Is Ron Rivera a successful coach?

April 3, 2023

by Steve Thomas

Ron Rivera has presided over the Washington Redskins Washington Football Team Washington Commanders Washington during a trying time, to say the least.  From a leadership qualities standpoint, he seems to have the right stuff – the players respect him, and he’s been a voice of reason in the midst of the nonstop insanity that is Washington under the leadership of The Little Tyrant, as well as the impact of massive governmental overreach during the time the Virus of Unknown Origin.  All of that is wonderful, but the most important question is about his on field results.  Washington hasn’t prospered during Rivera’s tenure in that regard.  How does he stack up against his peers in terms of results?  I’m curious about this, so we’ll take a look at a couple of stats in effort to find out.  All stats are courtesy of www.pro-football-reference.com except as specifically stats.

For this exercise, I looked at the 2022 NFL head coaches who have coached for 90 games or more in their career as a head coach.  That may seem like a bit of an odd number, but that allowed me to include the top 12 coaches in terms of number of games.  Rivera is at 190, with 4 coaches are below him.  The following chart shows the number of games coached, the number of wins for each, and their respective winning percentages, sorted by winning percentage:

The obvious takeaway is that Rivera’s win-loss record is towards the bottom of the records of the NFL’s long-term coaches.   This probably isn’t a revelation, but it does establish that his results are lesser in comparison to his peers.  Obviously, future hall of famers Belichick and Reid are at the top and have winning percentages far greater than Rivera, but it’s a bit surprising to see Sean McDermott at that level as well.  Rivera’s .521 winning percentage lumps him in with the likes of Kyle Shanahan and Doug Pederson; meaning, decent, but nothing to write home about.  That roughly conforms to the smell test.

The next chart shows the number of playoff seasons, the number of playoff games, and the ratio of number of playoff games versus number of games coached, for each of the same twelve coaches.  The number of playoff games / number of games coaches statistic is something I created in order to give some insight into the amount of playoff success each coach has had while taking into account the length of time these men have or have not spent as head coaches; generally, the higher, the better.  As an example, if a coach had coached a total of 55 games, and had taken his team to a total of 6 playoff games, his ratio would be 6 / 55, or .109.  The higher the number, the better the record.  The chart is sorted by this statistic.

Once again, these numbers put Rivera towards the bottom – the number of seasons he made the playoffs is substantially less than everyone except Lovie Smith, and his playoff games / total games ratio is in the same boat.  Rivera’s playoff success is lacking as compared to his coaching peers.

This next chart shows a statistic called “Simple Rating System”, created by Pro Football Reference, which attempts to measure a team’s effectiveness by comparing point differentials in games over the course of a season while accounting for strength of schedule and home field advantage.  A score of 0.0 is average.  A full explanation of this statistic is here.  Obviously, this statistic isn’t perfect, as it doesn’t take into account the situation, such as, for example, a game in which the star quarterback is hurt, or a week 18 game in which one team sat most of its starters.  Nevertheless, it is a good, basic look at a team’s effectiveness over the course of a season.  “OSRS” is the rating as applied to only to the offense, and “DSRS” is applied only to the defense.  These are Rivera’s numbers during his years as a head coach:

As you can see, Rivera’s time in Washington produced overall negative results for all three of his seasons in Washington, overall negative results on offense, and negative results in 3 of 4 seasons on defense.  His best years, 2013 and 2015, were the heart of the Cam Newton era, with 2015 being the Panthers’ Super Bowl year.  The point is, Rivera’s teams have been a mixed bag, with 7 of his 12 seasons earning an overall negative SRS.   This final chart shows the number of seasons in which each coach had positive and negative SRS statistics, along with the percentage of years that were an overall negative rating.  A lower percentage is better:

The reason that Andy Reid’s numbers don’t add up is that Reid had one season rated at exactly 0.0, meaning that it was neither positive nor negative.  The takeaway here is that Rivera is in last place by this metric, with Lovie Smith ahead of him by two seasons.

Overall, these stats have demonstrated that Rivera is on the lesser end of the pile of long-term head coaches, as measured by most objective measurements.  This isn’t to say that Washington can’t be successful in 2023 and possibly beyond, but it confirms that his results to date aren’t at the level expected of a head coach who’s been in the league as long as he has.  He therefore most likely doesn’t have the record to survive both an ownership change and a fourth losing season.