As the NFL season reaches its midway point, many NFL teams are reaching the unpleasant realization that they have hired the wrong coach. What makes this year’s coaching carousel particularly fascinating is that it potentially has more of an outsized impact on this season than usual. Normally, the coaches on the hot seat are coaches who are allowed to finish the season because their team is already out of playoff contention, meaning there is little benefit to making an immediate change. This year, many of the hottest seats belong to coaches whose teams have a chance to make the playoffs, meaning there actually is a difference to the team in whether the coach is fired now or at the end of the season. With that in mind, we’re gonna start the coaching carousel a little earlier this year. Along with talking about who is most likely to lose their job at the end of the year, we’re gonna go ahead and do the work for some teams and get rid of their coaches right now. So without further ado, let’s fire some coaches.
Fire Them Right Now
This category is for coaches who should undoubtedly be fired, but whose teams are actually in contention. Giving these coaches the ability to finish the year would hinder these teams this year because they actually have rosters that have put them in a position to potentially make a run at the postseason. Every day that these coaches are allowed to keep their jobs is a day in which their organization is willingly lessening their playoff chances.
Mike Zimmer (Vikings)
We’re gonna start off with the coach who has done the worst job in the NFL this year. No coach has gotten less out of his roster than Mike Zimmer. Armed with one of the most talented rosters in the NFL, Zimmer has consistently mismanaged games to the tune of a 3-4 record despite the Vikings being number 11 in Football Outsiders’ DVOA metric which measures the value created by each team on a per-play basis. The story of this Vikings team has been Kirk Cousins having to bail out Zimmer at the end of games after Zimmer takes the ball out of his hands. Cousins has had 6 drives in the final five minutes of regulation and in overtime in which he has put Minnesota in a position to either tie or win the game, and yet Minnesota still only has three wins. Part of that is due to mistakes such as Dalvin Cook’s fumble against the Bengals and Greg Joseph’s missed kick against the Cardinals, but Cook’s fumble occurred once Zimmer went conservative and took the ball out of Cousins’ hands, while the Joseph missed kick followed in Zimmer’s horrible run of special teams coaching. Remember, this is a man who drafted Daniel Carlson only to cut him after two games, a man who traded a fifth-rounder for kicker Kaare Vedvick who went on to miss the team, a man who let Coradarelle Patterson walk out the door. The Vikings brought in a new Special Teams Coordinator to try to improve on last year’s 30th place finish in Special Teams DVOA, and this year have moved all the way up to 31st. This leads to the next problem, which is Zimmer’s inability to hire a coaching staff. An important part of the job of a Head Coach is hiring good assistants, particularly in your areas of weakness. Zimmer has gone through six Offensive Coordinators in his eight years in Minnesota and is in his fifth straight year with a different one. This is because Zimmer hires guys who run uber-conservative offenses before firing them when it inevitably doesn’t work, only to hire someone else who does the same thing. Kirk Cousins has the third-lowest average depth of target this year despite having two weapons in Justin Jefferson and Adam Thielen who are dynamic in the intermediate and deep areas of the field. If Zimmer can’t hire assistant coaches or put his QB in the best position to win, then the big question is what skills does he have as a coach? Well managing a game is not one of them. Zimmer is third-worst in the league in win probability lost per game by kicking in go situations and is a notoriously horrible manager of timeouts. Zimmer’s time in Minnesota is more than up, yet he has somehow been allowed to be one of only seven coaches to hold the position since 2014, despite being the only one of that group to never win a Super Bowl. The Vikings are a playoff-caliber team who could make a run at this thing, but in order to do so, they need to get rid of a coach who is continuously holding them back.
Matt Nagy (Bears)
While the Bears probably aren’t good enough to be a typical playoff team, the lack of depth in the NFC means that they are still within striking distance, especially considering the fact that just last year they made the playoffs despite undergoing a six-game losing streak during the season. On top of that, even if the Bears don’t make the playoffs, the way Nagy is stunting Justin Fields’ growth means that it is in the long-term interests of the Bears to fire him right now. He has handled Fields about as bad as you can handle a rookie Quarterback, trying to get Fields to adjust to Nagy’s vanilla offense rather than adjusting his own offense to Fields’ dynamic skill set. Fields thrives when put on the move in play-action, as a mobile strong-armed Quarterback who can drive the ball down the field. Fields is right now 29th in the league in drops backs using play-action, just ahead of Russell Wilson (more on that in a minute), with Nagy instead opting for the three-step drop, quick pass offense suited to players such as Andy Dalton. On top of that, the Bears have the highest first down run-rate in football, meaning that Nagy is continuously putting Fields in difficult late-down situations. Last Sunday was perhaps the best example of the way Nagy is hurting the Bears' offense because he was not there. Sidelined by COVID, Nagy was not able to coach or gameplan in the facility, and the Bears suddenly started using Fields correctly. They put him under center, put him on the move more off of play-action, and Fields had the best game of his young career. Nagy needs to be fired not only because he is actively hindering a dynamic Quarterback which is causing the Bears to lose games, but because that Quarterback is the foundation of Chicago’s future, and every day that Nagy retrains the top job is a day in which Fields is not being developed correctly.
Vic Fangio (Broncos)
The truth is the Broncos aren’t very good, but their 4-4 record necessitates that Fangio be put in this category. Simply put, the guy does not know how to manage a game. He finished last in 2020 in Football Outsiders’ aggressiveness index which rates the fourth-down aggressiveness of every coach and seems to be allergic to correct timeout usage. On top of that, he seems to have Zimmer’s problem when it comes to hiring Coordinators, with Pat Shurmur (a former Zimmer guy) running the offense the past two years, as Fangio decided that Shurmur’s putrid job running the offense with the Giants somehow merited his hiring. Denver’s offense predictably sputtered, finishing last year 30th in Offensive DVOA. Denver doesn’t have the best roster but has ridden a laughably easy early-season schedule to a 4-4 record. In the right hands, this team could make a run at making the playoffs in the wide-open AFC. Unfortunately, they are guided by a man who was described by Sports Illustrated as someone who is “well versed in addressing the shortcomings of his defense but he seems powerless to prevent them.”
The Mike McCarthy Conundrum
Mike McCarthy (Cowboys)
The 2021 Cowboys will be a fascinating test case for how teams address their coaching staff. They are a team with a 6-1 record that had been maximized by coaching, but not from the Head Coach. Rather, the biggest coaching-related reason for the Cowboys 6-1 record in Kellen Moore. Their young Offensive Coordinator has come out with a dynamic offense that is among the top in the league in motion use, designing a system that maximized output from every one of Dallas’ dynamic offensive players. As for McCarthy, well his role on the team seems to be screwing up in-game situations, forcing his team to bail him out. McCarthy is currently 24th in win probability lost per game by kicking in go situations and is a notoriously horrible clock-manager (USA Today ran an article a little over a month ago with the headline “If Mike McCarthy Can’t Manage the Clock, What Does He Do for the Cowboys?”). While Moore is clearly the biggest factor behind the Cowboys’ success, it’s not as simple as immediately promoting him. If the Cowboys were to promote Moore at the moment, that would create a dynamo effect along with the entire Offensive Coaching Staff. If Moore becomes Head Coach the team will need a new Offensive Coordinator who will likely be a positional coach meaning the team would need a new person in that slot, with the dynamo reverberating throughout the Offense. Should the Cowboys really risk that disruption to the operation of a unit that is among the best in the league for a 6-1 team? In my opinion, there is no doubt that come Week 1 next year Moore should be the Head Coach for Dallas. They don’t want to be put in the position of the post-2016 Falcons where Kyle Shanahan, the man responsible for designing the league’s number one offense, was allowed to leave for a Head Coaching job while Head Coach Dan Quinn was suddenly left without the handcuff of an all-world Offensive Coordinator, revealing his own deficiencies as a Head Coach. The question is whether the Cowboys should make the move right now.
The Steve Wilkes Corner
David Culley (Texans)
If you are wondering who Steve Wilkes is, you’re probably not alone. He led perhaps the most forgettable team in recent NFL memory in the 2018 Cardinals, before getting fired after one year. Wilkes took the job before the year as an under qualified coach brought in to move on from the Bruce Arians era, but that year turned out to be wildly disappointing as both Wilkes and rookie Quarterback Josh Rosen sputtered to the tune of the league’s worst record. Both were let go, and the team moved on by drafting Kyler Murray. The Texans feel like they are in a similar situation to that team. They are a team who knew that they were rebuilding, but who did nothing this year to improve their stock. No one wanted to take the job last offseason so they wound up with Culley, a wildly underqualified coach who had never held playcalling duty and who had most recently been the Ravens’ Wide Receivers Coach and Passing Game Coordinator, which is especially crazy considering much of the discourse last offseason was about how Baltimore's Receivers and Passing design had failed and Lamar Jackson. The job should be considerably more desirable considering the Texans now have draft picks, and in a weird way, the Deshaun Watson issue is more resolved now for the team. While there are still question about his status both legally and in terms of football, we can definitively say that he will never play again for the Texans. If he never gets traded a coach will be walking into a bad team rebuilding with high draft picks, and if he does a coach will be walking into a team with extra picks. The Texans will get a chance to draft a new Quarterback and build a real foundation starting next year, and Culley has given zero indication that he should be the man at the helm going forward as he simply looks overmatched as a Head Coach. Let him finish the year, get rid of the poor guy, and move on with a real rebuild.
The Lame Ducks
These are the coaches on terrible teams who should be allowed to finish the season, but who should in no way be allowed to coach next year.
Urban Meyer (Jaguars)
I really shouldn’t need to explain this one.
Joe Judge (Giants)
Judge has simply been a disaster, hiring Jason Garrett as Offensive Coordinator, which has gone about as poorly as expected. He’s also in the bottom ten in WP lost by kicking in go situations (notice a theme here?), a ranking which isn’t even lower because the Giants are usually losing, meaning that most of the time the team is in a position where they will probably lose anyway. He is supposedly a stark disciplinarian whose team is still among the ten most penalized groups, and while no one has asked the question yet, one must wonder whether there is a link between his grueling practices and the vast array of injuries suffered by the Giants’ skill guys. His expertise supposedly comes from his time as a Special Teams Coach in New England, yet the Giants have lost multiple games due in large part to poor special teams, including the game against the Washington Football Team when Dexter Lawrence jumped offsides prior to a missed game-winner, giving them a second chance which they converted. The Giants should move on from Judge at the end of the year and bring in a more offensively minded coach who will put them in a better position to make their ultimate decision on Daniel Jones at the end of next year.
Hot Seat
We shouldn’t pull the plug just yet, but these guys are skating on thin ice.
Brian Flores (Dolphins)
Flores seemed to have a safe job coming into the year, yet this season has so far been an unmitigated disaster for Miami. They have sputtered to 1-7 as one of the most conservative teams in football, running both a horrible offense while being last in win probability lost per game by kicking in go situations (drink). The Dolphins are also among the most penalized teams in football, and simply don’t look like a well-coached team. They always seem less prepared than their opponent and don’t seem to have any type of identity. All of the credibility Flores built up over the past two years has suddenly fallen, and if things don’t change quickly, Miami might need to start going in a new direction.
Pete Carroll (Seahawks)
While Carroll has been very successful as a Head Coach it has been almost a decade since Seattle won the Super Bowl, and he is no longer armed with one of the greatest defenses in football history. The Seahawks have now fallen into a repetitive nature of Russell Wilson bailing them over the first half of the year before Carroll decides to take the ball out of his hands. Perhaps more than any other non-offensive coach, Carroll inserts himself into the offensive game planning to the detriment of the team. Carroll consistently insists on running the football, with the Seahawks at one point having as high a run-rate as the early-day Lamar Jackson Ravens. Even though the Seahawks seemingly hired an Offensive Coordinator from the McVay coaching tree, they are still in the bottom half of the league in play-action and were a run-heavy team even before Wilson got hurt. This is as good of an indication as any that it is Carroll who is truly pulling the strings, and the performance of the offense without Wilson is indicative of the extent to which Wilson has bailed Carroll out these past few years. While it is hard to fire a Head Coach who won you a Super Bowl, there were already some initial trade rumblings with Wilson last offseason, and one must wonder how long he will be willing to let his prime be squandered before forcing the Seahawks’ hand. Seattle shouldn’t give him that chance, meaning that they may very well need to let Carroll go at season’s end.
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Week 9 Picks
Last Week’s Record: 5-10-1 (0-1 Locks)
Season Record: 62-68-1
*Lines as of Thursday Afternoon
Colts (-10) vs Jets
Ravens (-5.5) vs Vikings
Bengals (-2.5) vs Browns
Cowboys (-10, lock) vs Broncos
Texans (+6) @ Dolphins
Falcons (+6) @ Saints
Raiders (-3) @ Giants
Patriots (-3.5, lock) @ Panthers
Bills (-14.5) @ Jaguars
Chargers (-1.5) @ Eagles
Packers (+7.5) @ Chiefs
49ers (-2.5) vs Cardinals
Rams (-7) vs Titans
Bears (+6.5) @ Steelers
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