NFL Hot Seat: Coaches to be Fired and Who Replaces Them
By Will Osgood
A new calendar year means NFL firing season, and seven coaches deserve to be canned, or at least move on.
In the NFL the New Year means firing time. It’s an unfortunate reality in the sport, that as the sudden presence of a new number on the calendar brings unbridled hope to many, it also brings a kind of downcast to many men, and their families, who make their livings by coaching football.
Make no mistake, this impacts many people, not just the head coach. Assistants are rarely retained by new coaches, making a move to a new locale almost mandatory, which of course always takes a great toll on the wives and kids.
The point is that as someone who used to coach high school football, and for quite some time truly thought I’d make my living coaching football at an even higher level than that, I have empathy for these coaches. And I’m probably less apt to exclaim “Fire him”.
But there are some coaches who simply must be canned, because their particular situations have reached untenable levels. There is little hope remaining that if they remained with their particular franchises, winning could be attained. In most cases, these are not bad coaches. In fact, in almost every situation these are really quality football coaches, who simply need the proverbial “change of scenery”.
In their place someone can come in and build on the positive elements of what that previous coach brought, while hopefully eliminating the baggage left by the current coach.
In some cases, a first-year head coach (Jay Gruden in Washington and Ken Whisenhunt in Tennessee) may be dangerously close to reaching this point. But I do not believe in firing a first-year coach, no matter how bad things have gotten. It’s bad for the organization as a whole. And one season is never enough time to implement a coach’s full plan. Thus neither Gruden nor Whisenhunt, nor even second-year coach Gus Bradley should be fired this offseason. All deserve at least one more season to figure things out.
Which current NFL head coaches must be fired? And who are the best candidates to replace them?
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