Seven of the NFL's 32 teams have changed head coaches since the start of the 2015 regular season. Some will take over rebuilding teams, while a few step in to guide strong programs that for whatever reason changed course. Here, I'll briefly evaluate each new coach's situation, and guess how long he might hold his new job.
We'll go through the new coaches alphabetically. For each one, you'll find his new team, his job last year, and my estimate — in the form of an Over/Under betting line — of how long he'll coach the new team.
Adam Gase
Miami Dolphins
2015: offensive coordinator, Chicago Bears
Over/Under: 3.75 seasons
Including interim coaches, Gase is the team's fifth head coach in the last six seasons. The Dolphins have also fired a coach in midseason in three of the past 12 seasons. The last Dolphins coach to last five seasons was Don Shula, who retired more than 20 years ago.
All of that inspires a pretty low level of confidence in Gase's prospects. I see three possibilities:
1. The Dolphins have hired a lot of bad coaches, but Gase breaks the trend. They've finally found the right guy.
2. The Dolphins have hired a lot of bad coaches, and Gase is just the latest one. He's a product of the same bad process that yielded Tony Sparano and Joe Philbin.
3. The Dolphins have hired decent coaches, but organizational problems and/or impatience in the front office have sabotaged their career prospects.
That's two out of three possibilities suggesting that Adam Gase won't be in this position five years from now. I don't think anyone questions Gase's abilities as an offensive coordinator. He's got a great football mind. But franchise history doesn't inspire much confidence in his chances of lasting longer than Dave Wannstedt.
Hue Jackson
Cleveland Browns
2015: offensive coordinator, Cincinnati Bengals
Over/Under: 2.5 seasons
This is a terrible job. It makes the Dolphins' head coaching position look stable. Here's what I wrote in my Week 17 Power Rankings:
Since 2008, five AFC North head coaches have been fired — all five by the Browns. Hey, successful coordinators! Looking to sabotage your own career? Come to a job where you have a terrible roster, tough division opponents, no GM, and an owner who may or may not be a criminal! You're almost guaranteed to get fired after two years! Unless you get fired after only one!
Agreeing to coach the Browns right now is career suicide.
And the following week, after Cincinnati was eliminated from the playoffs:
Hue Jackson has been linked to the head coaching positions in San Francisco and Cleveland. Don't do it, Hue. Those are bad jobs. If Jackson doesn't get a good offer this offseason, he should stay in Cincinnati for another year, and he just might inherit the Bengals.
The Browns have taken some positive steps since then. They hired Paul DePodesta, they cut Johnny Manziel, and I liked their draft. I also have great respect for Hue Jackson. He was incredibly successful in Cincinnati, and he led the Raiders to an 8-8 record in his one year as head coach.
But this is still a bad job. The Browns are starved for talent and management can't tell its head from its feet. I'd be stunned if Jackson is still the head coach in 2020.
Chip Kelly
San Francisco 49ers
2015: head coach, Philadelphia Eagles
Over/Under: 3.25 seasons
The Eagles are idiots. Kelly went 26-21 in Philadelphia, and it doesn't make any sense to hire someone who runs a unique system, put him in charge of personnel after two years, and then fire him less than one season later. Kelly's personnel decisions were terrible, but he got good results as a head coach.
I don't mean to sound like a broken record, repeating that these are good coaches with little chance to succeed because of problems in the organization that hired them. But that's really the case in San Francisco, with the incompetent York family running the team. These are the people who hired Dennis Erickson because he was whiter than Marvin Lewis or Lovie Smith. They're the ones who fired Jim Harbaugh because he's a jerk. They're the ones who replaced Harbaugh with Jim Tomsula, and fired Tomsula after one season.
Chip Kelly is an innovative coach, but he's also a unique snowflake, and pro sports detests unique snowflakes. Doing things differently opens you up to disproportionate criticism, so if you do things differently and you're not Bill Belichick, you're not going to last long. I think Chip Kelly is a pretty good coach, but I don't think his fast-paced offense can facilitate Super Bowls, and I think he's doomed to a pretty short tenure in the city by the Bay. This is a terrible job.
Dirk Koetter
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
2015: offensive coordinator, Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Over/Under: 3.75 seasons
Here's the opposite scenario from the first three coaches we've profiled. Dirk Koetter has been a hot assistant for several years now, but I'm not sold on him. However, he's got a much better situation than Jackson or Kelly. Koetter takes over a team that is explicitly rebuilding, that has some good players in place, and appears to be on the way up as long as he doesn't start a brushfire. I think there's basically no chance that he doesn't last at least two seasons, which I can't say about the positions in Miami, Cleveland, or San Francisco.
The Bucs have had a pretty itchy trigger finger ever since firing Jon Gruden. Koetter is their fifth head coach in the last nine seasons, and that doesn't include any interim HCs. But Koetter was promoted from within. He impressed in his work with young offensive players like Jameis Winston and Mike Evans, and the team fired Lovie Smith because it was afraid of losing Koetter to a head coaching position with a different team. If they develop and the team can win some games, Koetter should be secure. He can take a mulligan in 2016 — which he might need, since the NFC South looks pretty strong — and I feel like the team is bound to improve, both from its own momentum and as the rest of the division begins to decline. I'd be surprised if he doesn't at least begin a fourth season.
Ben McAdoo
New York Giants
2015: offensive coordinator, New York Giants
Over/Under: 4.5 seasons
Like Koetter, an offensive coordinator promoted from within after his boss was fired. It's not a common method of promotion in today's NFL. If you like the direction the team is going, you keep the coaching staff intact, including the head coach. If you don't like the direction the team is going, you clean house, including the assistants.
Tom Coughlin has a great résumé, but he's always had a tense relationship with his players, and there are some aspects of the job that had clearly passed him by. McAdoo, who worked with Aaron Rodgers in Green Bay before joining the Giants, has changed Eli Manning's approach, apparently for the better. The team obviously hopes that this move allows them to keep what they liked about the team's recent performance while improving on Coughlin's weak points. More than any other team who found a new head coach in 2016, the Giants are a stable organization that's unlikely to fire the coach without a good reason. McAdoo will get a chance to prove himself.
Mike Mularkey
Tennessee Titans
2015: assistant head coach/tight ends, Tennessee Titans
Over/Under: 2.25 seasons
I'm glad I was wrong about Mike Mularkey. He got a raw deal in two previous stops as head coach, prompting me to predict:
Mike Mularkey can't catch a break. He resigned from the Bills after only two seasons as head coach, and got fired from the Jaguars, who were terrible before he got there, after only one. He never really got a chance to turn either team around, but most people around the league will perceive him as a two-time failure, and I bet he'll never get another opportunity as HC in the NFL.
When the Titans fired head coach Ken Whisenhunt after less than a year and a half — which was just as bad as what happened to Mularkey — the team promoted an assistant head coach with NFL head coaching experience, the obvious choice to guide the team through the rest of the season. While his 2-7 record was uninspiring, Mularkey did enough to get the "permanent" job.
I'm glad for Mularkey that he's getting another shot in the NFL. He wasn't given a fair chance by either the Bills or Jaguars, and he deserves a chance to prove himself. Unfortunately, I don't believe he'll get that opportunity. The Titans are bad right now. More than that, they're terrible. It's not realistic to expect success in the next couple of years, no matter what Mularkey does. But this is another franchise that's betrayed impatience with its coaches. Mularkey is the team's fourth head coach in the last six seasons. Jeff Fisher was fired after the 2010 season, Mike Munchak — who had a Hall of Fame career with the team as a player — lasted three years, and Whis made it 23 games.
So here's a bad team with a retread head coach and a front office that hasn't shown a lot of patience. I'd be surprised if Mularkey lasts three years, which is a shame.
Doug Pederson
Philadelphia Eagles
2015: offensive coordinator, Kansas City Chiefs
Over/Under: 3.25 seasons
Seven NFL teams have a different head coach at the beginning of this season than they did in 2015. All seven hired coaches with offensive backgrounds, and three of the seven promoted an assistant from within. That doesn't include Pederson, who was an assistant to former Eagles coach Andy Reid. He coached for the Eagles from 2009-12, then followed Reid to Kansas City. This isn't a promotion from within, but it's clearly an attempt to return to the team's tradition of success under Reid, maybe even an admission that they were wrong three years ago.
Pederson has a mixed record with the Chiefs. The team has been successful, and that includes an offense directed by journeyman quarterback Alex Smith. Pederson got the most out of Smith, without distinctly improving Smith's reputation. The team leaned on its ground game and Jamaal Charles, with a pass attack that famously went an entire season without any touchdowns by wide receivers. It's not the sort of distinction I'd look for in a head coach, but you could also argue that Pederson used the players he had as effectively as possible. No coach is going to turn Alex Smith into Aaron Rodgers.
Chip Kelly got a pretty quick hook from the Eagles, but Reid coached there forever, so it's not obvious how franchise trends might affect Pederson's long-term prospects. What likely will affect them is the state of the team. They gave up a zillion draft picks to draft Carson Wentz, and they have pretty significant holes at running back and linebacker. Pederson has a big job ahead of him, and if he can get this team above .500 in any of the next three seasons, he's earned the long-term job. I don't see it happening, but I'll go ahead and predict that he's the next head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs.
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