Axe swings in a wide arc on NFL’S Black Monday
A quarter of the league is in the market for a new head coach after dismissals
Eight NFL teams are entering 2019 in search of a new head coach.
It was a glum New Year’s Eve for fully one-quarter of the head coaches who began the 2018 season, what with four more dispatched Monday: Denver’s Vance Joseph (fired after two seasons), Arizona’s Steve Wilks (fired after one season), Miami’s Adam Gase (fired after three seasons) and Cincinnati’s Marvin Lewis (who “mutually parted” ways with the club after 16 seasons).
On Sunday, the New York Jets fired Todd Bowles after four seasons and Tampa Bay fired Dirk Koetter after three.
Earlier, Cleveland fired Hue Jackson halfway through his third season, and Green Bay fired Mike Mccarthy with four games to go in his 13th season.
The only identical threads running through these transactions are ownership impatience and fan frustration.
Mccarthy didn’t win enough lately with one of the game’s alltime best quarterbacks, Aaron Rodgers, in spite of his shining career win-loss record of 125-77-2 (. 618) in the regular season and 10-8 (. 556) in the playoffs, including a Super Bowl championship on Feb. 6, 2011.
Koetter and Lewis didn’t win nearly enough with a highly drafted quarterback from earlier this decade.
Joseph didn’t have a top quarterback in Denver (Trevor Siemian, Paxton Lynch and Case Keenum) and posted Denver’s first back-to-back losing seasons since the early 1970s, in going 11-21 (. 344). Broncos GM John Elway continues to swing and miss on his quarterback acquisitions since landing Peyton Manning as a free agent in 2012. Elway is a superhero in Denver but, really, since winning the Super Bowl three seasons ago he hasn’t done much right with his roster.
Gase is gone in Miami for the same basic reason. His supposed top QB Ryan Tannehill missed games down the stretch in 2016 and in the middle of this season, when everything went south. When Tannehill did play he often looked bad, as he did in his pregase first four NFL seasons, never more so than in Sunday’s 42-17 loss in Buffalo.
Gase went 23-25 (. 479) in Miami and reportedly already was taking calls Monday afternoon from other teams now with headcoach vacancies.
Wilks (3-13, .188) was given a veteran QB with nothing left (Sam Bradford) and a rookie (Josh Rosen) who had to be rushed into duty before October. But Cardinals owner Michael Bidwill said what prompted him to cut the cord with Wilks less than 12 months after hiring him was “not only the record, but the lack of competitiveness, and the fact we went backward on offence and defence, and looking at his plan for 2019, I just didn’t feel like it was a plan that I wanted to get behind that would turn us around.”
Lewis had 16 opportunities to win a playoff game in Cincinnati, but failed to do so. His Bengals made the playoffs in 2005, ’09 and 2011-15, but lost every time in their first post-season game. Lewis told a news conference that he and owner Mike Brown mutually decided “that it’s just time.”
“I didn’t deliver on what your No. 1 goal is, and that’s to be world champions,” said Lewis, whose regular-season record was 131-122 (. 518).
The Jets gave Bowles the 2010s equivalent of a lifetime to earn a playoff berth — four years — but couldn’t. He and his staff probably milked as much from a bad roster as any coach could have, especially at QB, what with two years of Ryan Fitzpatrick, one with Josh Mccown and one with raw 2018 No. 3 overall draft pick Sam Darnold starting out of the gates in September. But some of his players seemed to pack it in in October. Bowles’ Jets went 24-39 (. 381).
As for Jackson, don’t expect him to get any calls soon, except maybe from Brown in Cincinnati, the one place where he might yet land another head-coaching gig. Jackson went 3-36-1 (. 088) in two-and-a-half seasons running the Browns. To his partial credit, perhaps, after Lewis brought him in to help make a bad Bengals defence better over the last half of the season, it allowed 2.3 fewer points and 48 fewer total yards per game.
REPLACEMENT CANDIDATES
Mccarthy leads an otherwise less-than-glistening pack this year. Mary Kay Cabot of the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported on Monday that the Browns already had reached out Mccarthy, who is free to sign with any team, any time.
Browns GM John Dorsey at a Monday morning news conference stopped far short of denying the report, adding: “I have a lot of respect for Mike Mccarthy and for what he has done, but I am not going to go into details about who is and who is not on our list.”
There are no hot-buzz college coaches putting their names out there so far this year.
According to NFL Network, ESPN and other prominent NFL news outlets, current NFL assistant coaches believed to be, or reportedly known to be, leading candidates include: Josh Mcdaniels, assistant head coach and offensive co-ordinator, New England; Brian Flores, defensive co-ordinator, New England; Kris Richard, defensive co-ordinator, Dallas; Eric Bienemy, offensive co-ordinator, Kansas City; Dan Campbell, assistant head coach, New Orleans; Matt Eberflus, defensive co-ordinator, Indianapolis; and Mike Munchak, offensive line coach, Pittsburgh.
Previous NFL head coaches now unattached and either open to returning to their former workforce, or lobbying hard to, include Bruce Arians, Jim Caldwell and Chuck Pagano.
MAYOCK NEW RAIDERS GM
The Oakland Raiders hired longtime NFL Network chief draft analyst Mike Mayock as GM on Monday. At his introductory news conference, Mayock said the job of everyone on the player-personnel side is to find players that acutely fit the wishes of head coach Jon Gruden and his staff.