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Sports Illustrated

Sport

Conor Orr

The Ravens Firing John Harbaugh Just Broke Open the NFL Coaching Carousel

John Harbaugh Ravens NFL Mike Macdonald Baltimore (Organization) Giants Andy Reid Jesse Minter Kevin Stefanski Alabama (Organization)

To this point in the NFL head coach hiring cycle, we’ve had the NFL equivalent of openings at Bowling Green (Cleveland), Marshall (Arizona) and Cal (Tennessee). There are openings at blueblood programs that have fallen on hard times and appeal as reclamation projects (Giants) and openings at strange technical schools that may or may not actually be accredited universities and are likely run by a consortium of shady tech barons as a tax shelter (Raiders, obviously).

But on Tuesday, the Ravens shattered the low, white noise hum of this carousel by firing John Harbaugh after 18 seasons in Baltimore. The Super Bowl–winning coach creates a vacancy at a perennial contender with a top-five quarterback in the NFL under center. The Ravens have a top GM in the NFL and a front office that regularly outpaces the league in finding an edge. An enviable organizational model. A lineage of future head coaches longer than the Bill Parcells tree.

To round out the metaphor, Alabama is now taking applications.

In mid-December, we pondered what might happen if Joe Burrow’s malaise was related to the head coaching position and the kind of coaching logjam that would take place as prospective job seekers lined up for the chance to work with one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL. Well, the same can be said about the Ravens, without the organizational baggage of their divisional rivals in Cincinnati. This is a job that coaches dream of. This is a job that comes around once a decade.

The weather patterns of early January have now gone from San Diego predictable to chaos resembling the high plains of Oklahoma. What happens next is anyone’s guess, but allow me to throw some cards on the table for thought:

• Will having John Harbaugh on the table motivate any team that is still on the fence about firing its head coach to make a move? Harbaugh is 63 and is the fourth-winningest active head coach (14th winningest in history). Harbaugh’s career .614 winning percentage is better than the one Andy Reid had when Reid left Philadelphia. By a quick count, I would say that Harbaugh is a markedly better head coach than at least six teams that currently do not have a head coaching vacancy. ESPN reported that Harbaugh’s agent fielded seven calls (one more team than currently has an opening). Does this mean anything to the Jets or Dolphins, specifically?

• Speaking of the New York football scene, John Harbaugh and the Giants make an awful lot of sense together, and Harbaugh’s offensive coordinator Todd Monken would be an ideal fit for Jaxson Dart. Harbaugh could help stabilize the franchise at a critical time with owner John Mara battling health issues and embattled general manager Joe Schoen still getting a grasp on the wheel.

• Were the Ravens impacted at all by seeing Mike Macdonald leave Baltimore and immediately turn around the Seahawks? Discussions about Harbaugh’s contract and future have been at a low simmer for the past few seasons, though it always had a way of resolving itself. However, the same year that Macdonald clinched the No. 1 seed in the NFC, it’s not hard to see the parallels between Seattle just before his arrival and Baltimore now, MacDonald’s Ravens connections aside. Like the Seahawks with Pete Carroll, the Ravens had a Super Bowl in their back pocket and a high floor that made changing coaches feel gluttonous to some degree. Is there another coach like Macdonald that Baltimore is afraid of missing out on?

• That brings us to Jesse Minter. The 42-year-old Chargers defensive coordinator (for Harbaugh’s brother, Jim), was a defensive assistant alongside MacDonald back in the late 2010s before, like MacDonald, taking a sojourn to Michigan. Minter has posted one of the league’s best defenses in each of the past two seasons despite a talent pool considerably beneath some of the other units ahead of him. In Minter’s final season as defensive coordinator at Michigan, the Wolverines finished first in the NCAA in total defense, allowing just over 10 points per game (albeit with a massive, screaming caveat). Klint Kubiak, the son of former Ravens offensive coordinator (and Super Bowl–winning head coach) Gary is another name that is wildly popular this cycle.

While I would imagine the Ravens are going to conduct an eclectic search, given that the team has been off-market for almost two decades and would like to glean some research on what is happening with the rest of the league, it’s foolish to think that Baltimore made this move without the slightest idea of whom it may go after.

The coaching carousel never fails to offer something out of the ordinary, but this is seismic. Harbaugh is the best proven head coaching candidate to hit the market since Andy Reid after the 2012 season. And the Ravens’ job is the best opening since the 2020 Cowboys or the 2019 Packers.

Expect some major strategy shifts in the coming days and, not so subtly, a referendum on the reputation of certain organizations around the league. One industry source told me Tuesday morning that the Falcons and Giants were clearly the best jobs available before Baltimore came open. Kevin Stefanski and Harbaugh are clearly the best candidates. While it would make sense that those franchises and candidates pair off, what happens to the Raiders, Cardinals and Titans of the world? While there is a downside to the coaching carousel food chain, having an Alabama job come open—and, maybe in the case of Harbaugh, a Nick Saban entering the market—is a good way of showing everyone where they stand. And, in the case of many owners, why simply changing coaches every few years is never enough.