Comparing Greg Schiano's success to previous Buccaneers head coaches

Just how good have coach Schiano and his coaching staff have been in his rookie year in the NFL? We all know he is disciplinarian with his “Toes on the Line” meme last year during the offseason. The rookie coach earned a 7 – 9 record, which is a dramatic improvement from a three win season two seasons ago. Let us take a look at the past five years for comparisons, just for the heck of it.

Take a good look at the chart above. Schiano’s offense ranked higher than offensive minded Gruden, something that Morris couldn’t meet nor surpass. The offense had a great improvement with offseason acquisitions of G Carl Nicks, a #1 WR Vincent Jackson, and late first round draft pick RB Doug “Muscle Hamster” Martin for on field personnel.

Defensively, the team did improve by one ranking. The defensive ranking looks terrible, but we will delve into more numbers to inspect just how bad the defense was. What is striking is that Gruden had the best defense the organization has had in the previous five years. Please note, these rankings are based upon yards gained.

The second chart breaks down the rankings into pass and rush separately. The 2012 Schiano offense ranked five spots higher than 2008 Gruden, but when broken down in pass and rush offense we begin to see that they are not all that different. Defensively, the team swapped the worst rushing offense for the worst passing offense in the NFL. But what it did do well was go from last to first in rush defense. Even though the 2012 team moved up only one spot in defensive ranking, there were huge changes going on. Yet, yards alone do not necessarily have transitive property on how well or terribly a team has performed and thus the prompting on yet another chart. (Yay, me!)

From the Points Per Game chart, we notice that Schiano’s team greatly improved in terms of point differential compared to last year. With the focus on offense last offseason, we see a huge jump in production as well as bringing down points allowed. Although the defensive ranking only moved up by one, we see that the points allowed dropped by 6.3 points, or a touchdown without the extra point. Quite impressive considering the biggest acquisition was CB Eric Wright.

What really stands out is how awesome the offense was last year compared all of the other years in the past five years. There are many discussions about the offense during the year, but in comparison to the previous five years in Buccaneers’ organization, there should be many praises for our rookie coach Schiano and his work.

We did have a losing record last year, but the improvement along the offense and defense are quite remarkable. Despite the many odd things that coach Schiano did during the games last year, he still was able to improve the team as a whole; and he was able to produce the highest scoring offense in the previous five years.

No wonder why GM Mark Dominik is so enamored with Schiano and so should we, at the moment. This offseason, the organization went heavy on defensive acquisitions. I wonder how much better this defense can be this coming year. Hopefully, in a year, we can revisit this article and add another stat to relish or be disgusted with. Until then, coach Schiano, I say, “Cheers!” You deserve whatever is available that is on tap for such an improvement.