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A Minnesota Vikings fan's opinion on why John DeFilippo is a good fit in Jacksonville

Brad Rempel-USA TODAY Sports

When the Minnesota Vikings hired John DeFilippo I supported the move. While it didn't work out between him and the team, I still believe he's a very good coach, and his firing should not be viewed as such a strong mark against his coaching acumen as one might initially think.

He's a rather young coach at 40 years old, and has only played or coached at the quarterback position. He has very positive energy, and I mean that in a good way. He exudes confidence, likely raising the confidence level of those with and under him, which I believe is a very good trait for a leader to have. From what I can tell he's a very good teacher.

As our coach Mike Zimmer says: "Coaching is teaching".

Because of his particular experience, his area of expertise is clearly the passing game. He seems to be a very good passing play designer, and red zone offense is a specialty of his (in addition to coaching quarterbacks in Philadelphia, he was their red zone coordinator). However he has two key weaknesses: knowledge of blocking and running; and by extremely unfortunate coincidence, those weaknesses were terrible fits for the situations he was in.

No coach of his experience level should be expected to know all facets of offense inside and out, but his first offensive coordinator job (in Cleveland) should've been a good fit for him, because he would bring his knowledge of the passing game, and his offensive line coach would help him with what he lacks. Unfortunately he lost that supplement when the offensive line coach got suspended and eventually released from the team early on, leaving DeFilippo on his own.

As is to be expected, DeFilippo fell back on what he knew, and that was passing. Thus the Browns became very unbalanced and pass-heavy, and though individual players in the passing game put up impressive stats, the lack of balance made the offense unsuccessful as a whole. Without the threat of running, the passing game was put under undue stress, and because blocking is a weakness for him, his protection schemes were not diverse and became predictable and easier for defenders to exploit.

After an unsuccessful season, head coach Mike Pettine and his staff were fired from Cleveland, and John returned to caching quarterbacks, now with the Philadelphia Eagles. He continued to excel in that role as he had with the Oakland Raiders with Derek Carr, coaching Carson Wentz from a somewhat raw college player and a rather shaky rookie to a near MVP level quarterback, and Nick Foles from mediocre backup to an excellent playoff performer and Super Bowl champion. As mentioned above, he also coordinated the Eagles' red zone offense.

He parleyed this success into getting another shot at coordinating a full offense, this time with Minnesota. While he hadn't been able to improve his knowledge of running and blocking much, he would have major help from offensive line/running game guru, Tony Sparano. Unfortunately lightning struck twice, this time more disastrously than the last time, as he lost his offensive line coach again, this time with Sparano's tragic death.

Because of our awful blocking, the offense didn't perform well, and under pressure DeFilippo once again fell back on what he knew, i.e. the passing game. If a run didn't go well, maybe gaining only one yard, he wasn't willing to try it again, but would try to get the offense back on schedule with a pass. Whenever something didn't go according to plan, he would fall back on what he knew to try fix it. As expected our offense became extremely pass-heavy, and ended up the least balanced attack in the league.

Unfortunately... a terrible offensive line, predictable pass frequency, and unvaried protection schemes doomed the offense to failure. After (I assume) trying to correct it privately, Zimmer even publicly expressed his frustration at the lack of balance, and shortly thereafter fired DeFilippo.

I still maintain DeFilippo is a good coach, including leadership, personality, and passing expertise. His weaknesses just happened to be the worst possible fits for the two offenses he was tasked with coordinating.

I think things will go better for him in Jacksonville because he'll have better support for those weaknesses. Doug Marrone's area of expertise is offensive line, Tom Coughlin has vast knowledge in all facets of the game, plus he'll have a regular offensive line coach, and an assistant offensive line coach (who just happens to be the late Tony Sparano's son) all to help him.

In addition to coaches who can help him with his weaknesses, the personnel are likely to make his running attempts more successful, so he won't feel he has to throw to dig himself out of a hole. His offensive line would almost have to be better than what he had in Minnesota, and their PFF rankings would support that. Also Leonard Fournette is a more power, fall forward type running back than Dalvin Cook, which I think is better in this context.

The only disadvantage he'll have to face is that Blake Bortles isn't as good a quarterback as Kirk Cousins, and I don't think your receivers are as good as ours. However with DeFilippo's pass scheming, it's quite possible that he can get guys open and place Bortles (or a rookie quarterback) in very advantageous situations.

This became a much more intensive (and lengthy) undertaking than I intended, but I hope I could provide some clarification for you on your new offensive coordinator.

To sum it up, I believe you got a very good coach who might finally have been put in a position where his weaknesses could actually be mitigated, instead of magnified to their maximum negative impact.

Best of luck this season to your team, and to coach Flip in particular. Feel free to vote in the poll and comment down below!

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