The most nauseating phrase in NFL draft circles is "best player available." While it might serve as a team's best strategy, the terminology is commonly utilized to disguise a franchise's intentions.
In coaching circles, though, a curious trend is developing. Teams aren't exactly hiring the best coach available, though available is open to interpretation. The deeper a prospective candidate goes into the playoffs with another team, the less chance he has of getting a head coaching job.
Including Brad Childress' hiring in Minnesota on Friday, there have been 38 coaching hires since the 1999 season ended. Only one head coaching hire -- Romeo Crennel by the Browns -- went to a coach who lasted past the divisional playoff round. No wonder Charlie Weis let his Patriots' contract elapse in New England in 2004 and ended up signing with Notre Dame.
Weis was a big part of three Super Bowl championships for the Patriots, but the better he did and the longer he lasted in the playoffs, the harder it was for him to get a head coaching job. He was like a 28- or 29-year-old running back trapped in the franchise tag trap. The team can keep an aging running back on one-year deals until the player loses his negotiating leverage. It's a tough world.
The post-2005 coaching market is predictably chaotic. All year, the prediction was that six to nine head coaches would lose their jobs. Herman Edwards' pending departure from the Jets pushes the number of offseason openings to nine.
The system of replacing those coaches just doesn't make sense, but it won't change. Teams fire coaches without a concept of what exactly they are going to do. Let's say a team has a coach in mind and fires its head coach with the idea of hiring Giants defensive coordinator Tim Lewis, who is a hot candidate in many circles. If the Giants beat the Panthers on Sunday, his chances of getting a head coaching job drop significantly. If he gets to the NFC title game, forget about it.
In the NFL, it's not the best coaches who are hired -- it's the best coaches who are actually available during the two-week window between the end of the regular season and the divisional playoff round. Win a divisional playoff game, and say goodbye to a head coaching job that year.
It shouldn't be a surprise that Childress was the first coach hired. He had been trapped in the NFC championship vacuum with the Eagles for four seasons. Hot coaches turn cold if they do well in the most important games in the playoffs. With Childress out of the playoffs this season, opportunity came knocking. He was going to be in the top two in Green Bay, which is one of the reasons the Vikings didn't let him out of Minneapolis on Thursday, making sure he tentatively agreed to a contract.
Childress had to wait five years for this opportunity.
If you look at the stats of the past 38 hires, the pattern is telling. Crennel was the only Super Bowl participant who got a job. Seven coaches who were in the playoffs got jobs, but none who made it to a conference championship game. There were eight promotions from within, six coaches who came out of retirement and three who came from the college ranks. The biggest number was out-of-the-postseason coaches (13).
This craziness is understandable. Hiring assistant coaches is almost as important as hiring the head coaches. Tampering rules have been toughened, so it's getting harder and harder to get assistants who are under contract. That puts a franchise under more pressure to make up its collective mind quickly in order to let the head coach get the right staff. Childress was the first choice of everyone; now that he's hired, you will see a very fast market as far as other teams getting their head coaches in place over the next week.
For years, the NFL tinkered with the system, and the league has had some successes. Commissioner Paul Tagliabue and his staff and Steelers owner Dan Rooney deserve a lot of credit for mandating that teams interview minority candidates at the cost of stiff fines. The NFL isn't where it needs to be as far as minority hiring, but it's a good sign in 2005 when Tony Dungy of the Colts, Lovie Smith of the Bears and Marvin Lewis of the Bengals are among the top Coach of the Year candidates.
Tim Lewis has a great chance of getting a head coaching job -- as long as his Giants don't do too well in the playoffs. What if the Bears, Steelers, Giants and Broncos reach the conference title games? If they do, teams virtually lose the chance of getting Ron Rivera of the Bears, Russ Grimm and Ken Whisenhunt of the Steelers, Tim Lewis or Kevin Gilbride of the Giants and Gary Kubiak of the Broncos.
Fixing the problem, though, is almost impossible. There has been talk about putting a moratorium on assistant hiring until after the Super Bowl. But there's no way that will ever happen. First, it would make February too chaotic and unproductive. The scouting combine is toward the end of February and free agency starts in March. There would be so much scrambling for coaches, and staffs wouldn't be put together until after the start of free agency.
Planning for the offseason would be shot. Plus, the bad teams would be hapless for the month of January. A head coach would head to the Senior Bowl with no one to help him evaluate players at practice because he wouldn't have any assistants. Franchises going through a coaching change would be virtually dead at this key time.
Perhaps the worst part of that would be the internal evaluation process. There wouldn't be enough time for coaches and organizations to evaluate their own players and determine who to keep and who not to keep in free agency. Roster blunders would abound. Plus, teams would be heading into free agency and the offseason program still trying to figure out what type of offensive and defensive systems they want to run.
Ultimately, you'd have a less efficient National Football League. Memo to NFL owners: The best suggestion is to have some patience with head coaches and don't pull such a quick trigger in firing them. The Ravens, with rumors swirling that Brian Billick was on the hot seat, opted to retain him for at least another season.
The pattern of firings hasn't changed since the salary-cap era began in 1992. NFL teams fire an average of seven coaches per year. Last year, only three new coaches came into the league, so it was predictable that a high number of changes would be made this offseason. The pattern suggests that another five or six will be fired next year, meaning almost half of the league's coaches are turned over in three seasons.
Clearly, the system is flawed, and something must change.
John Clayton is a senior writer for ESPN.com.