Four NFL coaches get fired, including Bengals’ Marvin Lewis.
Bengals’ Lewis, Broncos’ Joseph are among those to lose their jobs
When the NFL regularseason ends, a new season immediately begins. The postseason? No, not yet. First comes the brief but brutal annual season of firing coaches.
Four teams dismissed their coaches on Monday: Marvin Lewis was fired by the Cincinnati Bengals, Vance Joseph by the Denver Broncos, Steve Wilks by the Arizona Cardinals and Adam Gase by the Miami Dolphins.
News of the four firings came out in a short window on Monday morning, a particularly ugly hour or two for the members of the NFL coaching fraternity.
Joseph, Wilks and Lewis are black, leaving the number of black head coaches in the NFL at two: Anthony Lynn of the Los Angeles Chargers and Mike Tomlin of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Lewis leaves the Bengals after 16 seasons that included seven playoff appearances. But he lost all seven of those playoff games and just completed a third straight losing season, at 6-10. He was hamstrung in part by an injury to quarterback Andy Dalton that put Jeff Driskel in the starting lineup.
Perhaps more important to Bengals fans: Lewis never managed to lead his team out of the long shadow of the archrival Steelers in the AFC North. His regular-season record against Pittsburgh was 8-24.
Joseph took over a Broncos team that had made the playoffs in five of the previous six years and was two years removed from a Super Bowl win. But he was unable to help the team navigate the transition to the post-Peyton Manning era.
The Broncos were 5-11 and 6-10 under Joseph, their first back-to-back losing seasons since 1971-72. Case Keenum was far from the answer at quarterback, putting up average numbers on his good days and finishing second in the league in interceptions.
After a 6-6 start that kept them in playoff contention, the Broncos lost four straight to finish the season, falling consecutively to the San Franciso 49ers, the Cleveland Browns and the Oakland Raiders, hardly a murderer’s row of foes.
Wilks’ only season with the Cardinals ended with a 3-13 record, the team’s worst since 2000. The Cardinals were in the NFC Championship Game three seasons ago, and had seven and eight wins in the subsequent seasons.
The team struggled this year behind a rookie quarterback, Josh Rosen, who was unable to take the league by storm as his classmates Lamar Jackson of the Baltimore Ravens and Baker Mayfield of the Browns did.
The Dolphins made the playoffs in the first of Gase’s three seasons but were 6-10 and 7-9 the next two years. The once proud franchise has three playoff appearances, and no wins, since 2000.
The New York Jets fired Todd Bowles and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers fired Dirk Koetter on Sunday. Earlier in the season, the Browns fired Hue Jackson, and the Green Bay Packers fired Mike McCarthy, who has already been mentioned as a candidate for several of the open jobs.