Rest In Peace

The regular season has come to an end, and as always we’re down to twelve teams. I don’t know about you, but I’m really pumped for the playoffs (at least on the NFC side), and I’m certain I will have a lot to say about the teams left alive.

But before we get to that, we should take a quick run through the twenty teams that failed to make the playoffs this year. And we’ll start in everyone’s favorite place, with the firing of coaches. As of Tuesday evening there are now six coaching openings, and I’ve gone through each of them below, giving my thoughts about whether I felt the firing was justified and ranking each team in descending order of how attractive the opening is.

Coaching Openings

Chicago Bears

I may be more bullish about the future of the Bears organization than any other person in America. I think that with the right coach this could be a playoff team as early as next year, and I think their struggles this season were almost entirely due to injuries and poor coaching. Chicago did not give rookie quarterback Mitch Trubisky anything to work with, and he still looked reasonably impressive, good enough to make me believe he can make a Wentz and Goff type jump with a better situation next year.

The path to building a contender in Chicago is very straightforward. Bring in a couple proven wide receivers to help their quarterback out, continue to develop a young and talented defense (I would definitely consider keeping defensive coordinator Vic Fangio around), and trust that Trubisky will pay off the promise that he shows. This is very clearly the best opening in the league, and I wouldn’t even put any other job in the same conversation.

Oakland Raiders

There had been plenty of talk about this, but I didn’t expect the Raiders to actually go through with it. Obviously they were disappointed after falling back to Earth following their breakout season in 2016, but in truth the performance dip wasn’t as big as the six win swing indicated. The Raiders were due for regression, and a well run franchise would have been aware of that from the start and tempered expectations. This is essentially the same team Jack Del Rio coached a year ago, and I don’t think he deserved the blame for their lack of success.

As an opening the Raiders are fairly intriguing. I’ve never been high on Derek Carr, and after a sharp statistical regression I’m finding more people in my camp now. But he’s better than most quarterback situations you’ll find among coachless teams, and the presence of Khalil Mack on the defensive side only makes things sweeter. There’s something to build around here, even if it’s dragged down some by the uncertainty surrounding the franchise’s planned move to Las Vegas.

Of course, this isn’t really an opening. The Raiders let Del Rio go with the intention of hiring Jon Gruden to replace him, a move that is much bigger in headlines than it is in football significance. Gruden hasn’t coached at any level since 2008, and he’s shown no real indication that he’s wanted to get back in the game since then. The Raiders are luring him with a big money deal, but I’m still not sure why everyone is convinced he’s such a great coach, based on a Super Bowl victory that is now fifteen years old.

Detroit Lions

The Lions are an okay team. They’ve been an okay team for several years now, and it looks like they’ll be an okay team for several more years. And when you compare them to where they were ten years ago, simply being middle of the pack is a giant leap forward. But they haven’t been able to take the next step, and that ultimately cost Jim Caldwell his job. I’ve never been a big fan of Caldwell, and I was against the hiring from the beginning, but he did better than I expected with Detroit, and I’m conflicted about the decision to let him go.

The problem with the Lions is that I really can’t see a path for them to jump and become one of the elite teams in the league. They simply don’t have the top notch talent needed to beat the best teams, and they haven’t shown the ability to identify those players in the middle of the draft order. With Matthew Stafford now earning more than any other player in the league, there are very few paths for this team to acquire the players they need to fill out their roster. Their only hope is to get a truly top notch coach who can make the most of the talent they have. That’s still more hope than some of the other teams, and this is a job with a high floor, even if the championship potential seems very faint.

Indianapolis Colts

Chuck Pagano should have been fired years ago. This team stumbled into the greatest quarterback prospect of a generation, and they completely botched the early portion of his career. The inability to build and develop a team around Andrew Luck is inexcusable, and they were far too cautious about making the changes needed to turn things around.

The presence of a superstar quarterback makes it easy to view this job as an attractive one, but there is nothing else to like about the Colts. Their roster is still stripped to the bare bones by the mismanagement of the previous regime, and their ownership situation is among the worst in the league. It’s very possible that there is no salvaging this team, and that Luck’s talents will remain wasted until he can find his way to a better run franchise.

Arizona Cardinals

Officially Bruce Arians “retired”, but it seems like this was largely a mutual decision. The Cardinals are at a major crossroads as a franchise, and it doesn’t make sense to keep around an aging coach. Arizona is going to have to tear down their entire organization this offseason, moving on from Carson Palmer and trying to find a new answer at quarterback.

There are some young pieces already in place with the Cardinals, especially on the defense. But so far none of them have stepped up as clear stars, and there is a lot of work that needs done to rebuild the offense. This is a high upside job, but it also has the potential to truly bottom out over the next two or three years, at which point any coach they hire now will probably end up pushed out the door.

New York Giants

The Giants are one of the most traditionally stable organizations in the NFL, and they were a playoff team just a year ago. They have young stars on both sides of the ball, and they have the second overall pick in the draft. You would think this team would be near the very top of this list, and instead they find themselves almost at the bottom because of the damage Ben McAdoo did.

Any coach that takes over this team will have to immediately turn their attention to fixing the massive problems in the locker room. Their best player is Odell Beckham, but he is also a constant headache to manage. Their second best player is Landon Collins, currently feuding through the media with 2016 first round pick Eli Apple. And there is the questionmark at quarterback, where you have to juggle a 35 year old starter who is beloved by the fan base but offers no long term solution at the position, all without making the same team destructive mistakes the previous coach did.

The Bengals

I just, I just don’t know. I had this whole thing written yesterday, and I was prepared to list the Bengals as the worst job opening in the league. This team has completely mismanaged their roster for the past five years, and the only worthwhile thing they did was finally deciding to get rid of Marvin Lewis. And then, only a few hours ago, they undid their one moment of intelligent thinking, giving a contract extension to the coach who has ridden them through fifteen years of mediocrity.

What is there even to say at this point? There are some truly dreary situations in the league (you don’t even have to leave the state to find the one people point the most to), but I genuinely don’t know if there is a fan base I would less want to be a part of than Cincinnati’s. Because say what you will about the Browns, their struggles can almost entirely be blamed on incompetence. They are trying to build a winning team, and there is something to respect in that even as they botch it over and over again. The Bengals are the one organization in the league with no interest in trying to improve themselves, and that’s not going to change anytime soon.

Still Alive

There were quite a few jobs that came open, but there were also several that were heavily rumored to be opening up. I go through these below, ranked in descending order of how much sense it made for them to keep their coach around.

Washington Redskins – Jay Gruden

Gruden is a good coach, and the last thing Washington wants to do is open this job up. This is one of the uglier situations in the NFL, with a perplexing quarterback situation, an unclear hierarchy in the front office, and an owner constantly meddling with every little detail. I’m not optimistic about the future of the Redskins, but the small fragment of stability Gruden has brought to this organization is about the only thing they have going for them.

Houston Texans – Bill O’Brien

I was more than a little surprised when I started hearing O’Brien’s name popping up on the hot seat a couple weeks ago. I was lower on him than most coming into the year, and things got off to an admittedly rocky start with his decision to start Tom Savage and then bench him midway through the opening game (the second time he’s done that since taking over the Texans). But after he switched to Deshaun Watson, he did an excellent job building a scheme that maximized his rookie’s strengths while protecting his weaknesses. The team fell apart when Watson went down, but that’s no reason to fire the coach, and he should get at least another year to build on what he had going before Watson’s injury.

New York Jets – Todd Bowles

If I’d been asked to name one coach prior to the season that was going to be gone by the end of the year, it would have been Bowles. He looked like a dead man walking, kept around just because the Jets didn’t want to bring in a new coach while the team bottomed out. Instead the Jets exceeded all expectations and won five games (expectations were really, really low), and most of the credit for that has to go to their coaching staff. I’m not sure this performance justifies giving him a contract extension like they did, but it’s hard to fire him after the season they just put together.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers – Dirk Koetter

I’m really conflicted on this one. On the one hand, I’m generally opposed to firing a coach with less than three full seasons to evaluate him (barring especially egregious situations), and for a team that has as little organizational stability as the Buccaneers I think they do benefit just from keeping someone around. They’ve had four coaches over the past nine seasons, and simply proving to future candidates that they’ll give them a fair shake is crucial at this point. On the other hand, the entire reason Koetter is around is to develop Jameis Winston, and after three years in this system (Koetter was the offensive coordinator his rookie year) Winston is still making the exact same mistakes. A first overall pick quarterback is a very rare commodity, and the Buccaneers have to do whatever is best for his development, and at this point that probably means trying something new.

Cleveland Browns – Hue Jackson

I just can’t make any sense of this. How an NFL coach can go 1-31 over two seasons is beyond me, and the way he did it only makes things worse. Jackson bumbled his way to a winless record with a team that was far better than its record indicated, constantly putting his players in the worst possible situations for success and growth. He destroyed the confidence of his rookie quarterback, undermined his GM trying to trade a second and third round pick for a mediocre quarterback (somehow the GM ended up getting fired after this), and then neglected to take any responsibility for what happened. Not since the days of Greg Schiano in Tampa Bay have I seen a coach that needed fired this desperately, and yet somehow Jackson is coming back for 2018.

One Year Check-In

Five teams made a change at head coach last offseason. The Bills and Rams both jumped into the playoffs in their first year, leaving three teams to check in on after their coach’s first year.

Denver Broncos – Vance Joseph

I definitely could have included this one in the category above. On the final day of the season there were a lot of rumors that the Broncos would be cutting Joseph loose after one season, rumors that I struggled to wrap my head around. Yes, the Broncos had a bad season. But I’m not sure what they expected from Joseph coming into a situation with a quarterback room of Trevor Siemian, Paxton Lynch, and Brock Osweiler.

If anyone deserves to be fired for the Broncos, it’s GM John Elway. He received far too much credit for building their Super Bowl team, and he’s not getting nearly enough blame for how they’ve fallen apart since. Lynch was a disastrous draft pick, and they neglected to do anything to improve the team this offseason. The discussion to fire Joseph was nothing more than an attempt at scapegoating, from the man responsible for hiring Joseph in the first place. And of course, I don’t see any reason to expect this team to bounce back next year, with a defense that continues to age and no clear philosophy on offense. Joseph is hanging around for now, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find him out of a job at this time next year.

Los Angeles Chargers – Anthony Lynn

The other AFC West team to change coaches last offseason has to be feeling a lot better about how the first year went. Yes, it was disappointing to miss out on the postseason due to tiebreakers, especially with how many close games went against them early in the year. But you can make a compelling case that the Chargers were one of the top five teams in the AFC this year, and that they’ll be in just as good shape heading into 2018.

The age of their quarterback is still a concern, but outside of that this team is built for success for years to come. Their defense finally came together this year thanks to an excellent pass rush and quality play in the secondary, and it will likely only be better next year as Joey Bosa enters year three and Jason Verrett (hopefully, maybe) returns. Expectations will be high heading into year two, and I think the Chargers will be able to live up to them.

San Francisco 49ers – Kyle Shanahan

If the Chargers are feeling positive going into next year, the 49ers have to be over the moon. There are teams in the playoffs who have to be less optimistic than San Francisco, despite their 6-10 finish. Six wins seems pretty good for a team that lost their first nine games, especially with five straight victories to end the season after making the change to Jimmy Garoppolo at quarterback.

There are still a lot of holes on this roster, but they are much farther along than anyone expected them to be after year one. They will have a high draft pick and a lot of cap space, and if they play aggressively (which seems to be the way GM John Lynch operates) they can be a contender in the NFC next season. They look like they’ve filled the two most important roles on any football team, and the combination of Garoppolo and Shanahan could carry them a long way.

Back to Glory

This has truly been a remarkable and unexpected season. Of the twelve teams that made the playoffs, only four were in the postseason a year ago, including the Falcons as the only repeat NFC representative. As exciting as it is for all these breakout teams, the flipside is that eight teams fell from a playoff berth to a disappointing result. Three of those teams responded by firing their coach, but for the other five the question becomes how they will bounce back next year to return to their previous performance.

Baltimore Ravens

Okay, the Ravens are the one team that doesn’t really fit in this category. They didn’t make the playoffs a year ago, and they fell just short this year with a heartbreaking final week loss to the Bengals. But there was never any indication that John Harbaugh could lose his job, and their track record over the past ten years makes them feel like a team trying to bounce back.

Harbaugh is an excellent coach, but it is going to be very interesting to see how long he can last before the Ravens start thinking about moving on. The Ravens have failed to make the playoffs three straight years now, and they haven’t won the division since 2012. Joe Flacco’s contract and downward spiral loom over this organization, and they’re likely to be stuck with his mediocre quarterback play for at least another two seasons. They found some good young defenders in this year’s draft, and the AFC is hardly a high hill to climb. But they remain a long way away from the Super Bowl contenders they expect to be, and there isn’t a clear path towards reaching that point again.

Green Bay Packers

Injuries killed Green Bay’s season, but that isn’t the only thing they should worry about. This team has gotten progressively thinner with each passing season, and it’s only going to get worse next year. Both Jordy Nelson and Clay Matthews could be cap casualties, and even if they’re brought back on more reasonable contracts they aren’t the players they used to be. The Packers have drafted extremely poorly in recent years, and outside of their two lines there isn’t a lot to like about the young players on this team.

Packers fans have been grumbling about Mike McCarthy for years, and even though they’re sticking with him for another year, it’s good to see some indication that they’re willing to make some changes, as they have shifted GM Ted Thompson into a smaller role with the organization. Thompson can only ride so long on snagging Aaron Rodgers in 2005, and his stubborn unwillingness to improve the team through free agency has left them in the position they’re in right now. And yet, if Rodgers can stay healthy next year this team is still very much a playoff contender. This organization has been completely mismanaged for close to a decade, yet they’re still in a good position because a single player can carry them as far as they need.

Dallas Cowboys

The Cowboys are lucky to be able to blame the Ezekiel Elliott suspension for their falloff this season, because I suspect they wouldn’t have made the postseason even if he’d been available for all sixteen games. There were far more problems with this team in 2017 than just missing their star running back, and these problems won’t go away next year.

Dallas’s offense that looked so stacked a year ago is suddenly full of holes. Dez Bryant looks like a shell of his former self, and they lost a lot of the depth that made their offensive line so elite. Tyron Smith is struggling with back issues that may never completely go away, and while I still like Dak Prescott as a long term answer at quarterback, he will need to take a major step forward to start carrying this offense without everything going perfectly around him. 2016 was the best of all possible worlds for Dallas, and it’s very likely that this core will never reach that level again.

Seattle Seahawks

Is this the end for Seattle, or just a bump in the road? I can see reasonable arguments for either case. This team is definitely aging, and there is no way to know how much longer they’ll be able to rely on contributions from players like Earl Thomas and Michael Bennett. They traded away a lot of draft capital over the years to improve their team immediately, and most of those trades haven’t panned out, leaving them with mediocre veterans and underwhelming young players.

On the other hand, they still have one of the best quarterbacks in the league with potentially ten more years of high level play, and there is nothing in the league more valuable than that. This season may be just what the Seahawks need to figure out that they have to change their formula. They can no longer count on their defense to shut the opposition down on a weekly basis, and they can’t keep asking Russell Wilson to do everything on his own on offense. This is a crucial offseason for Seattle to decide what sort of team they want to be going forward, and to start reshaping themselves around that new identity.

Miami Dolphins

Miami’s season died the moment Ryan Tannehill went down, though in truth it was likely dead long before then. Much like the Raiders, the Dolphins were a bit of a fluke (no pun intended) in 2016, though in the tire fire that was the AFC this year they very easily could have slid into the playoffs.

They’ll have another try next year, hopefully with a healthy Tannehill. Their offense is intriguing, but the pieces never seem to fit together, and I’m worried about the way Adam Gase uses their skill position players. The defense is a much bigger concern, as Cameron Wake has to fall off eventually. They need to invest in a lot of young talent on that side of the ball and hope that it pans out sooner rather than later.