WestCoastJoe wrote:O'Shea certainly looked good out of the gate. Not so much now. His credentials are somewhat limited. Never been a DC. Just STs. If he fails, it also calls into question the judgment of Kyle Walters, and ultimately that of Wade Miller.
O'Shea has a steep learning curve. For the good of the Bombers' organization, and for the good of the CFL, I hope this is a temporary road bump on the way to stability for the Bombers.
I don't view "just ST" as limited coaching experience at all.
I was stuck in traffic one evening, well on my way to missing a flight out of Atlanta when I heard a great discussion on what makes ST coaches uniquely qualified for HC positions.
For the most part, DCs and OCs have a base set of dedicated personnel around which to game plan. They use that base set of personnel to develop schemes, they don't do significant substitutions (at least, not compared to ST), they have really only a limited number of base personnel circumstances around which to plan. (There is one set of core schemes from which variances are designed).
Special Teams coaches, on the other hand, have to pull personnel from different units, they have to make the best of the spare parts around them. They have exactly two dedicated players (one in Canada) the Punter and the Kicker. They are constantly herding cats, and get what's left over of both the bottom of the roster and those sets of players who aren't in other meetings. They also have Field Goal attempts, kickoffs, kickoff returns, punts, and punt returns around which to plan.
ST coordinators, because of the different nature of their job, should be better prepared to ascend to a Head Coaching position than a DC or an OC, because the nature of the work is more similar. DCs are dedicates to Defense. OCs are dedicated to offense. ST coordinators have to deal with a little bit of everything. It requires a different mindset, one more toward the disjointed nature of being a Head Coach.