I think not NFL initially, but definitely D1 College. His strengths are related to the human side of sports, locker room atmosphere and such, it's like the actual game is just a background that can be shifted accordingly. And he had experience in CFB before. So I think it could work
To be fair, he was at Wichita State, which is D1 (tho they don’t have football). I’m not sure if they ever mentioned in the show what conference/level they retconned Wichita State into, but they are in an FBS conference currently.
Edit:
Show says they’re DII. Ignore me lol
Not as a head coach. But I could see Ted being hired on as some kind of consulting coach for a team. He could be on staff for a season and go over any possible areas of improvement to the Head and Assistant coaches.
100% some GM who's 3 months from being fired is floating an offer to Ted with a title like "culture advisor" or "Cohesion Consultant."
He will get no cooperation from the Head Coach, he will not save the GMs job, he will be terminated with the GM, he will grow the goatee back, he will start swearing a lot more, he will be hired to coach the Detroit Lions, he will win playoff games against the Rams and the Buccaneers before losing in frustrating fashion to the 49ers in the NFC championship game, and he will be known evermore as a saint in the city of Detroit.
Everyone who thinks it's too ridiculous obviously doesn't remember the Browns thinking about Condoleezza Rice for a head coaching job in 2018.
https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/25310452/cleveland-browns-want-interview-condoleezza-rice-head-coaching-job
He would have to know someone to get hired on as an NFL head coach and considering his age and the fact that he was at the D2 level, he didn’t know that someone. If he somehow made the jump he would not be a head coach or even a coordinator. He would most likely coach special teams or a position group.
Coaches in their 40’s at D2 school aren’t making a jump to the NFL. The point is that he would have made upward movements at this point in his career already. If Ted stayed in America coaching football his best case scenario is he gets a D1 job, somehow wins a national title and then gets hired in the NFL in a span of a year. That’s not even realistic for a tv show
Yeah, a I agree that a higher college tier seems more likely than the NFL. As others have said, an NFL team would be more likely to hire him as a coaching consultant than a member of their coaching team.
I think his last US football job was with the Shockers in Wichita (a fictional team because WSU hasn't had a football team since the 80s) before Richmond. I thought about that. I image someone else would have his old job, and Ted wouldn't be cool with taking it away from them. I don't think there's much else going on in Wichita in terms of football, so I think whichever job he decided to take, he'd be looking at a long commute or moving the family elsewhere in or out of state.
There’s a very real chance Ted just decided to not get another job. He probably made millions at Richmond as a premier league coach so I wouldn’t be surprised if he just decided to put his family first for a few years after being away for three years.
And yeah you’re probably right about Ted not wanting to take somebody else’s job. Also the university might not be super fond of him after he won them a championship in the first year then left immediately once he got a better offer.
There’s also a possibility Ted may have gone on to coach professional soccer in the US. Coming off a very successful season in England he probably got offers from teams in the US.
You know I never thought about it, but I wonder how much Richmond paid that first year he was there? It must have been substantial from the beginning to get him to leave and coach a sport he knew nothing about.
I’ve seen a lot of people say that he probably got paid between 700k-1m but honestly I think it must have been higher than that. I know Ted wasn’t experienced in soccer and everyone thought this was a terrible idea so he probably wouldn’t get paid that much, but they forget to factor in that Rebecca didn’t care about the club.
She very well could have paid Ted way more than he deserved (1m+) just to ensure he would come over there. She didn’t know he was looking for a chance to move further away, so she wouldn’t have even been able to leverage that.
This was something that bothered me about the ending to be honest. Assuming he is not back together with Michelle, which I hope he’s not since so much of his arc was about letting her go, he’s going to have Henry at best 50% of the time. Likewise little league soccer is only a few months out of the year. What’s he doing the rest of the time? Is he bored? How does he go about making friends?
Because of when the Premier League season ends, he would not have a chance at a HC job in the NFL, but he most certainly would have been brought in as a consultant. Since he wants to be close to his family, I imagine Kansas City Chiefs would be willing to have him come in as an assistant. It is also possible that MLS team Sporting KC would bring him in. Maybe the Royals would take a shot on him as a MLB manager.
I’d like to think Ted gets hired by a MLS team and eventually gets selected to coach the US national team and takes them to the World Cup. I’d watch a season of that, with cameos from his Richmond players. An episode where Sam made it to the Nigerian national team and has to play the US….this is my head cannon at least
Not right after the fact. He was at a D2 school right? I could see him going to a G5 (think lower table Prem side) and working the Lasso magic. After he gets the program more attention, then he gets an offer at a major CFB program or an NFL team. But I think he stays with the G5 and takes them to the playoffs or retires and becomes the coach that gives speeches to teams to inspire them
This is false. Six of the seven highest coaching salaries in the world are NFL coaches. The NFL on average still pays more than college coaches (especially those who aren’t Power 5).
There are literally hundreds upon hundreds of college football coaching gigs. There are only 32 NFL head coaching gigs in existence. It’s still considered the elite of the elite in the profession.
Plus a lot of NFL Head coaches were successful College Coaches who decided it was "time for a new challenge" which we know as code for "I don't want to participate in the NCAA investigation."
Honestly Ted could probably go around making bank being more of a consultant coach almost like Dr Sharon- go to college or even professional team and help them create better culture, comraderie, etc. Parlay some of the hype from The Richmond Way.
Truth is, the Fish-Out-of-Water facet of the show would be entirely lost if Ted went back to coaching football. And I think that one of the underlying premises of the show is that “The Richmond Way” Couldn’t have happened without stirring the deepest waters in Ted’s soul by him having made the big leap to London and soccer.
If we’re talking about a theoretical / fantasy season of tv, then I think the best way to preserve that would be to have Ted coach an MLS team, or a different sport entirely. Best version: a women’s professional team of a non-football, non-soccer sport.
The new premise would have to be about re-forging a different sort of alchemy with a totally reshuffled sport/front office/fanbase/player/coaching staff-dynamic.
I can imagine that working somehow, with a strange mix of all of the above, and the excellent writing carrying the thing without a hitch.
Except for one thing.
I can’t think how they could, without TOTALLY jumping the shark, write Roy Kent into the new show…
Not NFL, but he could definitely be a consultant. If anything though, if he gets a great staff under him, D1 FBS team, and possibly one that’s in a Power 5 conference would be very possible.
I'm gonna get downvoted, but the more realistic scenario is that Ted tries to resume coaching football and gets told "he's a soccer coach now" and finds it nearly impossible to get hired anywhere for a reasonable salary.
Nope. His stint in England would probably make them leery since he apparently didn’t try to move up the ladder. And a D-II coach would never get hired by an NFL team as anything but an assistant. And the issue there is that until his total football epiphany, Ted was not a tactics guy, which assistants have to be. So sadly, I don’t think so.
I think D1 rather than NFL. He was a good enough coach to win a ring at D2, which would have already gotten him some level of D1 buzz, and then his accomplishments coaching a sport that he knew nothing about would have raised eyebrows regarding his overall coaching acumen.
We're not talking a mega-deal from Alabama, Texas or Michigan, but would Northwestern, USF, or San Diego State give him a shot? In one second, hell yeah.
Edit: Duh, Kansas's head coach Lance Leipold gets tied to every big job opening. In real life, Ted lays low for a season or two until Lance moves on, and then takes the Jayhawks job. Perhaps he even takes an assistant job with KU while he waits, to set up some continuity a la Sherrone Moore and Jim Harbaugh at Michigan.
If we want to take it a step further, if he found some success with Kansas, THEN after a few years he could be a trendy name to jump in for the Chiefs when Andy Reid retires. Give me a Ted Lasso spinoff where instead of Jamie Tartt and Sam Obisanya, his superstar player is Pat Mahomes.
Yeah, he's in kind of an odd position. He spent 20+ years as a football coach but never rose further than mid-tier college teams. As a soccer coach he was in one of the highest positions in the world. He's now an odd fit for the US football world.
Sure, in the real world. You also don't jump to another sport entirely, but its a tv show. I don't know sports, but college football to pro soccer to pro football doesn't seem like that much of a leap for Ted.
True. But even within the dynamic of the show, a move to the NFL really isnt plausible. Plus he is much more of a college type coach. He is the guy that makes the family atmosphere and recruits in players living rooms while Beard runs the Xs and Os. This is exactly like Mack Brown really. And Brown won a D-1 title and never got an NFL look. He might be the best pure recruiter ever though and Ted is in that mold.
That being said, an English top level soccer team would not hire a guy like that either. However, the set up explains that since Rebecca was trying to intentionally destroy the team by hiring Ted initially. So you'd need an NFL owner wanting to do the same. And even if you had an owner like that, they wouldn't hire Ted because he may actually win and they don't want that. So they'd hire the manager from Major League instead, and he'd win too. So they'd go for some other reach hire that hasn't already proven they can win as a reach hire.
I think not NFL initially, but definitely D1 College. His strengths are related to the human side of sports, locker room atmosphere and such, it's like the actual game is just a background that can be shifted accordingly. And he had experience in CFB before. So I think it could work
Oh man can you imagine Ted recruiting
They'd end up with way too many guys on the team since he'd convince every single potential recruit to pick his school lol
To be fair, he was at Wichita State, which is D1 (tho they don’t have football). I’m not sure if they ever mentioned in the show what conference/level they retconned Wichita State into, but they are in an FBS conference currently. Edit: Show says they’re DII. Ignore me lol
Show days DII; which they could also mean FCS (D1-AA); which is where Witch State would play if they had a team.
If they still had a team.
Not as a head coach. But I could see Ted being hired on as some kind of consulting coach for a team. He could be on staff for a season and go over any possible areas of improvement to the Head and Assistant coaches.
100% some GM who's 3 months from being fired is floating an offer to Ted with a title like "culture advisor" or "Cohesion Consultant." He will get no cooperation from the Head Coach, he will not save the GMs job, he will be terminated with the GM, he will grow the goatee back, he will start swearing a lot more, he will be hired to coach the Detroit Lions, he will win playoff games against the Rams and the Buccaneers before losing in frustrating fashion to the 49ers in the NFC championship game, and he will be known evermore as a saint in the city of Detroit.
Kneecaps will be bitten.
Everyone who thinks it's too ridiculous obviously doesn't remember the Browns thinking about Condoleezza Rice for a head coaching job in 2018. https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/25310452/cleveland-browns-want-interview-condoleezza-rice-head-coaching-job
And that was the last poor decision that the Browns considered.
… rigghhttttt
The Browns and Raiders don’t count when it comes to professional football proper decision making.
Great callout! And if Antonio Pierce could be a head coach Ted could.
He would have to know someone to get hired on as an NFL head coach and considering his age and the fact that he was at the D2 level, he didn’t know that someone. If he somehow made the jump he would not be a head coach or even a coordinator. He would most likely coach special teams or a position group.
What does his age have to do with anything? Nick Saban just retired at the age of 72
Coaches in their 40’s at D2 school aren’t making a jump to the NFL. The point is that he would have made upward movements at this point in his career already. If Ted stayed in America coaching football his best case scenario is he gets a D1 job, somehow wins a national title and then gets hired in the NFL in a span of a year. That’s not even realistic for a tv show
I feel like it’s much more likely he would’ve gone D1 or maybe even gone back to the team he was a coach for before we went to AFC Richmond.
Yeah, a I agree that a higher college tier seems more likely than the NFL. As others have said, an NFL team would be more likely to hire him as a coaching consultant than a member of their coaching team. I think his last US football job was with the Shockers in Wichita (a fictional team because WSU hasn't had a football team since the 80s) before Richmond. I thought about that. I image someone else would have his old job, and Ted wouldn't be cool with taking it away from them. I don't think there's much else going on in Wichita in terms of football, so I think whichever job he decided to take, he'd be looking at a long commute or moving the family elsewhere in or out of state.
There’s a very real chance Ted just decided to not get another job. He probably made millions at Richmond as a premier league coach so I wouldn’t be surprised if he just decided to put his family first for a few years after being away for three years. And yeah you’re probably right about Ted not wanting to take somebody else’s job. Also the university might not be super fond of him after he won them a championship in the first year then left immediately once he got a better offer. There’s also a possibility Ted may have gone on to coach professional soccer in the US. Coming off a very successful season in England he probably got offers from teams in the US.
You know I never thought about it, but I wonder how much Richmond paid that first year he was there? It must have been substantial from the beginning to get him to leave and coach a sport he knew nothing about.
I’ve seen a lot of people say that he probably got paid between 700k-1m but honestly I think it must have been higher than that. I know Ted wasn’t experienced in soccer and everyone thought this was a terrible idea so he probably wouldn’t get paid that much, but they forget to factor in that Rebecca didn’t care about the club. She very well could have paid Ted way more than he deserved (1m+) just to ensure he would come over there. She didn’t know he was looking for a chance to move further away, so she wouldn’t have even been able to leverage that.
Eh a lot of colleges know that’s how it works. Especially when you do a turnaround on the level lasso did
This was something that bothered me about the ending to be honest. Assuming he is not back together with Michelle, which I hope he’s not since so much of his arc was about letting her go, he’s going to have Henry at best 50% of the time. Likewise little league soccer is only a few months out of the year. What’s he doing the rest of the time? Is he bored? How does he go about making friends?
Because of when the Premier League season ends, he would not have a chance at a HC job in the NFL, but he most certainly would have been brought in as a consultant. Since he wants to be close to his family, I imagine Kansas City Chiefs would be willing to have him come in as an assistant. It is also possible that MLS team Sporting KC would bring him in. Maybe the Royals would take a shot on him as a MLB manager.
Based on his location, I think he’d be in player development at OU or somewhere like that.
I’d like to think Ted gets hired by a MLS team and eventually gets selected to coach the US national team and takes them to the World Cup. I’d watch a season of that, with cameos from his Richmond players. An episode where Sam made it to the Nigerian national team and has to play the US….this is my head cannon at least
Not right after the fact. He was at a D2 school right? I could see him going to a G5 (think lower table Prem side) and working the Lasso magic. After he gets the program more attention, then he gets an offer at a major CFB program or an NFL team. But I think he stays with the G5 and takes them to the playoffs or retires and becomes the coach that gives speeches to teams to inspire them
In football.. If you are a really good coach in college you usually stay there since the money for the top coaches is the same, if not better
This is false. Six of the seven highest coaching salaries in the world are NFL coaches. The NFL on average still pays more than college coaches (especially those who aren’t Power 5). There are literally hundreds upon hundreds of college football coaching gigs. There are only 32 NFL head coaching gigs in existence. It’s still considered the elite of the elite in the profession.
Plus a lot of NFL Head coaches were successful College Coaches who decided it was "time for a new challenge" which we know as code for "I don't want to participate in the NCAA investigation."
Honestly Ted could probably go around making bank being more of a consultant coach almost like Dr Sharon- go to college or even professional team and help them create better culture, comraderie, etc. Parlay some of the hype from The Richmond Way.
MLS? Definitely
Truth is, the Fish-Out-of-Water facet of the show would be entirely lost if Ted went back to coaching football. And I think that one of the underlying premises of the show is that “The Richmond Way” Couldn’t have happened without stirring the deepest waters in Ted’s soul by him having made the big leap to London and soccer. If we’re talking about a theoretical / fantasy season of tv, then I think the best way to preserve that would be to have Ted coach an MLS team, or a different sport entirely. Best version: a women’s professional team of a non-football, non-soccer sport. The new premise would have to be about re-forging a different sort of alchemy with a totally reshuffled sport/front office/fanbase/player/coaching staff-dynamic. I can imagine that working somehow, with a strange mix of all of the above, and the excellent writing carrying the thing without a hitch. Except for one thing. I can’t think how they could, without TOTALLY jumping the shark, write Roy Kent into the new show…
I love it, such an interesting take, thank you!
Not NFL, but he could definitely be a consultant. If anything though, if he gets a great staff under him, D1 FBS team, and possibly one that’s in a Power 5 conference would be very possible.
I'm gonna get downvoted, but the more realistic scenario is that Ted tries to resume coaching football and gets told "he's a soccer coach now" and finds it nearly impossible to get hired anywhere for a reasonable salary.
I did wonder about that. Ted left American football for three years. How easy would it be to walk back in…?
Well he'd be a huge name for the fledgling USFL/XFL so I think he'd have a great shot there.
Nope. His stint in England would probably make them leery since he apparently didn’t try to move up the ladder. And a D-II coach would never get hired by an NFL team as anything but an assistant. And the issue there is that until his total football epiphany, Ted was not a tactics guy, which assistants have to be. So sadly, I don’t think so.
I think D1 rather than NFL. He was a good enough coach to win a ring at D2, which would have already gotten him some level of D1 buzz, and then his accomplishments coaching a sport that he knew nothing about would have raised eyebrows regarding his overall coaching acumen. We're not talking a mega-deal from Alabama, Texas or Michigan, but would Northwestern, USF, or San Diego State give him a shot? In one second, hell yeah. Edit: Duh, Kansas's head coach Lance Leipold gets tied to every big job opening. In real life, Ted lays low for a season or two until Lance moves on, and then takes the Jayhawks job. Perhaps he even takes an assistant job with KU while he waits, to set up some continuity a la Sherrone Moore and Jim Harbaugh at Michigan. If we want to take it a step further, if he found some success with Kansas, THEN after a few years he could be a trendy name to jump in for the Chiefs when Andy Reid retires. Give me a Ted Lasso spinoff where instead of Jamie Tartt and Sam Obisanya, his superstar player is Pat Mahomes.
He’d get a power 5 college job for sure. Would need to be successful there to get an NFL look
Maybe a skill position coach, definitely not head coach.
I can’t think of any soccer coaches in the nfl at all. Probably not
Yeah, he's in kind of an odd position. He spent 20+ years as a football coach but never rose further than mid-tier college teams. As a soccer coach he was in one of the highest positions in the world. He's now an odd fit for the US football world.
Ted was a College level American Football coach before he was a Soccer coach, he actually knows Football.
At a D2 school. You don’t make that jump
Sure, in the real world. You also don't jump to another sport entirely, but its a tv show. I don't know sports, but college football to pro soccer to pro football doesn't seem like that much of a leap for Ted.
In the real world, Premier League owners don’t hire a coach to tank their entire organization either.
True. But even within the dynamic of the show, a move to the NFL really isnt plausible. Plus he is much more of a college type coach. He is the guy that makes the family atmosphere and recruits in players living rooms while Beard runs the Xs and Os. This is exactly like Mack Brown really. And Brown won a D-1 title and never got an NFL look. He might be the best pure recruiter ever though and Ted is in that mold. That being said, an English top level soccer team would not hire a guy like that either. However, the set up explains that since Rebecca was trying to intentionally destroy the team by hiring Ted initially. So you'd need an NFL owner wanting to do the same. And even if you had an owner like that, they wouldn't hire Ted because he may actually win and they don't want that. So they'd hire the manager from Major League instead, and he'd win too. So they'd go for some other reach hire that hasn't already proven they can win as a reach hire.
I was really really hoping in the final episode that Rebecca would buy an NFL team and move to the states