Thus, the Eagles didn't draft well and flopped on key staff decisions. Eventually the halo of the McNabb and Johnson decisions would wear off, and here we are. Perhaps Andy Reid is really ideally suited to be an offensive coordinator, or perhaps he needs to be a head coach with less personnel say.
Kansas City needs a quarterback, so we'll get to see how Reid does in identifying their next one.
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