The unusually cold weather hitting parts of the United States has closed theme parks usually stuffed with visitors this time of year. Disney’s Typhoon Lagoon, Universal Orlando’s Volcano Bay and Florida’s Sea World are all shuttered indefinitely. But one ride that is popular every January remains in operation: the NFL coaching carousel. Ride at your own peril.
Six NFL head coaching jobs are open following the usual end-of-season round of firings and resignations. The Oakland Raiders, Chicago Bears, New York Giants, Detroit Lions, Indianapolis Colts and Arizona Cardinals are all looking to make hires. Not surprisingly, many long-known names are already in the mix. The Raiders reportedly may give $10m a year to Jon Gruden, who hasn’t coached since 2008 and last won more than nine games in 2005. Gruden was fired by the Buccaneers after years of mishandling the quarterback position. Naturally, he’s seen as a quarterback guru.
Then there’s an existential threat unrelated to the global danger caused by Kim Jong-un and his dotard nemesis trading insults and arguing button size. A smaller scale, football-specific threat. The “nuclear option” of coaching hires: the assured destruction that is employing Jeff Fisher. Yes, the former Titans and Rams head coach reportedly has interest in several of the NFL jobs that are now open.
The six franchises left to ponder Fisher, Gruden and other candidates find themselves in that position because they failed to make the upcoming NFL play-offs. But these play-offs should offer hope to those looking for a new coach. There are better options available than retreading the same old tire and hoping that this time it doesn’t blow out.
Of the 12 NFL play-off teams, eight are led by coaches in their first-ever NFL head coaching job: Mike Tomlin, Sean Payton, Ron Rivera, Mike Zimmer, Dan Quinn, Doug Pederson, Sean McDermott and Sean McVay. The lesson here? Well, other than that it seems it may be smart to hire a coach named “Sean”? It’s that taking a supposed risk on an unproven coach is probably the safer, smarter choice.
All eight of the first-time coaches listed above have winning records over their careers, and that’s even with Zimmer, Quinn, Pederson, McDermott and McVay taking over losing programs within the last four years. McVay’s story has been the most remarkable and the reason some franchises seek to hire the “new Sean McVay” this offseason instead of the old Jeff Fisher.
“I am a huge fan of the Rams players,” Fisher told the Los Angeles Daily News late last month. “They’re basically – I don’t want to say my players – but I had a lot to do with that roster.” OK. While Fisher tries to take credit, let’s give him credit for this: the Rams roster this season is almost exactly what it was last year, only now it’s winning behind a coach with fresh ideas and a new approach.
Despite being younger than a couple of his players, the 31-year-old McVay has turned the Rams from 4-12 and dead-last in the NFL in scoring at 14.0 points per game to 11-5 and first in scoring at 29.9 points per game. He already is the youngest head coach in NFL history. Soon he will be the youngest person ever named Coach of the Year. Quarterback Jared Goff, written off by many as a draft bust under Fisher, threw for as many touchdowns in three games under McVay as he did in seven a season ago. Meanwhile, former Fisher quarterbacks Case Keenum and Nick Foles are under center for two other NFC playoff teams.
Keenum has been a revelation in Minnesota under Zimmer, as the coach has steadily built a contender since arriving in 2014. Behind a strong defense and a consistent offense built from spare parts, the Vikings are the most balanced team in the NFC. Foles is being coached up by Pederson, whose offense lit up the NFL throughout November and into December before Carson Wentz got hurt. And while not everything McDermott has touched in Buffalo has turned to gold – the Week 11 decision to start Nathan Peterman over Tyrod Taylor won’t soon be forgotten – he did manage to become the first Bills coach since Wade Phillips in 1999 to get Buffalo into the playoffs. Overjoyed Bills fans won’t soon forget his role in that.
This is all not to say that finding a successful head coach is as easy as plucking some new name from the assistant ranks and then letting the W’s wash over you. If there was a simple solution to finding a winning coach – or a good quarterback – the NFL would have 32 great coaches and 32 star quarterbacks. Bill Belichick of all people is a “recycled” head coach, grabbed by the Patriots after leading the Browns for five years and the Jets for a single day. (By the way, let’s all agree that Belichick managing to win 36 games with the Browns could be even more impressive than winning five Super Bowls with the Patriots.) John Fox, let go by the Bears in his third job, won a Super Bowl in his second with the Broncos. Chuck Pagano, axed in Indianapolis after six years, was a first-time head coach who got off to a promising start only to see it all fall apart. Ben McAdoo didn’t make it through two seasons with the Giants. Pederson’s success in Philadelphia comes on the heels of a much bolder first-time coach hire, that of Chip Kelly, flaming out in spectacular fashion. And then there’s Marvin Lewis, still technically a first-time head coach with the Bengals, who apparently will remain so for all eternity, probably even after world leaders press their buttons and wipe out the rest of civilization.
Yet while the Raiders, Bears, Giants, Lions, Colts and Cardinals were not any good this season, a lesson of 2017 is that they could be very quickly with the right coaching hire. The odds are the right coach will be someone who has never led an NFL team before. Finding exactly who that is is where it gets hard. But not nearly as hard as trying to win with Jeff Fisher.
