After seeing only five head coaches fired during last offseason, the NFL sure has some clunkers at the helm of some of their teams. We have already seen the Las Vegas Raiders move off their former head coach and general manager in Josh McDaniels and Dave Ziegler, respectively. It may not happen Thanksgiving week, but you better believe some of these head coaches will be fired soon.
Like, it is bad out there, man... While I would contest that this year's quality of football is far better than the crap we were subjected to until the postseason a year ago, many of these teams are being let down by their head coaches. For that reason, expect for around eight or so of these 32 jobs to be opening up before or right around Black Monday. A new voice could be what lifts a struggling team.
With a few teams on their annual bye, not every franchise got to strut its stuff on the gridiron this week. In weeks like this, good and bad can, and will, be magnified, as there are fewer places for fans watching at home eyeballs' to wander to. Some teams need a new head coach like I need a haircut. Others may need a change at the helm sooner than you would think. We just do not realize this yet...
So with many teams' Week 11 results fresh in the books, let's put some coaches on the hot seat!
5 NFL head coaches firmly on the hot seat after Week 11's bad results
5. Frank Reich might be completely cooked as a head coach, to be honest
Maybe Jim Irsay knew exactly what he was doing when he kicked Frank Reich to the curb a year ago? The former Indianapolis Colts head coach is now leading the worst team in football in the god awful monstrosity that is the Carolina Panthers. They just got pulverized at home by the Dallas Cowboys to the tune of 33-10 to fall to a disastrous 1-9 on the season. This team is a flaming bag of dog crap...
Although there may be an overarching David Tepper component to all this, why would you take this job if you were Reich to begin with? I understand that he played for the 1995 expansion team, but this year's team was destined to be terrible. To give up all that draft capital to the equally dysfunctional Chicago Bears to draft an undersized Bryce Young looks worse by the day. So does Reich as a coach.
Clearly, the Indianapolis cloud did a number on Reich's brain. His IQ may not be 25 points below baseline like it was at the end of his Colts tenure, but it is not exactly creeping back up to what it was when he helped the Philadelphia Eagles win their only Super Bowl on Doug Pederson's staff six years ago. This is the new normal now, as the Panthers are by far and way the worst team in the NFC South.
Reich is the only candidate who could go one-and-done this year, which is shocking to say the least.
4. Mike Vrabel should not be winning 30 percent of his games right now
I gotta be honest. I'm starting to worry about the Vrabes, man... Mike Vrabel is a good head coach, but the Tennessee Titans are starting to feel like a gallon of two-percent left out in the rain for a week and was totally forgotten about it. This team stinks, as they Titans have fallen to 3-7 on the year after getting blown out by the Jacksonville Jaguars in Duval, 34-14. The Titans really need some juice...
With Jon Robinson being ousted as general manager a year ago, and Monti Ossenfort partnering up with Jonathan Gannon over in The Valley of the Sun to lead the Arizona Cardinals, we may be experiencing a bit of a front-office brain drain in Nashville. Ran Carthon could be a promise general manager, but things have gone from bad to worse ever since he took over this front-office operation.
I don't know if Amy Adams Strunk would be willing to kick Vrabel to the curb after one bad season like this, but she is her late father's daughter. We saw the late Bud Adams do absolutely zany things owning the Houston Oilers, such as blowing it all up after the 1993 NFL season, only to relocate to Tennessee four years later. At least Titans fans will have a new stadium to look forward to here soon.
If the Titans were to fire Vrabel, he would be hired immediately by any other franchise with a pulse.
3. Ron Rivera will not get the benefit of the doubt from his new owner
While I would say there is a chance the Tennessee Titans let go of Mike Vrabel at the end of the year, or even that David Tepper could pull the plug on the Frank Reich-Carolina Panthers experiment gone wrong after one season, I sincerely doubt that Ron Rivera will be in the nation's capital after this year. The Washington Commanders do not have hot water at FedEx Field and they need a new head coach.
It has been a tumultuous tenure for Rivera in Washington. The franchise has had three nicknames since he has been around, two owners, one division title, but not a single winning season under his watch. Washington is absolutely going to hit the reset button with Josh Harris now the majority owner of the franchise. He is going to want to leave his imprint on the franchise he bought from Dan Snyder.
After seeing Washington fall to 4-7 on the season in their latest defeat of the year, it is only a matter of time before Harris pulls the plug on all this. The fact that Washington lost at home to an equally bad New York Giants team 31-19 makes it even worse. And just when you thought the horror show that was the Snyder era was firmly in the rearview mirror, Commanders players cannot even shower there.
The only thing that stinks more than this football team are the football players who cannot rinse off.
2. Matt Eberflus never had a chance with these toothless Chicago Bears
Just when you think Matt Eberflus might be given the benefit of the doubt to get a third year at the helm of the Chicago Bears, you get a coaching catastrophe like we saw on Sunday afternoon vs. the division rival Detroit Lions. Chicago had the division-leading Lions, but fell apart at the seams in final minutes, losing on the road, 31-26. This is one of those losses where you just don't come back from...
The Bears are now 3-8 on the season after pretty much ripping defeat away from the jaws of victory to allow the juggernaut Lions to improve to 8-2 on the campaign. Once again, for as long as Kevin Warren and Ryan Poles are in the building, I am going to fade the Bears, even if I think Eberflus is a great defensive mind who took the only NFL head-coaching job he was ever going to be offered.
The worst part in Sunday's loss to the Lions was that their perpetually frustrating franchise quarterback Justin Fields actually played well. We still may not know if he is a guy or not in Chicago. Unfortunately, he is not going to be given a real chance because the Bears are the equivalent of locking yourself out of your car in a snowstorm and all you have to get back inside is a wire hanger.
I hope Eberflus gets a coordinator gig next season, as well as for nobody to be drafted by the Bears.
1. Brandon Staley is a snake oil salesman holding a cheap owner hostage
We have finally arrived at the one who has got to go yesterday. Brandon Staley has been pushing more snake oil than Jimbo Fisher did at Texas A&M. He is a fraud, as he is the NFL's equivalent of P.T. Barnum. "A sucker is born every minute," and that sucker continues to be Dean Spanos for employing Staley as his head coach. The Los Angeles Chargers are 4-6 and just lost to the Green Bay Packers...
The Packers had no running game and still found a way to beat an infinitely better roster than theirs at home, 23-20. At this point in time, the best coach Justin Herbert has ever played for was Mario Cristobal in college, and even he had no idea how to use him while at Oregon. For the love of this man's talent, can we please get him a coach who actually knows what he is doing? This is malpractice.
Of course, the only thing standing in between Herbert getting a real NFL head coach is Spanos' penny-pinching ways. Until the Chargers get themselves a new head coach, they are not a serious football team. Frankly, they need somebody other than a total cheapskate owning the franchise for any of that to change. In the meantime, keep on being the greatest waste of massive talent, Bolts.
It may not come until the end of the season, but the book is out on Staley and it is a bad read, bruh.
