The Las Vegas Raiders are 3-4, and somehow their season feels so much worse than that.
Swapping out Derek Carr for Jimmy Garoppolo had roughly the effect we all expected, as the trade-up from Applebee’s to Chili’s failed to convince fans they were being served anything more than microwaved food. A stellar offensive line effort is being wasted by an unremarkable passing game that’s been forced to throw Brian Hoyer and Aidan O’Connell into the mix due to Garoppolo’s injury concerns. The defense, as is tradition, is a constellation of one or two straggling stars and the cold, dark expanse of dead space behind it.
And the architect of it all is a head coach unable or unwilling to change from a meticulously planned, destined-to-fail playbook.
Behold, Josh McDaniels, once again dazzling NFL fans with his lack of situational awareness and indefatigable commitment to crap. The man who helped Tom Brady attain greatness remains unable to coax the same from regular NFL players, and he’s made that the Las Vegas Raiders’ problem the past season-plus. He’s a leading candidate to lose his job when Black Monday — the first day after the regular season ends — rolls around. Who could join him?
Sean Payton and Bill Belichick, each coming off wins and unlikely to be “fired” fired this winter, reached the exit velocity to escape this list’s gravity … for now. Their spots have been replaced by a couple familiar names when it comes to coaching hot seats. Let’s see who leads the fireability rankings after Week 7 (it’s McDaniels. We all knew this).
5
Dennis Allen, New Orleans Saints
Allen was a low-risk, low-reward option for the Saints coming off the Sean Payton era. Their former head coach had been so successful for so long it made sense to keep a holdover in place, especially when Payton waited until January 25 to retire in 2021 — two days after the Divisional Round of the postseason had concluded and well after most other teams had already begun their coaching searches.
That made him the best of a bad situation, either a budding star who could live up to his place in the spotlight or, more likely, a brief placeholder who could wait out the expensive contracts of the prior regime and set things up for rebuild and a new coach to come with it. Through nearly one-and-a-half seasons, Allen looks like the latter.
In that stretch he’s 10-14. His three wins in 2023 have come over opponents with a combined 4-15 record. He’s got Derek Carr at quarterback, who exceedingly looks like Just a Guy. Injuries have played a part depleting his offensive line, but Allen has a rejuvenated Alvin Kamara, Chris Olave and a working, if not spectacular Michael Thomas. Still, his offense ranks 19th in total DVOA.
This is screwing up the thing Allen still does well: coach a veteran defense. New Orleans ranks eighth in defensive DVOA, seventh in points allowed and fourth in yards allowed this season. The Saints have forced a turnover every week and given up fewer than 300 yards in the majority of their games so far. Allen is still clearly a solid defensive game-planner, but it’s not bled over to the other side of the ball.
New Orleans has at least one more year of the Carr experience to live through before his contract can be discarded. Will the Saints opt for a new coach in hopes of reviving his value? Or will they keep Allen around for one more shot, letting key contracts expire and setting the table for a fresh start for whomever his successor could be in 2025?
4
Ron Rivera, Washington Commanders
This season was always going to be Rivera’s opportunity to prove himself in the eyes of new team owner Josh Harris. He’d been championed as one of the few positive influences in the festering wound that was the Dan Snyder era. His reputation as a team builder and leader gave him an honest opportunity to survive any house cleaning Harris may have on his schedule.
His reputation can’t account for a 3-4 record, however — or losses to the Chicago Bears and New York Giants.
The primary culprit is a defense that’s backslid heavily despite the presence of several players pegged as future stars. The 2022 Commanders ranked 10th in defensive DVOA, seventh in points allowed and third in yards given up. This year’s squad — despite fielding one of the league’s best pass-rushing combinations in Chase Young and Montez Sweat — ranks 26th, 29th and 29th, respectively. It’s allowed at least 33 points in the majority of its games, which includes tilts with the otherwise woeful Chicago Bears and Denver Broncos.
This has left little cover for a perpetually shaky quarterback situation. 2022 fifth-round pick Sam Howell has exceeded expectations, but his lack of consistency, ridiculous sack rate and general inability to generate his own offense is a problem. Howell’s adjusted net yards per attempt (ANY/A) of 4.55 ranks 27th among 32 starting quarterbacks despite a 65 percent completion rate. There’s good in Howell’s game, but too often it’s inundated and washed out by the bad.
Rivera’s Commanders are a flawed team, a collection of parts unable to be placed in working order. If he can’t pilot this team to something approaching a .500 record, he won’t get a fifth year at the helm. Even if he does, it’ll probably come with serious adjustments to his coaching staff — and the likely firing of defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio.
3
Brandon Staley, Los Angeles Chargers
This year’s Chargers team is, fundamentally, no different than the majority of the squads that existed solely to torture its remaining fans over the past two decades. There’s an offense capable of greatness but unable to get all its pieces working properly at the same time. There’s a defense that’s supposed to be better than it is, serving to underwhelm despite a handful of high value acquisitions.
And at the center of it all is a head coach no one trusts. This time around, that’s Staley.
Let’s start with the most common complaint about his 2-4 start to 2023. Staley’s fourth-down decisions have come under scrutiny despite:
a) being statistically the correct call nearly every time, and
b) converting nearly 64 percent of those opportunities.
However, the misses have come at crucial junctures that threaten to derail his team. You can argue Los Angeles is a couple of bounces away from a 5-1 record. You can also make the case their two wins — vs. the Minnesota Vikings and Las Vegas Raiders — were the result of a defense bailing them out with late interceptions after Staley’s fourth-down gambits failed and put trailing teams in position to drive fewer than 35 yards for game-winning or tying touchdowns.
What’s more concerning may be another year of Justin Herbert’s wasted potential. The big-armed quarterback looked like he was primed for a leap under new offensive coordinator Kellen Moore. Through the first three games of the season he produced 0.222 expected points added (EPA) per play, good for fifth-best in the NFL. In the three games since, he’s stuck at 0.004 — 24th-best.
Turning around the season starts with Herbert, and pushing him back to top five status would go a long way in suggesting this coaching staff is more than the typical run of bumble-grunts that have called plays in Los Angeles (and before that, San Diego). If Staley can get him online and get a few more of these fourth down scenarios to work in his favor in big moments, he can survive to a fourth year.
2
Matt Eberflus, Chicago Bears
Eberflus got a win last week. With his backup quarterback, an undrafted rookie out of Division II Shepherd University, no less. So why is he still here?
Because that win came over Brian Hoyer, Aidan O’Connell and the most fireable coach in the NFL (ah geez, spoilers, I guess).
Eberflus maintained a low-impact offense that allowed Bagent to throw easy passes and take few dangerous shots downfield; his average pass traveled two yards beyond the line of scrimmage. That’s nice, but it’s not a sustainable strategy against opponents who don’t treat their own feet like clay targets at a shooting range.
The problem now is Justin Fields’ dislocated thumb will make it difficult to gauge whether any meaningful progress was being made this season. The third-year quarterback was dreadful in his first three games, but improved dramatically in Weeks 4 and 5 to pick up the team’s first win. Then he was bad again in Week 6, then saddled with the kind of injury that could affect his downfield accuracy through the rest of the 2023 season.
The longshot that could bail Eberflus out is a defense that’s come alive in recent weeks. Chicago has forced four turnovers its last two games while allowing 31 total points and 235 yards or fewer each week. The five Sundays that preceded them suggest this is an outlier, but there’s a chance a healthy Fields, a heaping helping of run plays and a suddenly opportunistic defense can make this team something better than awful.
Would that be enough to save a head coach who is 5-19 through 1.5 seasons? Probably not, especially if the Bears decide they’re through with Fields. Regardless, the book isn’t written on Eberflus’ Chicago career just yet.
1
Josh McDaniels, Las Vegas Raiders
In Week 3, McDaniels ended up on this list for opting for a field goal while trailing by more than three points late in a game against a beatable opponent. He took a beating here and elsewhere for his lack of strategic logic, and it seemed like he’d learn from this mistake and continue on his path as a moderately successful but mostly frustrating, middling head coach.
Then Week 7 happened, and McDaniels became his own Goofy “I’ll do it again” meme.
Down 21-3 in the 4th quarter, Josh McDaniels just kicked a field goal from the opposing 6.
— lukezim (@lukezim) October 22, 2023
This is the selling point of the McDaniels era; a head coach whose wildly inflated confidence in his own team’s ability to mount epic comebacks in a tight timeframe is matched only by that same team’s ability to allow them. The former Patriots assistant and Broncos head coach earned a vote of confidence after 2022 despite three different blown leads of 17-0 or greater. There’s been no such public statement from team owner Mark Davis in 2023, though he has told fans calling for McDaniels ouster to “smarten up,” whatever that means.
The actual smart move would be to fire the guy who is 14-32 in his last 46 games as an NFL head coach. McDaniels only got worse as he went on in Denver. He’s threatening to do the same in Las Vegas despite a 3-4 record — in part because those three wins came over teams who are a combined 6-14 at the moment. His utilization of star wideout Davante Adams is frustrating, the degradation of his offensive line and run game is concerning and his pass defense … OK, well, in fairness to McDaniels having an awful secondary is fast becoming a staid Raiders tradition.
Still, the evidence is piling up and suggests McDaniels is made for the assistant life, not a top role. Maybe Mark Davis will keep him around to spite fans. Or maybe he’ll smarten up and envision a world where Las Vegas can win more than seven games.
