The Tennessee Titans and Seattle Seahawks pushed themselves into the NFL head-coaching carousel this week and are about to find out that the grass is not always greener on the other side. Both the Seattle Seahawks and the Tennessee Titans are parting ways with successful, established coaches who have largely maintained their clubs’ competitiveness in Pete Carroll and Mike Vrabel, respectively.
The success percentage of recent head coach hires should cause organizations to reconsider replacing their current successful coaches, even though teams, the media, and fans can get captivated with the up-and-coming talent in the coaching ranks.
Though Seattle’s ownership and supporters may have thought the Carroll era’s final few years were dull and unproductive in the postseason, the team was nonetheless competitive and nearly always in the running.
Even though Tennessee had two unproductive seasons under Vrabel before he was fired, the Titans’ issues appear to extend much beyond the head coach’s office, particularly in light of some of the personnel selections made in the previous two seasons (most notably the trading of a talented player in A.J. Brown).
Despite their imperfections, they were nevertheless successful NFL coaches with a consistent winning record. The recent history of NFL coaching hires emphasizes how difficult it is to replicate that.
There were 35 new head coaches hired in the NFL between the 2019 and 2023 season (not including interim hirings made during the season).
The full list of names among that group: Kliff Kingsbury, Jonathan Gannon, Arthur Smith, Matt Rhule, Frank Reich, Matt Eberflus, Zac Taylor, Freddie Kitchens, Kevin Stefanski, Mike McCarthy, Vic Fangio, Nathaniel Hackett, Sean Payton, Dan Campbell, Matt LaFleur, David Culley, Lovie Smith, DeMeco Ryans, Shane Steichen, Urban Meyer, Doug Peterson, Brandon Staley, Josh McDaniels, Brian Flores, Mike McDaniel, Kevin O’Connell, Dennis Allen, Joe Judge, Brian Daboll, Adam Gase, Robert Saleh, Nick Sirianni, Bruce Arians, Todd Bowles and Ron Rivera.
Out of that group 16 of them have already been fired. One of them (Arians) retired. Eleven of them have coached just two years (or less) on their respective teams with very mixed results and still very much have the jury out on them. Several more (Eberflus, Saleh, Pederson and perhaps McCarthy and Sirianni depending on their playoff results this season) could find themselves already on the hot seat going into next season.
From an objective numbers perspective, the results are even less encouraging. Those 34 coaches have combined for just 26 playoff appearances (out of 77 possible seasons coached by the group) over the past five years. Eight of those appearance belong to just two of them — McCarthy and LaFleur.
Just for comparison, Carroll and Vrabel each made the playoffs in three of their past five seasons (60 percent success rate) and combined for just three losing seasons.
Every recent hire mentioned above was at one time a hot name on the coaching carousel and considered a rising star in the coaching ranks. Very few of them matched that hype. Something teams should keep in mind if they already have a good coach on their sidelines like the Seahawks and Titans did. The chances of downgrading are probably way higher than upgrading.
Leave a Reply