Black Monday is coming. It won’t be quiet.
The first day of the offseason for the NFL’s non-playoff teams is, traditionally, the end of the road for a handful of struggling head coaches each year. In 2023 — a year already defined by three in-season firings — it could produce a bushel of grim headlines for rebuilding teams and once-proud franchises.
There could be as many as nine teams, more than a quarter of the league, looking for new full-time head coaches in January. The names on the chopping block include a few of the guys we’d at least kinda/sorta expected last year and a handful of the NFL’s most respected sideline generals. So who might wind up getting fired and who’ll definitely be moving on?
Let’s run down Black Monday’s list of candidates, ranging from least to most likely to be get go.
6
Robert Saleh, New York Jets
Saleh earned a pass through most of 2023. The quarterback for whom his franchise traded away significant draft capital lasted four plays before tearing his Achilles. Said quarterback’s acquisition also prevented the Jets from acquiring a reasonable contingency plan, as free agent cash was spent on backup Tim Boyle (who is, famously, terrible at football) and wideouts Allen Lazard and Randall Cobb (who have 27 catches between them this season).
But Saleh’s problem isn’t an offense that can be at least partially explained away by bad luck. It’s an exhausted defense that’s been overtaxed by the offense that can’t sustain drives and keep them off the field. New York has given up 28-plus points in each of its last three games and five of its last seven. While that unit still ranks third in both overall DVOA and expected points added (EPA) per snap, cracks have begun to show. Since Week 11, the Jets rank only 11th in overall efficiency when it comes to stopping opponents:
There have been bright spots in that stretch, but ultimately it’s led to a 2-5 record where four of those losses have been by 17 points or more. The feisty team that began the season 4-3 is gone, replaced by roughly you’d expect from a Zach Wilson/Boyle/Trevor Siemian project.
Will Saleh shoulder the blame for this? Despite the box scores, his defense remains a solid unit that should remain that way in 2024. paving the way for a return to top five status. Management may decide, however, he’s not the right ringleader for the certain brand of circus Aaron Rodgers sets up once he arrives. If the Jets decide this sloppy 2023 was the result of a lack of institutional oversight — or maybe if they just get a strong enough hint certain players no longer want Saleh around — it could be curtains for the third-year head coach.
5
Mike Vrabel, Tennessee Titans
Can Vrabel win in Tennessee without the efficient power running of Derrick Henry? So far, the evidence is not in his favor.
Henry has been pedestrian in his eighth year in the league — reasonable, considering he’s racked up more than 2,100 carries in his pro career. He’s accounted for exactly three rush yards over expected (RYOE) in 17 weeks this season, a number that falls in line with his career lows of 3.9 yards and 1.9 yards after contact per carry. The power back has utility, but he’s no longer capable of carrying an offense on his own in stretches.
That’s shifted the onus to a passing game that’s shined outside the spotlight and shriveled under it. Ryan Tannehill’s time in Nashville is coming to an end thanks to diminishing returns following his stunning 2019 revival. Will Levis could be a franchise quarterback, but his rookie season has been predictably inconsistent and generally ineffective. The power run/efficient pass attack that made Tennessee a consistent contender in the AFC South is gone and the Titans don’t have the defense to stay afloat even in a weak division.
After closing out 2022 on a seven-game losing streak, Vrabel is now 5-18 in his last 23 games. He hasn’t won a playoff game since that improbable 2019 run to the AFC Conference Championship. In 2021, his last winning season, Tennessee’s defense ranked 10th in defensive DVOA. In the two years since they’ve slid to 19th and 20th. His passing defense has typically been bad, but this winter it’s been the third worst in the NFL.
This could all be enough to convince Titans ownership a wholesale change is needed. Tennessee is facing an uncertain future and a fighting a tide that’s at risk of becoming a flood without significant improvements. Maybe the team believes Vrabel can be the guy to oversee a new era and identity. Or maybe 2023 is proof enough this is a job better served for someone starting from scratch.
4
Matt Eberflus, Chicago Bears
Phew. OK. After a 2-7 start to 2023 doomed him to 5-21 as an NFL head coach, Eberflus appeared untenable. His Bears offense ranked 25th in passing game expected points added (EPA) and 30th in defensive efficiency. The team was a disaster and a reset loomed on the horizon, especially with the first overall draft pick of 2024 headed their way thanks to last spring’s trade with the Carolina Panthers.
But in that run, Chicago declined to sell at the trade deadline and instead added Montez Sweat to the pass rush. Justin Fields finally got a reasonable playbook that incorporated more designed runs and helped create space for his wideouts downfield. Since then, the Bears are 5-2. Their passing game only ranks 19th in EPA per dropback (-0.002), but their defense is suddenly the best in the NFL:
In the process, Eberflus’ seat has cooled significantly. The defensive minded head coach has a defense that’s crushing it. He’s done enough that Ian Rapoport relayed he’s expected to return in 2024 despite his struggles.
Bears head coach Matt Eberflus is expected to return in 2024, per @RapSheet https://t.co/HqCGz3dAJx pic.twitter.com/LFR1qR0ai1
— Around The NFL (@AroundTheNFL) December 31, 2023
That’s not written in stone of course. Eberflus’ future is just one of a handful of tough decisions looming for the Bears. They’ve got to decide if Fields is their franchise quarterback going forward, figure out what to do with the top overall pick (now locked in), come to an agreement with pending free agent Jaylon Johnson and figure out how to spend an estimated $60 million in salary cap space.
This is a franchise crossroad, and it looks like Eberflus has done enough to earn another shot to prove he can navigate this team back to the postseason. But there’s evidence both for and against retaining him, leaving his future very much up in the air.
3
Arthur Smith, Atlanta Falcons
Smith was supposed to be the offensive mastermind capable of smoothing out the rough edges of mediocre quarterbacking to build a winner. That’s what he’d done as an assistant with Vrabel’s Titans and what he was hired to do with a Falcons team closing out the Matt Ryan era without a clear succession plan in place.
This is not what Arthur Smith has done. Despite selecting skill players with top 10 draft picks each of the last three seasons, Atlanta’s offense has been pedestrian at best and nearly unwatchable at worst.
The Falcons provided Smith with a fireworks factory by spending first round picks on Kyle Pitts, Drake London and Bijan Robinson in back-to-back-to-back drafts. The third-year head coach has proven incapable of navigating his team there and has seen only modest improvement since overseeing the end of Ryan’s Atlanta career. In 2021, the Falcons ranked 27th in overall offensive DVOA. In 2023 they rank … 26th.
Some of the problem can be attributed to an unsettled quarterback situation in which Desmond Ridder has been twice benched for Taylor Heinicke. Heinicke is only completing 54 percent of his passes but is the preferable option considering Ridder has 22 interceptions and fumbles combined in 14 games this season. Neither one of those guys is going to be the engine behind a top 10 offense.
But still. The Falcons were sold a bill of goods that suggested Smith was the mitigating factor that once turned Ryan Tannehill from a Miami Dolphins washout into the league’s most efficient quarterback. Pairing Robinson with Tyler Allgeier was supposed to provide the Derrick Henry-esque run attack that allowed the Titans to claim a weak division years earlier. Instead, Atlanta’s -0.145 EPA/rush play ranks 23rd in the NFL.
Smith may have had team owner Arthur Blank’s support in November, but that doesn’t mean he’s safe. The Falcons aren’t just mediocre; they’re also boring. That may be a fireable offense.
2
Bill Belichick, New England Patriots
It’s important to note there’s almost no chance Belichick is fired. He’s a first ballot Hall of Famer with eight Super Bowl rings. He’s the man who took a franchise that was, at best, a little more than the northeast’s Cleveland Browns and built a dynasty. His contributions are such that he won’t get ejected from the cracker factory without so much as a “good luck” on his way out.
But Belichick may have team owner Robert Kraft in his ear, unsubtly extolling the virtues of retirement and pointing out Division III lacrosse coaching vacancies across the northeast. 2023 has easily been the worst season New England’s endured in two decades, not only extending the team’s playoff drought but setting Belichick’s personal record for losses in a season (12) with one game remaining.
The Patriots are guaranteed their first last-place AFC East finish since 2000. Both Mac Jones and Bailey Zappe have been disasters at quarterback, which means the upshot of being thoroughly putrid this winter is a potential top-two draft pick that could deliver a franchise cornerstone. Of course, that would have to come at the expense of a Week 18 loss to the Jets, who the Pats beat on the road in Week 3. Belichick isn’t the sort of head coach to tank games for strategic purposes in the first place, but even less so when it’s potentially his final game with the team.
It would be nice to think this creates some kind of binary solution to the problem; if Belichick loses to the Jets, he’ll get the chance to come back because that would be the worst possible way to go out and if he wins the coach who has to deal with the slightly worse draft position is … someone else. But that’s not how the NFL works. Belichick is (likely, since we don’t know the details) under contract and a commodity. The Patriots could glean draft compensation by letting him ink a deal elsewhere, especially so in a year where a quarter of the league may be looking for new head coaches.
That’s a lot of words to say New England’s five-year playoff win drought and 2023 in general would be enough to get most coaches fired and that Bill Belichick is not most coaches. The Patriots have a tough decision to make on their sideline for the first time in two decades. Figuring out what to do with the guy who has 243 more wins than anyone else in franchise history will not be easy.
1
Ron Rivera, Washington Commanders
Rivera is done with Washington, but he and the franchise have struck up a symbiotic relationship on his way out. As a respected head coach who sucked it up through the tail end of Dan Snyder’s ownership era without a complaint, he’s been given the latitude to make it to the end of the season before getting relieved of his duties. In return, he’s continued to throw Sam Howell into the fire en route to loss after loss and, as of Week 17, a top-two 2024 NFL Draft pick.
2023 was Rivera’s audition year for new owner Josh Harris, who came into power too late this offseason to make any wholesale changes (aside from generally not being a prick in public, a massive departure from the Snyder days). The former two-time NFL coach of the year got off to a 3-3 start and was 3-5 by the team Washington decided to hold a fire sale at the trade deadline. Chase Young and Montez Sweat were shipped out to officially signal a rebuild.
In the eight games since, the Commanders have given up at least 27 points seven times (the only reprieve was a 20-17 win over the offensively challenged Patriots). No team in the league had given up more points or total yards this winter. This has resulted in one win, in no small part because Howell, once useful, has devolved into the 34th best quarterback in a field of 35 and is worse than both Easton Stick and Tommy DeVito.
This is all very bad for a coach who’d failed to produce a winning season for the Commanders (he did produce a division title, but only because the NFC East was hilarious for a moment there). Rivera is 26-39-1 in Washington, having held together a franchise perpetually unable to find the gravity necessary to stop itself from spinning into pieces as long as he could. He got the team to the postseason despite a lineup of starting quarterbacks that includes Taylor Heinicke, Howell, Dwayne Haskins, Kyle Allen, Garrett Gilbert, a 39-year-old Ryan Fitzpatrick (six passes before getting injured) and post-injury Alex Smith.
He’s earned a year off or a stretch working pregame shows before someone new decides he’s the right guy to oversee a rebuild. The Commanders are about to give it to him.
