The NFL coaching carousel touched more teams than usual last offseason, with seven new hires at head coach. Five of those new hires are first-year head coaches, with Las Vegas' Pete Carroll and New England's Mike Vrabel as the exceptions.
Ben Johnson of the Chicago Bears, Kellen Moore of the New Orleans Saints, Brian Schottenheimer of the Dallas Cowboys, Aaron Glenn of the New York Jets and Liam Coen of the Jacksonville Jaguars. All have noteworthy experience as coordinators, but none of them have held a head coaching role in the NFL until this season.
That is a tall task, even for the best and brightest playcallers. So much of being a successful head coach in the NFL has nothing to do with football. It's about building a culture, building out your staff, managing egos. You can ace the X's and O's, but if your players don't execute them, or if there's something off in the locker room, none of it matters. Your team will fall apart, as we've seen countless times with coaches new and old.
In keeping the modern trends, four of these five hires were highly successful offensive coordinators, often paired with young quarterbacks in need of mentorship. Glenn, who led the defense in Detroit last season, was the lone exception. But he's a former Jets first-round pick and one of the most respected motivators in football. That felt like the right hire in the moment.
But how are things shaping up after half a season? Well, let's dive in.
Liam Coen, Jacksonville Jaguars
The Jacksonville Jaguars began the season 4-1, with impressive wins over San Francisco and Kansas City. Since then, however, Jacksonville has lost two straight going into their Week 8 buy. It's hard to knock them too hard for losses to Seattle and the Los Angeles, two more quality opponents, but it does dampen the excitement around the organization ever so slightly.
That said, for the Jags to be a game over .500 midway through the season after such a tough early schedule is a positive sign. Jacksonville has a few softball matchups on the horizon and should be able to assert itself as a Wild Card threat, at the very least.
It's also fair to wonder if Jacksonville's hot start is sustainable. Despite gritty wins over quality teams, Jacksonville's offense ranks 17th in total yards and 21st in scoring. The defense isn't exactly dominating either. This team, on paper, does not hold up to much scrutiny, aside from their ability to come up clutch. Trevor Lawrence has put together a couple magical fourth quarters, but he's still his standard, inefficient self overall. It's hard to locate much evidence of tangible growth.
The Jags are a much better team than they were a year ago. Coen has revived the locker room and brought Jacksonville out of the NFL's basement. But in terms of immediate results, this feels like a flash in the pan. Coen has not manufactured anything close to the explosive offensive results he was able to a year ago in Tampa Bay. Perhaps that's a personnel issue — Lawrence isn't Baker Mayfield — but for a team with so much money wrapped up in its current offensive core, the Jags are trending toward disappointment.
Grade: C
Kellen Moore, New Orleans Saints
The Philadelphia Eagles offense rode Saquon Barkley all the way to the Super Bowl last season. Kellen Moore was the ringleader, working in tandem with Nick Sirianni to balance the Eagles offense and save what not long ago felt like a sinking ship (and an offense that has begun to flounder periodically in his absence).
A 1-7 record won't impress anyone, but judging Moore on wins and losses as this stage of the New Orleans Saints' rebuild would be a bit silly. The Saints are the most blatantly tanking team in the NFL. Process and player development are so much more important than results right now. In that sense, Moore has done a phenomenal job. The Saints are competing most weeks, punching well above their weight despite severe holes on the depth chart.
Most impressive, perhaps, is Moore's ability to coax quality performances out of second-year quarterback Spencer Rattler, who looked completely beyond his depth a year ago. It feels like only a matter of time until rookie Tyler Shough gets his moment in the sun, but Rattler has flown past all reasonable preseason expectations. He has thrown four interceptions in the last two weeks, a sign of potential regression, but overall this Saints offense — 26th in yards and 29th in points — deserves more props than the surface-level output suggests. Again, this is a team losing on purpose.
The Saints are running good stuff and establishing a repeatable blueprint for next season, when ideally Moore has a better roster to work with. It's hard to pump up his grade too much when the Saints are sitting so low in the standings, but Moore is a keeper. Hopefully the Saints are patient enough to let him see his vision through.
Grade: B
Aaron Glenn, New York Jets
The New York Jets finally captured their first win of the Aaron Glenn era on Sunday in a 39-38 shootout against the Cincinnati Bengals. Now 1-7, the Jets are still in a sprint to the bottom. It's fair to wonder how much blame Glenn should receive for what is clearly a deeper organizational issue.
Few teams fumbled their offseason plans worse than New York. On top of the Glenn hire, the Jets brought in an inexperienced GM, shed most of their veteran leaders, and failed to address soft spots in the depth chart. The offensive line is a disaster. The defense is so far below the standard Glenn set in Detroit, that it's hard to believe he's the man in charge. Even Steve Wilks, New York's defensive coordinator and a longtime journeyman in the coaching ranks, feels above whatever it is Jets fans are watching every Sunday.
Worst of all, the Jets hand-picked Justin Fields out of the free agent pool to lead their offense. He has been the worst quarterback in this NFL this season by a healthy margin. Removed from the bubblewrap of Pittsburgh's steadfast winning culture, Fields appears completely lost. He put together his best performance of the season in Sunday's win over the Bengals, but that's just not enough to paper over seven weeks of prior struggle.
Glenn is, by all accounts, a great culture-builder and a sharp defensive tactician, but culture is impossible to maintain if the team can't compete on the field. As for his defensive acumen, the Jets don't have the personnel to execute his vision. It's a mess. Glenn is far from the only person at fault, but unlike Moore in New Orleans, there was a level of expectation — or at least hope — that Glenn could begin to turn things around and restore the Jets to credibility. He has not done so.
Grade: D
Brian Schottenheimer, Dallas Cowboys
The Dallas Cowboys easily put together the lamest head coaching search of this past cycle, essentially forcing Mike McCarthy out the door with their incompetence before promptly promoting his offensive coordinator, Brian Schottenheimer. Aside from vague connections to Deion Sanders and Bill Belichick, the Cowboys' so-called "search" never amounted to much. It was Schottenheimer the whole way, with no real effort made to look outside their organizational box. Many read it as Jerry Jones opting for a low-profile coach he could leverage control over.
Dallas fell to 3-4-1 with an embarrassing effort in Denver on Sunday afternoon. The offense, to Schottenheimer's credit, rocks — hard. The Cowboys are second in yards (384.1) and points (30.8) per game. Dak Prescott has turned in MVP numbers through the midpoint of the season. The pairing of CeeDee Lamb and George Pickens at wideout continues to pay off. Dallas can score with anyone.
That is Schottenheimer's area of expertise and he's making the most of his excellent personnel on that end. But unfortunately, the head coach is responsible, on some level, for the whole product. And Dallas' defense is just as bad as the offense is good. Dallas is second-worst in yards (404.6) and points (31.3) allowed per game. You'll notice both those numbers exceed what even their vaunted offense is producing. The Cowboys turn every opponent into a top-five scorer.
Schottenheimer is in an unenviable position. The Cowboys traded Micah Parsons before the season. Jerry Jones can't build a serious roster. He just won't. That is not something Schottenheimer can control. He seems to have the respect of his players, especially on offense, with his built-in relationships to Prescott and Lamb going a long way. But at the end of the day, he's a first-time coach asked to manage the NFL's biggest circus. It's not his fault, but Dallas threw Schottenheimer into the deep end. He's probably going to drown eventually.
Grade: C-
Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears
The Chicago Bears fell to 4-3 with a disappointing loss against the shorthanded Baltimore Ravens on Sunday. Snoop Huntley delivered the W for Baltimore in place of an injured Lamar Jackson, just the second win of the campaign for the Ravens. That Baltimore roster stacks up with any contender in the NFL. Perhaps Huntley was the Cooper Rush upgrade the Ravens needed to stay afloat in lieu of Jackson. But this was a bad loss for a Bears team that was beginning to build momentum.
Chicago won four straight prior to Sunday's letdown, albeit all against mediocre opponents. The Bears still haven't beaten a (healthy) team of any remote quality. Their schedule lines up quite well over the next three weeks — Bengals, Giants, Vikings — so we might not see the Bears against a "real" opponent for a while. How Chicago comes out of this soft first-half schedule, and how it holds up to greater stress late in the season, will go a long way toward determining how fans feel about the Ben Johnson experience.
Overall, it has to be mostly positive. Johnson is doing what he was brought in to do. He's creative and aggressive with his offensive playcalling. Some of his clock management decisions warrant scrutiny, but by and large, the Bears' offense is flowing far more freely than it was under the Matt Eberflus regime. That's a low bar, but Johnson was the most coveted candidate in the coaching carousel for a reason. He also chose Chicago for a reason: to work with former No. 1 pick Caleb Williams.
So far, that partnership is a mixed bag. Williams has made tangible progress in recent weeks, but he's still slow-playing things a bit. For all his arm talent, there are moments where Williams just looks overwhelmed by the complexity of Johnson's scheme and the pressures applied to him by the opposing defense. Those instances are beginning to dissipate, but Sunday's lousy outing was a helpful reminder that Williams is still very much a work in progress.
It has been far too long since the Bears were a serious postseason threat. That probably won't happen this season, but if Johnson can help Williams along and get Chicago's offense into a higher gear (currently 11th in yards and 16th in points), Bears fans will come away optimistic about the future. Johnson was not dealt a favorable hand on defense and Chicago has some personnel issues to clean up, but if this offense can't hack it long term, that will fall squarely on Johnson.