Philly Front Office

With news out of Dallas yesterday that the Cowboys would mercifully not retain Mike McCarthy, it seems like the post-regular season head coach firing squad has finally run out of bullets. Unless someone suddenly retires, this leaves six head coaching vacancies around the league: Chicago, Dallas, Jacksonville, Las Vegas, New Orleans, and New York (Jets). Let’s rank these six in terms of desirability. New England doesn’t get ranked because they were apparently always going to hire Mike Vrabel. As Jerod Mayo just showed, this was not a desirable situation for anyone else.

So how are we doing this? It is easy to just say a “situation” is best, but what makes a situation desirable? First, you need to have a good owner who not only doesn’t meddle with the team but gives you a fighting chance to succeed before pulling the plug. Second, though it would be best to have an elite QB already on the roster, realistically you would prefer to have a rookie QB or at least a high draft pick to go get one. Anything in the middle just sucks. Third, you want a forgiving media market. Dealing with constant media scrutiny takes its toll and usually hastens a departure.

Let’s start at the very bottom:

6. New York Jets: Who in their right mind would want this job? Between the ownership situation, the roster, and the media market, there is no job on this list demanding more immediate success with less than this one. Immediate success with this team is completely unrealistic. The Jets have had 5 coaches in ten years and no playoff appearances. These guys are dead men walking when they arrive because the owner has very little idea of what he is doing. He has never had to run a business or evaluate talent yet has both responsibilities for the Jets. His plan for fixing the team is always applying his Johnson & Johnson Band-Aids rather than just opting for surgery.

With talent on the roster, they are a team built to win now despite only having a specter of a QB. Whether Aaron Rodgers is back or not, the team will have around $50m in cap space dedicated to him not performing. After already pulling the Rodgers lever 2 years ago, they have no ability to go get a competent QB this time. They could try to trade up and draft one, but we all saw how the last rookie QB handled NY. The next one will be faced with even higher expectations. What about signing Sam Darnold? Gulp. Russell Wilson? Oh god, are they going to sign Russell Wilson? The ceiling is severely limited.

If it were anywhere else, you could see some of the perks to this job. Since there is no GM, you could theoretically have a partner who shares your same team building philosophy. You could tear the team down together and start fresh with some good draft assets. The team could be rebuilt the right way with some good linemen and, after a bad first season, a real QB. None of that is happening.

To sum up, their QB situation is as bad as can be, in the biggest market, with one of the worst owners. If I am an established coordinator, there is no way I am taking this job.

5. Las Vegas Raiders: This is a dumb and bad organization lead by a nepo baby owner who can’t even manage his own hair, let alone form a plan for running a franchise. The Raiders have not been a legitimate contender in over 20 years, using 14 coaches in that time (with another one the way). That is total dysfunction. The only reason they aren’t lower than the Jets is because the NY market is much worse than LV.

They do not have a QB and always seem to play just-not-bad-enough to draft one. This year’s number 6 pick included. This is another situation where a full tear down would be ideal in order to get a QB next year, but they won’t do that. That’s why they fired their GM this year too. They. Want. Progress. Instead, they will try to get cute and give a second-round guy the keys too early (Jalen Milroe or Quinn Ewers?) or throw money at Sam Darnold.

Probably the worst part of being here though is that if you get hired, you know you are the wrong guy for the job. If an owner with no ability to truly evaluate talent hires you, do you even deserve the job?

4. Jacksonville Jaguars: I originally had them ahead of Dallas, but the GM situation is truly baffling. Despite objectively horrible performance, Trent Baalke kept his job. What is that? That puts the next coach in a no-win situation. The team will either have a decent record and the coach will be hamstrung by GM ineptitude for years OR will have a bad record and the coach will get fired along with Baalke after next season.

If it wasn’t for Baalke you could see this as a semi-attractive job. I think Trevor Lawrence is overrated, but that’s far from the national consensus. If a new coach were able to get the best out of him, you could see a playoff team in a traditionally weak division. The market also has absolutely no pressure. Not only is Jacksonville a comparatively small media market, but it is also right in the middle of an absurd college football hotbed between Gainesville, Tallahassee, and Athens (even traditionally hosting the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party). No one cares about the Jaguars.

This lack of interest is also true of the owner. He has locked the team into two trips to Europe per season. This is a total distraction and truly disrespects local fans (I will HATE whenever the Birds play over there). The team is just plain boring and it seems to flow from a lack of interest at the top.

This job is limited to a true QB whisperer only. The ship is tied to Trevor Lawrence because he isn’t going anywhere.

3. Dallas Cowboys: What is the one thing the Cowboys are looking for in a head coach? It’s not some cutting edge offensive scheme or a heavy disciplinarian approach or even a branch from a blooming coaching tree…it is total subservience to Jerry Jones. Anyone have an aging father who asks your opinion only to disagree with you and then get mad about it? That’s Jerry. Over the last 19 years, the Cowboys have had 3 head coaches and 4 playoff wins. While that’s nicer stability than most of this list, coaches have stayed in Dallas long past their expiration date simply because they know not to stand up to the boss. Famously, Jimmy Johnson did voice his opinion and the Cowboys haven’t really won since (technically the 1995 Super Bowl was with Barry Switzer, but they were Jimmy’s guys). Any coach will not have any say in roster matters other than total agreement.

The Cowboys do have Dak Prescott under contract for the next 4 years, but is that a good thing? He is currently the highest paid player in the sport and routinely comes up short when it matters. If you squint you can imagine him possibly winning a Super Bowl if everything goes right, but I don’t think even the biggest Cowboy fan would bet on that. The rest of the roster has talent, but they are starting to become top heavy. After drafting well for years, those players are now signing top of market deals while the well itself has started to run dry. This creates a team with big egos and division.

The Cowboys are the biggest draw in football. Despite Dallas not being the craziest media market locally, any new coach will find himself in the daily news nationally no matter what. Even though Jerry takes up most of the spotlight, this type of limelight is not for everyone. What they need is exactly what they won’t get, a no-nonsense football guy who changes the team culture. Keep up the great work Jer!

Dallas beats Jacksonville solely because of more immediate job security.

2. Chicago Bears: Maybe I am giving Caleb Williams too much credit here, but the competition at the top of this list isn’t exactly high. Williams was touted as a generational QB and wasn’t nearly as bad as his record showed last season. Meaning, it wasn’t a disaster. He played in the toughest division in football and, despite mid-season struggles, held his own. A new coach has a lot to work with here. Plus, there is the added benefit of the last guy being so bad he was run out of town.

Despite Chicago being a big media market, the Bears are never on the national radar and seem to get a midwestern benefit that is completely absent in the northeast. With even moderate improvement from Williams, a new coach should be given a long leash.

The GM is Ryan Poles who seems to have been dealt a pretty easy hand so far. He immediately hired his own coach when he was hired and fired him when the team was in open revolt. It’s laughable, but it would have been worse to keep him there. It just didn’t work out. Williams was the slam dunk top pick and likely would have been made by every GM, even with Jayden Daniels immediately flashing in Washington. He has an aggressive style that has resulted in correctly evaluating Bryce Young and trading his eventual pick to Carolina only to nab their top pick the next season. If he invests in the line of scrimmage in this year’s draft, the next coach could have a very solid foundation to work with.

This still isn’t a great situation, but the ability to work with Caleb Williams is a good start. The GM doesn’t seem like a total bonehead either. Throw in good city roots with no extra nonsense and this job can make a lot of sense for a good coordinator.

1.New Orleans Saints: I hate the New Orleans Saints. It pains me to place them atop these rankings, but a significant thing happened this season. They changed. GM Mickie Loomis finally let go of the post Drew Brees/Sean Payton team and started to make some moves like firing Dennis Allen and trading Marshon Lattimore. Assuming more of these moves are to come (and they do have players to trade), the Saints could finally start the reset they desperately need. They have been in cap hell for years and it’s time to embrace that by sucking it up for a season and bottoming out. With Derek Carr at the helm, this is not a contending football team. I think they finally realized that.

New Orleans is simply a great football market too. They love the team and don’t seem to get too upset when they lose. They won their championship and that matters. It seems as though there is a lot of built-up credit between the city and ownership. Throw in their place in the unserious NFC South and you have a clear and quick path to contention in another year.

A team without Carr can finish at the bottom of the standings next year without too much effort. Spencer Rattler lost all 7 games he was in and didn’t exactly show any juice that leads the team to believe he is the future. A new coach should have the ability lose quickly and then turn it around just as quickly assuming they continue the tear down. If not, I would still want this job more than most of these teams.