5 NFL coaches squarely on the hot seat after Week 4
By John Buhler
Like clockwork, we have to put even more bad head coaches on the hot seat. Last offseason cycle saw five NFL jobs open up and eventually be filled. Year after year, one quarter of the league seems to be looking for a new head coach every offseason. While change is good, it is not always necessary. What tends to happen is there are not enough quality candidates who are able to handle these jobs.
Although all but two teams have secured at least one win up to this point, many other teams are going to end up making a change at head coach come Black Monday. Again, we only had five openings last offseason, so we are due for many wholesale changes, quite frankly. The biggest questions are who will be the first head coach fired, and how many guys will be looking for a new job.
Whether it be a porous defense, incongruence offensively, one special teams disaster after another, horrific decisions made in crunch time, bad moments at the podium or some combination of all the above, there are plenty of reasons for bad organizations to make a change at the helm. For some teams, a change is exactly what they need to get back to good. For others, this is why you are awful.
While I do not expect to see all five of these men be out of a job in January, they are feeling the heat.
NFL: 5 head coaches who are starting to feel the heat only one month in
5. Arthur Smith needs to start getting more out of his offensive players
The Atlanta Falcons might be 2-2 on the season, but it does not mean head coach Arthur Smith is safe towards a fourth season in Flowery Branch next year. This is the first year general manager Terry Fontenot had money to spend in free agency. While he was able to help transform the defense, all of his best draft capital offensively has not resulted in points for Atlanta's offensive-minded head coach.
Given that Smith can be a tad prickly with the local media, it would not be shocking to see them turn on him if the Falcons resemble the same 7-10 crap they have been the last few years under his watch. Of course, the Falcons' two losses are to two better teams currently in the Detroit Lions and the Jacksonville Jaguars. We are talking about a pair of losses to two of the 12 best teams in the NFL.
Overall, the Falcons need to figure it out offensively to some degree in October. They do not have to set the world on fire because Ryan Nielsen's defense has played surprisingly well up to this point. However, starting quarterback Desmond Ridder cannot backslide in the coming weeks. If that happens, the Falcons should either turn to Taylor Heinicke, or it may be the end of the line for Smith.
Atlanta could be good enough to win a bad division, but the Falcons will not do it with a bad offense.