Jim O’Neil’s luck continues.
In the previous two seasons as defensive coordinator of the Browns, he never heard a lick of criticism – in the public eye at least, but probably overall as well – even though his group, the highest-salaried defensive unit in the NFL, couldn’t stop anyone. Those struggles have been well-chronicled here and elsewhere. While the defense was not the main reason why the Browns went 3-13 last season after losing the final five games of 2014, giving them a 3-18 record over that 21-game span, it certainly didn’t help.
That – getting a free pass – is what happens when your best buddy, in this case Mike Pettine, is the head coach.
Now O’Neil has a new job as the defensive coordinator of the San Francisco 49ers, the host team for Sunday’s Super Bowl 50 between the Carolina Panthers and Denver Broncos. As such, he succeeds former Browns head coach Eric Mangini, who was a member of head coach Jim Tomsula’s staff that was fired after just one season.
It is a real rarity that a former coach of one team replaces another former coach of that team in a job on another club. Mangini’s defense was awful (even the offensively-challenged Browns ran up 24 points on it in a two-touchdown victory at FirstEnergy Stadium on Dec. 13), just as his Cleveland teams were awful.
Pettine is currently out of football and likely will remain so for the entire 2016 season, being able to love more than comfortably on the treasure trove of money still owed him by the Browns. So while Money Mike won’t be there to have his back, O’Neil was able to catch a real break by getting a job under new 49ers head coach Chip Kelly, who has little or no interest in defense. For the offensively-minded Kelly, defense is merely something that happens when his offense is sitting on the sideline catching its breath. Wherever he has been, whether it be Oregon, the Philadelphia Eagles or now the 49ers, serving as Kelly’s defensive coordinator is like being the driver for a supermodel in that nobody pays any attention to you or what you’re doing. It’s like you don’t even exist.
So, in theory at least, O’Neil will have a lot of leeway to mess up by implementing the same ill-conceived schemes he used in Cleveland. It will have to get pretty bad – which may well happen – before Kelly takes off his headset, sets down his play sheet with the first 15 plays scripted, and says anything. If Kelly can’t “outscore” O’Neil – that is, if the San Francisco offense can’t score more points than its defense gives up – then there will begin to be some issues.
But that’s for down the road. For the here and now at least, Jim O’Neil is in a very good place.
Again.
And because that is so, he should go to church and light a candle for the good fortune that seems to follow him wherever he goes.
By Steve King
