Coinalytics: Find Out Which Two Active Coaches Hold The Best/Worst Career Coin Flip Win Percentage In Recorded NFL Coin Flip History
Oh, hi there! Welcome back to NFL Offseason Research Season.
You all seemed to thoroughly enjoy chronicling the NFL player with a record 114 entries in his career transaction log and I still have a name or two from that list to cover, but today we flip the topic of conversation on its head. If getting off to a good start is key in sports, then it only makes sense to crunch the analytics on the very first part of a football game. No, not the opening kickoff. Before that.
The coin flip.
The data only goes back to 1999 which is a damn shame, but that's enough time to properly analyze the mettle current coaches have in predicting metal. And as you can see from the scroll of a list above, current coaches Mike McDaniel and Jonathan Gannon make the head and tail of the list. These two flip sides of the coin are going to be the focus today. McDaniel. And Gannon. Dickens might even call this blog a tail of two heads.
Mike McDaniel started his career with an insane streak of 11 consecutive coin flip wins. Keep in mind this includes home games in which the visiting coach makes the call, but I'm officially including these flips as part of the study to maintain respect for a coach's coin flip defensive prowess.
Let's take a look at the full log of McDaniel's career:
That's right. Not only does he have an 11-game streak, but another 10-gamer in just two seasons as an NFL coach. If it ever comes out that McDaniel was guilty of some coin gate scheme please remember to credit me first. The forensic statistics smell something here and that something stinks. Who's to say he isn't sneaking a weighted coin in via one of his team captains with some magician expertise? Obviously he lost his special weighted coin for five weeks in his first year and again in year two for four weeks to end the regular season. But he always had it for the playoffs. Interesting. Interesting indeed.
Again, we'll just breeze by the technical fact that he would only have called half of these himself as the road team.
The real shitty thing about all this though is I don't have specific heads/tails results on the flips. Which absolutely sucks. Just whether a team or coach won or lost. If you know of any data source that does identify this please send it my way.
This is certainly the most coin flips any coach was on the right side of to start his career, but it's not the longest consecutive streak. That belongs to newly annointed Washington Commanders coach Dan Quinn and Steve Mariucci with 14. Then we have Sean McVay who snuck a 12-gamer in there before McDaniel's 11.
On the flip side of that coin, we have Riverboat Ron Rivera who lost the most consecutive coin flips according to the record books. There is no need to also mention he had a separate streak of 10 coin flip losses in a row too.
Just a heads up - do NOT tail Riverboat Ron if you see him at the roulette wheel. But let's zoom in on those 13 games real quick where the Panthers went 3-10 in the W/L column (wins highlighted green) and 0-13 in the H/T column:
As bad as that is, no coach has a worse record in coin flip results than Mr. SHOTS himeself, Jonathan Gannon, including a streak of ten losses in a row in just his first season as head coach. This time the green highlights just indicate coin flip results which I realize now is confusing since the last table it meant team wins. My bad. Anyway…
While McDaniel won the first 11 flips of his coaching career, Jonathan Gannon lost his first 11.
Wait a minute…That's not true. Gannon managed to win the toss in Week 1 before losing ten straight right afterwards. Wonder who the Cardinals played in Week 1? What coach could have been so ill-equiped at coin flip voodoo to let this happen?
Again. There is no need to mention…
Week 1, 2023
Again - do NOT gamble with Ron Rivera. Instead, use these coinalytics to your advantage. How? I'll tell you. I did my due diligence and looked up the 2024 schedule and indeed Jonathan Gannon will clash with Mike McDaniel in Week 11 down in Miami. October 27th. Mark your calendar and get ready to drop some coin on the coin.
Just not you, Riverboat Ron.
BONUS SECTION
Offensive Coin Flip Notes (on road when the coach actually makes the call)
Most Consecutive Coin Flips Lost: Andy Reid (14)
Most Consecutive Coin Flips Won: Pete Carroll (12)
Best Coin Flip Win Percentage (Active Coaches): Mike McDaniel still (13/18) just ahead of Nick Siriani (19/28)
Sneaky Good Coin Flipper/Bad Coach Combo: Urban Meyer (4/6)