Week 12 marked the two-thirds mark of the 2022 NFL regular season. That means struggling head coaches have six weeks to fix their teams before Black Monday comes for their jobs.
This season has already forced two coaches out of their offices. Matt Rhule, saddled with some of the league’s worst quarterbacks, wasn’t able to make the Carolina Panthers anything better than terrible and was dismissed. Frank Reich, who was much better at his job despite being stuck with retread veteran passers most of his Indianapolis Colts career, was let go weeks later and replaced by a former offensive lineman with a limited grasp on how timeouts work.
Those two were the first. They won’t be the last. 2022 has more candidates waiting to have their job titles ripped away, with only millions of dollars in yet-to-be-paid contract money to comfort them.
Brandon Staley, thanks to a game-winning two-point conversion vs. the Cardinals that kept his Chargers above .500, avoids the list this time around but remains in consideration. Kevin Stefanski could wind up on this list if his Deshaun Watson-led Browns remain as unimposing as they did in the 11 games Watson missed following more than 20 accusations of sexual misconduct and what the NFL described as “predatory behavior.” Texans coach Lovie Smith is in the conversation as well, though no one knows what the hell Houston is up to right now other than purposefully losing games.
These are the five coaches who are feeling the heat as the 2022 season rolls toward its conclusion.
5
Josh McDaniels, Las Vegas Raiders
McDaniels, by virtue of Raiders’ owner Mark Davis’ full-throated support and pair of overtime victories, has slid to the back of the rankings. For now. While he’s riding a two-game winning streak, it’s difficult to look at the expectations placed on this Las Vegas team and the opportunity created by each non-Chiefs team crumbling in the AFC West, then square that with a 4-7 record.
Derek Carr, who the franchise hoped would finally get his due as an above-average NFL quarterback by pairing him with college teammate Davante Adams and the offensive coordinator who oversaw some of Tom Brady’s best years, has been more explosive but less efficient in 2022. Injuries to Hunter Renfrow and Darren Waller haven’t helped, but it’s not a stretch to say the player driving this offense is tailback Josh Jacobs rather than the veteran passer at the center of its solar system. The Raiders are 4-1 when he rushes for at least 80 yards and 0-6 when he doesn’t.
McDaniels deserves some credit for getting the most from a player who has already set a career high for rushing yards in a season (an NFL-best 1,159). He has also shown the capacity for growth after giving up three different 17-0 leads in his first eight games with the Raiders. He doesn’t deserve an award for beating the hapless Broncos and inconsistent Seahawks on the final play of each game, but progress is progress and that’s something McDaniels can sell to Davis, a man who doesn’t need much convincing.
This suggests McDaniels will get a second year in Nevada. Whether or not he actually deserves one will hinge on how his team finishes the season.
4
Dennis Allen, New Orleans Saints
Allen hasn’t been able to turn chicken crap into chicken salad and it could make him a one-and-done head coach in New Orleans. His most efficient quarterback, by passer rating, is Taysom Hill. The defense that carried a string of underwhelming QBs to a winning record in 2021 has backslid and currently ranks 20th in points allowed.
This wasn’t unexpected. Sean Payton didn’t just retire because he was exhausted after leading the Saints for 15 years — he left because a reckoning loomed. New Orleans’ cap management has traditionally been to treat the league’s spending limit like a college student’s first credit card, paying off minimums and punting debts down the line through restructured contracts. This was fine with Drew Brees behind center, but now the team needs a quarterback and will have an estimated -$65 million in effective cap space for 2023, per Over The Cap.
This strategy, which paid off for a loonnnng time, means the team’s stars are beginning to age beyond their most effective years and there’s few opportunities to replace them. Further complicating matters is the fact the Philadelphia Eagles hold New Orleans’ 2023 first round pick thanks to last year’s deal that eventually allowed the team to select Chris Olave and Trevor Penning on Day 1. That future pick currently projects to be the sixth overall selection.
Allen may get a second chance to try and build his foundation on this swamp because the Saints job right now is fairly unappealing. New Orleans needs to bottom out towards a hard reset, but that may be a multi-year process — the club is currently projected to have less cap space in 2024 than all but two other teams (the Rams and Browns).
So the Saints likely have a below-average head coach, but they’re also designed to fail for at least one more season. Allen may keep his job not through quality, but because New Orleans’ 2023 could be grim and the team may not want that stink to taint whomever they choose to finally lead the team back to prosperity. And who knows? Maybe Allen can exceed expectations, build from his experience and be that guy. It sure hasn’t looked like it so far in 2022 but, again, he’s stuck with Hill, Andy Dalton and an injured Jameis Winston as his quarterbacks.
3
Todd Bowles, Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Bowles wasn’t supposed to be in this position coming into the 2022 offseason. He’d been a pretty good defensive coordinator in Tampa before being drafted up to head coach duties following Bruce Arians’ surprising retirement in late March. Rather than scour a picked-over coaching market, the Buccaneers opted for continuity in hopes the success of the previous two seasons would carry over.
It hasn’t. Tampa Bay leads the NFC South but its 5-6 record is an accurate reflection on how bad this team is. Bowles is unable to coach to his team’s strengths or cover its weaknesses, leaving Tom Brady to spend what may be his final season captaining the league’s 27th-ranked scoring offense.
His time management quackery boiled to the forefront of the Bucs problems in Week 12. He sat on timeouts as the Browns rallied for a game-tying touchdown in the final two minutes and again after getting the ball back with 32 seconds left in a tie game and Brady behind center. Tampa opted to play for overtime despite employing a quarterback with 11 game-winning drives in two-plus seasons in pewter and wine. That left the Bucs standing at the Cleveland 48-yard line as time expired rather than in position to win in regulation.
His defensive philosophy was similarly baffling. Bowles opted to not pressure Jacoby Brissett late despite having success with blitzes throughout the game. That gave the Browns plenty of time in the pocket to drive 71 yards for the game-winning score that dropped the NFC South leaders under .500 at the latest point in any season in Brady’s career as a starter.
There will be some moving parts in play for the Buccaneers in 2023. Brady will be a free agent at the brink of his 46th birthday. It may be time for a reset in Tampa. That would include a new head coach.
2
Kliff Kingsbury, Arizona Cardinals
DeAndre Hopkins’ return was supposed to be the catalyst that pushed a disappointing Cardinals team into the playoff hunt in a disheveled NFC. Instead, Arizona is 2-4 since his return and hasn’t won back-to-back games all season.
Kingsbury’s biggest failure is the troubling backslide Kyler Murray has undergone in 2022. The recently extended quarterback started 2021 as the league’s hottest quarterback before falling back to earth late in the year as his team collapsed around him. He wasn’t able to build himself up this fall, as Hopkins’ absence, Hollywood Brown’s injury and general ineffectiveness has Murray ranked on the Aaron Rodgers/Matthew Stafford tier of quarterback efficiency — a level that would have been a compliment in 2021 but decidedly is not this fall.
A top 10 offense is now barely a top 20 unit, which is not what the Cardinals signed up for when hiring Kingsbury, whose reputation as an innovator (earned or not) painted him as a Sean McVay-type difference maker in a league leaning harder on the passing game than ever. Kingsbury’s efforts to save his job will depend on him turning things around late in the season. This is not a strength.
In the last three seasons, Kingsbury’s Cardinals are 6-11 in December and January. A defense that gives up more points per game than anyone in the league but the Detroit Lions means that Murray badly needs to step up to save his coach’s job. If he can’t, someone’s gotta go — and it won’t be the quarterback who signed a contract extension with $189.5 million in guarantees in July.
1
Nathaniel Hackett, Denver Broncos
Someone has to take the fall for the Broncos’ unbelievable collapse. Since the team is stuck with Russell Wilson through at least 2025, has no first or second round pick next spring and only has a modest amount of salary cap space, the only way for Denver to build hope for next season may be to fire Hackett.
It wouldn’t be much of a sacrifice. Hackett was a questionable hire to begin with — a candidate better suited for a possible Aaron Rodgers trade due to his history with the Packers than Wilson — whose struggles extend beyond playcalling. His clock management in the first two games of his career got him heckled by his home fans. In Week 11 he gave up offensive duties to Klint Kubiak, saw a brief boost in production, and then slunk back into the mud while losing to the Carolina Panthers 23-10 in Week 12.
This is inexcusable. The 2021 Broncos, with Teddy Bridgewater and Drew Lock at quarterback, finished 19th in total points and 21st in third down conversion rate. That’s not good, but it’s light years better than 2022, where no team scores less than Denver and only two are worse on third down.
This is all wasting another sparkling defensive effort. The Broncos rank third in points allowed and yards allowed and fourth in pass defense DVOA. There’s a reasonable chance they lose coordinator Ejiro Evero to a head coaching job elsewhere, but he could also leave for a DC role just to get the hell away from this ongoing disaster and to a team where his efforts lead to wins.
There’s very little hope for a turnaround in Colorado. Firing Hackett and replacing him with a different offensive guru — maybe Kansas City offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy? Philadelphia OC Shane Steichen? Cincinnati OC Brian Callahan, who interviewed for the job last winter? — is the only way to build some kind of excitement for 2023. Otherwise, running it back with broken Russ Wilson and Hackett is only going to depress Broncos fans.
