How Do Staff Changes in NFL Football Create Unpredictability?

There are a number of different factors that can impact teams and players at the start of an NFL season, resulting in unpredictable performance  and predicting NFL at the start of the season challenging.  One of those factors is changes in personnel.  Staff turnover is a complex matter.  Players are traded, coaches hired or fired, and managers replaced.  When a team has major changes in its roster or management, there are a number of resulting variables that can impact a team’s performance:

• Improvements or declines specific in different positions.  This is probably the most obvious change that results from switching out players.  If a team replaces poor offensive players with strong offensive players, the o-line has taken an obvious boost.  The mistake is in thinking that these changes take place in a vacuum.  All things being equal, yes, you would see an improvement.  But the factors below can continue to exert an influence.  Sometimes that influence is positive, sometimes it is negative. 

• Overall strategic changes.  When players are replaced, you are going to end up with players with different strategic strengths and weaknesses.  That means that a team needs to adjust its strategy to play to those strengths and curb those weaknesses.  A team may also be making overall changes to its strategy to offset what didn’t work last year.  A new strategy by itself may not solve problems either if a team has difficulty adjusting to the new tactics.

• Chemistry changes.  Sometimes players work intuitively together right from the start, but that is rarely going to happen overnight.  When new players are thrown in together, they have to get used to each others’ play styles and personalities.  This is not just about teamwork.  When players get along and have great camaraderie, it will reflect well in their game play.  When players do not get along and have off-field issues, those issues will generally leak onto the field as well.

• Leadership changes.  Staff changes can also result in changes in leadership.  On the most obvious level, this refers to management and coaching changes.  But roster changes may also result in the loss or gain of leadership.  Strong team captains and key players can motivate and rally the team together.  Weak leaders result in fragmentation and disarray.

Because many NFL teams make substantial changes to their personnel during the offseason, they often come back transformed into entirely different teams - teams which are still getting used to working together and have not yet reached their full potential.  As a handicapper, you will have to carefully review the new roster and think about the numerous ramifications of trades. 

If you do your research, you may be able to make some pretty good predictions at the beginning of the season.  Never forget though that those predictions will never be rock solid.  Only after the season starts to progress can you get a real feel for the ultimate impact of staff and player changes.