The Ringer: The NFL’s Head-Coaching Carousel Is a Crisis

quote:

---

There are six teams who’ve made four or more coaching changes in the past decade?—?double the number of the previous 10 years. Last season, the 49ers became the first team in NFL history to fire their first-year head coach in two consecutive offseasons. We live in historic times.

Last week, Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk set the over/under for open jobs this offseason at 7.5. There were six coaches hired last year. When Florio started to list the names that could be departing at the end of this season, he wound up with an astounding 14 coaches.

There are not, of course, seven coaches who would fix teams that make a move; there may not be two. In 2016, the Eagles hired Doug Pederson, who’s been an unqualified success. But that same year, McAdoo, Hue Jackson, and Dirk Koetter were all hired, and they all have a chance to be fired after Week 17.

When you talk to executives around the league, they’ll privately grumble at how watered down the coaching market has become, but in many ways, this is self-inflicted since they not only fire coaches often but replace them in uncreative ways. It’s impossible to objectively say that coaching is worse than ever. What we can say is that coaching is more important than ever, but the coaches haven’t improved with the higher demand. Since Bill Belichick was hired by the Patriots in 2000, NFL teams have hired 146 coaches. How many of them have made their teams better?

There are a lot of issues in the league: There’s a quarterback shortage, an offensive line problem, a tackling problem, a play-calling problem, and the list goes on. But the issue with the coaching problem is connected to all of the other ones: A good coach can resolve those issues, and a bad coach can create them.

---