Seahawks' Jim Mora is bucking NFL trend — again

Jim Mora became a trendsetter when Atlanta hired him five years ago, a charter member for the next generation of NFL head coaches.

He was the spirit of youth in a headset. He had no previous head-coaching experience, just tons of enthusiasm and an ear for today's players. Mora didn't just know that it was rapper Snoop Dogg who was being played over the stadium public-address system before a game, he asked for the volume be turned up.

When the Falcons reached the NFC Championship game in his first year, the league took notice. It was an early step in a change in the hiring practices along the sidelines.

Five years later, Mora has become an exception to those trends because he has head-coaching experience.

The hiring criteria has changed in the league. Bring us your young, your enthusiastic, your coaches with only a little bit of experience and a whole lot of hunger. A revolution is under way, and it won't just be televised. It will be Twittered and texted and all those other newfangled ways the kids communicate these days.

New is novel for NFL teams searching for head coaches, not to mention cheaper. There are 11 coaches in the league entering their first full season with their teams, and only two have previous head-coaching experience: Mora and Eric Mangini in Cleveland.

In 2004, Mora was tied for the youngest among the NFL's head-coaching hires. This year, he's in the older half of the league's new coaches.

Thirtysomething isn't just a syndicated TV show, it's a description of NFL sidelines. The Bucs hired 32-year-old Raheem Morris this year. The Broncos are coached by Josh McDaniels, who looks about half his age of 33.

New hires along the NFL sidelines are starting to resemble Hollywood. Youth is a plus, experience helpful but definitely not necessary.

Coaching veterans like Jim Fassel? He had to head to the upstart UFL to get another head-coaching gig. Dan Reeves? You'll still find him in the broadcast booth.

What's gone overlooked is that many of the most successful NFL coaches of the past 10 years were men who had the scar tissue from a previous run as head coach.

Bill Belichick made the playoffs once with Cleveland in the 1990s, but he has won three Super Bowls with New England. Tony Dungy won at a higher clip in both the regular season and the playoffs with Indianapolis than he did in his first coaching job at Tampa Bay.

Of the past nine coaches to win a Super Bowl, six were NFL coaches in their second tour of sideline duty.

And when Mora was hired in Atlanta, the Falcons were swimming upstream against the trend of finding a coach ready for his second go-round. Arizona hired Dennis Green, the Giants brought back Tom Coughlin and Washington hired Joe Gibbs. Again.

Of the league's seven new coaches in 2004, four were older than 50. Mora and Mike Mularkey of Buffalo were tied for the youngest when the season began.

Mora's Falcons played for the conference championship that year, and two years later, the Jets made the playoffs in their first season under first-time coach Mangini. Last year, three first-time NFL coaches led their teams to the playoffs in their first year on the sidelines. And when Mike Tomlin won a Super Bowl in Pittsburgh at the age of 36 in his second season as Steelers coach, a full-blown trend became evident.

Going back to 2007, there have been 22 men named head coach of the non-interim variety. Only four had previous head-coaching experience in the NFL: Mora, Mangini in Cleveland, Norv Turner in San Diego and Wade Phillips in Dallas.

Compare that to the three-year span that began in 2002. There were 19 head coaches hired in that time and 11 of those men had previous head-coaching experience.

Of course, this is the NFL, where teams do everything short of using a Xerox machine to copy the success of opposing teams. Mora was a pioneer once, one of the forefathers in Generation Next along the NFL sidelines.

Now, he's in Seattle trying to show that he'll be even better in his second go-round as an NFL head coach.

Danny O'Neil: 206-464-2364 or doneil@seattletimes.com