Mommy, Where Do Head Coaches Come From?

There are a lot of schools of thought about where NFL teams should look for a new head coach when the time comes to hire one. Whether it's college or the pros, offensive or defensive minded, or a fresh face as opposed to a familiar one, a team's head coaching search can go numerous different directions.

The folks from Football Perspective took a look at where NFL teams get their new head coaches from, and they have some interesting numbers.

There have been 159 head coaches hired in the National Football League from 1990 to 2013. The Vikings have hired four coaches during that time period. . .Dennis Green, Mike Tice, Brad Childress, and Leslie Frazier. Football Perspective eliminated the twelve head coaches that ascended to the head coaching job after a stint as the interim coach (a category both Tice and Frazier fall under) and examined where the other 147 coaches were plying their trade before becoming NFL head coaches.

Of the 147 coaches hired during that stretch,

-54 of them were classified as "retreads," or coaches that had previous NFL head coaching experience
-32 were offensive coordinators at their previous jobs, including Brad Childress
-31 were defensive coordinators at their previous jobs
-15 were college head coaches, including Dennis Green
-8 fell into the "Other" category, which you can learn more about at the link above
-4 were quarterback coaches
-3 were offensive line coaches

As far as how this relates to the Vikings' current coaching search, the current group of "retreads" doesn't hold a whole lot of excitement for yours truly. Guys like Jon Gruden and Bill Cowher aren't coming here, and probably shouldn't even be mentioned. None of the coaches that were recently fired have any real value, either. One name that's been bounced around is Lovie Smith, and while I don't think I'd hate that, per se, he's already being married to the Tampa Bay job. The Vikings aren't rumored to be looking in that direction at this point, from everything I've seen.

College coaches make up a pretty low percentage, a little more than one-tenth, of all the new hires over a 23-year stretch. Apparently that's the direction the Vikings want to go in, but we'll have to see how that works out.

Most of the coaches that the Vikings are rumored to be interested in are coordinators, and they appear to be looking at both sides of the ball in that respect.

Fans of the Minnesota Vikings have their favorites as to who they would like to see take over for Leslie Frazier in 2014. The folks from Football Perspective have given us a good grasp of where teams tend to look when they attempt to find a new coach. I know we're all looking forward to finding out which category the ninth head coach in Vikings history falls under.