Teams with first-year coaches need to tread lightly

Of all the NFL teams with new head coaches this season, these five -- St. Louis, Kansas City, Detroit, Cleveland and Tampa Bay -- have a combined two victories through Week 5.

It is better to be in this situation in your first year than in your third year, but it's still painful. As an organization, there are a number of factors you have to consider when you are going through something like this. Let's take a look at some of them:

Deal with negativity

Rams coach Steve Spagnuolo is trying to keep the Rams from sinking. (Getty Images)

This will come primarily from the press, but it can also come from some of the holdover players, too. As much negativity as there is surrounding these five teams, when you are working for one of them, you don't hear or see very much of it. The main reason is because you're working all the time. Where you have to spend time dealing with negativity is in a couple of areas.

The first and most important person you have to communicate with is the owner. The dialogue starts with you explaining your plan to the owner. That might include what you're going to do with the QB position like in Tampa Bay, where the Bucs drafted Josh Freeman in the hopes of letting him sit and learn.

The owner is going to hear all the things you don't hear, so you must have a plan to communicate with him constantly during this rebuilding process. Your hope with the owner is that he has the patience to withstand what the process is going to look like because it's not going to be pretty.

With the players, there are two forms of negativity you have to deal with. The first is the disgruntled player. It's best to move him. A disgruntled player will undermine you in the locker room and make it hard for you to sell your program to your younger players.

The second part of negativity is the constant questions the players are going to get from the media about the season. There are a couple of things you do here. The first is to instruct them not to listen to the radio talk shows, watch the TV reports and do not read the papers. The second is to constantly stress to players the improvements you are making and continually give them hope, because if you don't no one will.

Improving the roster

I remember the great GM of the New York Giants, George Young, told me that when he went to the Giants in his first year back in the late '70s, he wanted to have a second draft after the start of training camp. What he meant was he wanted to keep adding players from the start of training camp until the end of the year.

During this period that Young talked about is when you can improve the bottom of your roster by being aggressive on the waiver wire and picking players off another team's practice squad. You also need to be aggressive trying out players (like the Bengals did with Cedric Benson). It is possible to pick up some players who can help.

One technique that helps is to have one scout assigned to the practice squads just as you would assign him a team. Also, I think you should have a coach or coaches, maybe a couple of your young quality control guys who are taking the players out on their own on Tuesdays or after practice to give them extra instruction and extra classroom work. This can help you develop the players who don't get reps in practice because they are running the other team's plays and defenses in practice.

Figure out quarterback position

We can be more specific here. Each of these teams will be looking at a high pick next year. Judging the college crop of QBs is hard at this point. Last year, scouts felt there was not a good QB prospect in the draft. But almost every year some players develop faster than expected and some juniors come out who weren't expected to (Mark Sanchez) that make the draft stronger. Incidentally, Oklahoma's Sam Bradford was rated higher than Matt Stafford in the eyes of many people.

Cleveland has to find out about Brady Quinn and Derek Anderson. There should be some trade value for Quinn and that value might be better if he does not play, because people are going to go back and look at his college grade and trade for him off that. But most importantly, the Browns have to make the right decision on whom to keep.

St. Louis passed on a QB last year to help build the offensive line. There is no question the Rams need a quarterback because they already know all they need to know about their QBs.

Tampa Bay is facing the question of when to play Josh Freeman. I would wait as long as possible. I thought he needed a lot of work coming out of college in the pro style passing game. I would play Josh Johnson as long as you can.

Detroit already has its QB in Stafford. The key here is to be careful with his health and I expect the Lions to do that. Facing Green Bay this week on the road and a bye after that, I wouldn't expect to see him play again until they play host to St. Louis on Nov. 1.

Kansas City also has its QB of the future in Matt Cassel. I would be careful, though. K.C. is not going to win many games, so if you need to rest the QB, do it.

Find out who the keepers are

You do not want to go through a poor season and not know who to keep going into next year. It might not be possible to find out about how good all the players are but you need to find out which players have bought into the principles of your program.

But this is where a coach has to be careful. There is a fine line between being too rigid and establishing your core principles.