Since we last published this column, we’ve already seen one turkey axed ahead of Thanksgiving.
That was Las Vegas Raiders head coach Josh McDaniels, a man whose ousting sparked a rapid turnaround in Nevada. Behind interim coach Antonio Pierce and fourth-round rookie quarterback Aidan O’Connell the Raiders are 2-1 post-McDaniels after going 9-16 with him.
McDaniels’ dismissal has been vindicated in a short window. He won’t be the only man fired for failing to lead his team to glory in 2023, however.
One or two teams will make knee-jerk decisions. Others will course correct after waiting too long. When Black Monday rolls around, a slate of head coaches will take their buyouts and go home, leaving opportunities for a new class of play callers to take their places.
As we near the two-thirds mark of the regular season, here are the firing frontrunners so far.
6
Frank Reich, Carolina Panthers
Could Reich be axed just one season after being a high profile hiring in Charlotte? First year head coaches typically get a buffer year when it comes to settling in with a new club, but we’ve seen a rising tide of one-and-done playcallers recently — Steve Wilks, Lovie Smith and David Culley among them (…wait a second).
We know owner David Tepper is a bold man. Aside from the literal pair of brass testicles he kept on his work desk, he’s also reportedly the reason why Carolina opted for Bryce Young over CJ Stroud with the first overall pick even though the team’s coaching staff appeared to lean toward the Texans’ rookie of the year frontrunner. And when those reports broke, ostensibly sourced within that coaching staff in an effort to shed blame, well, Tepper probably wasn’t especially happy.
So there you have a bad football team, a new-ish, emboldened owner and a head coach who has swapped offensive play-calling duties on and off this season to diminishing effects. The Panthers are bad, and while that responsibility ultimately lies with Reich there’s no doubt he’s working with a deficient roster. Young has little to work with besides aging, supporting cast-style receivers and a frustrating offensive line.
Composite of quantified pass protection through week 10
Why does ESPN hate the Jaguars,, pic.twitter.com/jQ4UQNuhW9
— Computer Cowboy (@benbbaldwin) November 15, 2023
If Reich is out, who would want the job? The Panthers have some talented pieces but few avenues to rebuild. The Chicago Bears own their first-round pick. Nearly $47 million in effective salary cap space is useful, but doesn’t crack the top 10 next offseason, per Over The Cap. A sizable chunk of that will likely go toward re-signing pass rusher Brian Burns — who will not be cheap — and solid off-ball linebacker Frankie Luvu in hopes of keeping a solid young defensive core intact.
This all makes it foolish to cut bait on Reich after one season. That makes any such move unlikely, but not impossible. The team’s offensive playcalling crisis is a bad look in a season filled with them. Enough embarrassment for a new owner accustomed to turning junk bonds and distressed assets into riches could spur a knee-jerk reaction.
5
Bill Belichick, New England Patriots
Bill Belichick will not be fired. He may have all the benefits of retirement gracefully pointed out to him. He may be asked to give up personnel control when it comes to free agency and the draft. But Bill Belichick, owner of eight Super Bowl rings, will not be fired.
If he were anyone else, however…
This is an era of unprecedented badness for the legendary coach. He’ll need to finish 4-3 just to avoid the worst single-season win percentage of his career. 2023 will almost certainly mark his first back-to-back losing seasons since 1992-1993 with the Cleveland Browns. Five years without a postseason win will be the longest drought he’s ever seen as a head coach.
Without Tom Brady at the helm, the Patriots are 27-33 in three-plus seasons. Only four of those wins came over teams to either make the playoffs or set to qualify this winter. One was in a severe windstorm vs. the Buffalo Bills and another came against Miami Dolphins backups Teddy Bridgewater and Skylar Thompson. New England is terrible this year, but hasn’t been an imposing force even in its decent seasons.
There’s an ouroboros of blame to go around. Mac Jones hasn’t grown since his solid, if unspectacular rookie season. But he’s had little help from a coaching staff that cannot mitigate his weaknesses. And he’s gotten even less from a roster that’s been crushed by horrible drafting and forgettable free agent acquisitions. Jones is failing this team, but he’s been set up for disaster along the way by a team that’s failed him.
Belichick the coach may be cleared to run it back with a defense that gets difference makers Christian Gonzalez and Matthew Judon back from injury next season. At the very least, Belichick the general manager should cede some of his duties to someone who can help Patriots fans forget draft disasters like the class of 2022 and free agent mishaps like the Jonnu Smith signing.
2024 should be the beginning of a new era, in some way, for New England. No one’s quite sure what it will look like.
4
Arthur Smith, Atlanta Falcons
There may not be a more frustrating head coach in the league than Smith, a playcaller backed by three recent top-10 draft picks at the skill positions but lacking the capacity to turn them into anything more than a handful of fantasy football complaints each Sunday. The man brought in to upgrade the Atlanta offense instead has overseen a group that ranks 24th in scoring and, more importantly, made a team that should be a chaos engine just … sort of boring.
The caveat is Smith has been saddled with subpar quarterbacks; 2022 third-round pick Desmond Ridder, anonymous 2022 veteran placeholder Marcus Mariota and 2023 replacement-player-measuring-stick Taylor Heinicke. But after spending a decade building his name with the Tennessee Titans, this wasn’t supposed to be an issue. Smith had wrung the most out of Ryan Tannehill, a player the Miami Dolphins traded away for a pair of Day 3 draft picks.
Atlanta gave him the chance to work that magic again. There was no Derrick Henry on which to rely, but management stocked him up with a more heralded receiving corps than the Titans had. The Falcons had Kyle Pitts and Drake London, two catch-radius maestros able to lift up whichever quarterback could lob the ball their way. They gave Smith a rookie who’d run for more than 1,000 yards in his debut and then made him the buttress to the most electric running back prospect the league had seen in years.
This team had a open lane to contend in the NFC South; instead, it’s 4-6.
Pitts, who has dealt with injury, has three catches or fewer in the majority of his games this fall. Drake London has one game with more than 80 receiving yards and four with fewer than 40. Bijan Robinson has produced highlight reel fodder across multiple weeks and has just two rushing touchdowns.
Smith’s legacy as a head coach, thus far, has been his ability to make three quarters add up to 35 cents. Where great coaches find a way to maximize talent, his Falcons have continually failed to be more than the sum of their parts. And those parts, notably, are a buffet of highly regarded prospects capable of thriving elsewhere.
The NFC South remains winnable. The team in front, the New Orleans Saints, is roughly as reliable as a coin flip any given Sunday. Atlanta has an intriguing combination of veteran presence and young talent to spur a run.
But that run may not be Smith’s to make, even if leadership is behind him in November. The Falcons had a solid opportunity to break a five-year playoff drought in a weak division and maybe even make some postseason noise. Instead, they’re fighting for a scant chance at an 18th game.
3
Matt Eberflus, Chicago Bears
The Bears recent run of competent-adjacent football has eased Eberflus’ hot seat from scalding to boiling. This means he doesn’t crack the top two this time around. Still, it’s difficult to foresee a future where Chicago undergoes a rebuild based around two potential top five draft picks and a boatload of salary cap space and decides, “Hey, let’s keep the 6-22 head coach who barely gets anything right” around.
That’s probably all you need to know about Eberflus’s season-plus in Chicago. He loses games, often due to a lack of talent that’s no doubt sped along by his own failed efforts to improve things. He took a quarterback who had more than 1,000 rushing yards in 2022 and took designed runs out of his playbook. He made Justin Fields a pocket passer but struggled to incorporate anyone other than DJ Moore into his passing game consistently — a testament more to Moore’s abilities than anything Eberflus has done with the offense.
That’s reasonable, since Eberflus was formerly a defensive coordinator. But his defense has been bad as well. An undermanned unit ranked 32nd in points allowed and 32nd in overall DVOA last season. While better in 2023, that unit is only up to 29th in scoring and 25th in DVOA this fall.
His Bears hardly generate pressure and give up a 97.0 passer rating in coverage. They’ve been burned by quarterbacks like Jordan Love, Derek Carr and Baker Mayfield this season.
Fields may be playing out his string with the Bears. A new era awaits to tantalize and ultimately disappoint fans across the Midwest. Those plans likely don’t include Eberflus, modest defensive progress aside.
2
Brandon Staley, Los Angeles Chargers
By nearly every statistical metric you can find, Justin Herbert has been a top-10 quarterback through the first half of the 2023 NFL season. Yet his Chargers are 4-6 and have, per the New York Times, just an 11 percent chance of making it back to the playoffs — the same place where Staley’s team blew a 27-0 lead last winter.
So how’s Staley taking it?
A frustrated Brandon Staley on if he'll continue to call the #Chargers defense:
“You can stop asking that question. I’m going to be calling the defenses, okay? So we’re clear? So you don’t have to ask that again."pic.twitter.com/6E2ySnEIrk
— Ari Meirov (@MySportsUpdate) November 19, 2023
Yep, totally unbothered. Fully in control. Things are great!
Staley’s tenure has been defined by close losses and memorable collapses. He’s been liable to rely on analytics to make the right decision to go for it on fourth-and-short in key situations, then make the completely wrong call when it comes to picking a play that will actually work. After going 7-6 in one-score games last season he’s only 2-5 this fall, vacating any momentum from that 2022 growth and leaving the distinct impression we are, unmistakably, watching Chargers football.
Quentin Johnston could have won this game for the Chargers pic.twitter.com/v9dUQj1OVr
— Christian D'Andrea (@TrainIsland) November 19, 2023
Staley has solid football theories and little capacity to handle the pressure these theories create. The Chargers asked him to fight back the tide of mounting disappointment endemic to the franchise and he’s only been able to make token stands before getting swept away.
His offenses remain explosive and fun in a way that never really matters. Los Angeles remains gridiron Funyuns, an appealing option you *think* you want but ultimately regret after realizing they lack any capacity to actually satisfy.
Actually scratch that, maybe he’s the perfect Chargers coach after all.
1
Ron Rivera, Washington Commanders
It’s been a rough scene for Riverboat Ron. He was hired to oversee the dying days of the Daniel Snyder era, which effectively handed him a (well paid) lose-lose situation. Snyder was replaced by a owner who’ll look magnanimous simply by not actively antagonizing his own staffers, players or fans. That’s great for the Commanders, but less so for a head coach holdover from an era no one remembers fondly.
To that end, Rivera is playing out the string of 2023 with a depleted roster (see the Montez Sweat and Chase Young trades at this year’s deadline) and a quarterback management looked at, shrugged, and said “why not?” Sam Howell has been better than expected but prone to mistakes (12 interceptions in 11 games). The defense is by most metrics a bottom three unit, generating pressure less often than it blitzes (21 percent to 24 percent, per Pro Football Reference) and allowing the league’s highest passer rating in coverage (100.8).
Rivera was brought in to add a glossy layer of respect to a franchise that deserved none. He was undermined throughout that tenure, either by the continual broil of whatever war Snyder was waging against (gestures toward the world at large) or the reset that happened halfway through his first year coaching for Josh Harris. Now he’s got to fix things on the fly with a defense that’s only been made worse by attrition and a quarterback who can give it an honest effort in a shootout, but ultimately keeps coming up short.
Rivera is 26-34-1 as the team’s head coach. Two more losses this year will ensure he won’t have a winning season in four years in Washington. Granted, that includes a division title because the NFC East was a mess in 2020 (me too, NFC East), but the veteran’s output with the Commanders has more closely resembled his off years with Carolina than any of the Panthers’ 2010s glory.
That’s not appealing to new ownership, though it’s possible Rivera gets another chance for being a good citizen and well-liked players’ coach for a franchise powered by spite the past two decades. Even so, both sides could benefit from a split; I’m not sure anyone’s going to judge Riverboat Ron too harshly for taking a bad situation and only getting it to “subpar” in four years.
