Interesting round of coaching changes in the NFL this year. Atlanta’s hiring of Mike Smith, the Jacksonville defensive coordinator, made it 3-of-3 in hirings of first-time coaches, with Washington yet to come.

Recent years have seen a trend toward hiring coaches who have done it before, and it is understandable. Insiders say the changes in the last decade, with free agency and the salary cap now the rule, have called for experienced coaches.

Here is how it has changed.In the first 31 years of the Super Bowl, only two men, Weeb Ewbank and Don Shula, won the championship with their second franchise.

But in the last decade, 8 of the 10 Super Bowls were won by coaches on their second team: Bill Belichick (three times), Mike Shanahan (twice), Tony Dungy, Dick Vermeil and Jon Gruden.The trend toward recycling coaches, in fact, is so pervasive that this year’s game will match two men, Belichick and Tom Coughlin, who were fired from a previous job. Two previously-fired coaches have opposed each other in the Super Bowl only once before, when Shanahan coached against Dan Reeves in the Denver-Atlanta Super Bowl following the 1998 season.

The last Super Bowl that matched two coaches on their first head-coaching jobs was Giants (Jim Fassel) vs. Ravens (Brian Billick) following the 2000 season.

Perhaps what’s most interesting about this year’s trend toward newness, however, is that three of the teams hiring coaches are owned by guys who love flash, and they are avoiding it. Smith in Atlanta and Tony Sparano in Dallas were hardly household names, and from all indications even Washington’s Dan Snyder is not embarking on a star search this time around.

It makes for an intriguing change of philosophy, and worth watching.