Baby Shanahan is a good example. He's got a good lineage. He's got a good resume. & he installed his system in Atlanta & was successful. Chances were pretty good he was going to be able to do the same somewhere else. Either as a HC or an OC.
O'Brien is a bad example. He's got no lineage. His resume was ok, not great. The only offense he installed was at Penn State & it was only ok. How many new players were introduced into New England's offense when he was their OC?
We're going to get a new coach from somewhere. Was he a part of the system, or was he the system? Shanahan was the system. O'Brien, was a cog in the wheel.
I don’t disagree about OB. Dude had accomplished nothing as far as I could tell. And I don’t consider him just being on the Patriots staff as being a success.
Honestly, I don’t know much about Bienemy other than he was under Bevell in Minnesota where they went from 6 wins to double digit wins 2 years in a row, with a top 10 offense for at least 2 years. And of course Bevell went on to have a top 5 offense 5 of the 8 years he was with Seattle.
So Bienemy has learned under Bevell and now Reid, two well put together offenses. That’s a whole lot better resume than what OB had piggybacking Belichick.
And as for retreads, well, they’re retreads for a reason. Sure there’s plenty of examples of coaches going elsewhere and succeeding, Belichick for example, and even Reid to a certain extent, but I don’t see how that’s any less risky than an up and comer. Again, provided there’s some semblance of some meat on the resume, unlike OB didn’t have.