2023 was not a kind year to NFL head coaches. Three lost their jobs before the NFL’s regular season even ended. Five more followed once Week 18 wrapped, including former coach of the year recipients like Pete Carroll, Bill Belichick and Ron Rivera.
Their losses create new opportunities for rising young coordinators and retread veterans alike. One quarter of the league started off 2024 in the market for a new head coach, creating a seller’s market for hot commodities — and putting teams with depleted rosters, tangled salary cap commitments and disheveled, impatient ownership (cough, Carolina Panthers) at a disadvantage when it comes to nabbing the hottest candidates.
Here are all the hirings so far, starting with the first man to earn his stripes — New England Patriots’ head coach Jerod Mayo.
Jerod Mayo, New England Patriots
Who he’s taking over for: Bill Belichick
Who is he? A former All-Pro linebacker who played eight seasons with the Patriots and spent the last five years as the team’s linebackers coach.
What he’s inheriting: A 4-13 record and a mess at:
- quarterback (Mac Jones and Bailey Zappe are the only guys under contract for 2024)
- offensive line (tackles Trent Brown and Mike Onwenu are both free agents)
- wide receiver (see the past two decades of Belichick’s wideout drafting)
On the plus side, the defense for which Mayo served as linebackers coach and de facto coordinator remained strong even after losing stars Matthew Judon and Christian Gonzalez to injury early in the season. We’ll learn how much of that was thanks to Belichick and how much could be attributed to Mayo’s leadership early on. We’ll also get to see what a new era of roster building will look like in New England; Belichick was also the team’s personnel director.
Antonio Pierce, Las Vegas Raiders
Who he’s taking over for: Josh McDaniels and the interim version of himself.
Who is he? A nine-year NFL veteran, one-time Pro Bowler and one-time Super Bowl champion from his time with the New York Giants. Pierce was a high school coach and spent four years as an assistant at Arizona State before taking on the linebackers coach role in Vegas. When McDaniels was fired less than halfway through his second season with the Raiders, Pierce got the call to take over.
What he’s inheriting: A team that rallied to a 5-4 finish despite an unintimidating roster. Rookie fourth round pick Aidan O’Connell outperformed expectations but hasn’t proven he can be a franchise quarterback. He’s got a solid receiving corps led by Davante Adams and Jakobi Meyers, but question marks remain elsewhere — especially with 2022 All-Pro Josh Jacobs headed to free agency.
The defense rose up under Pierce, finding new ways to introduce chaos to the pocket. That unit finishing the season ranked second in expected points added (EPA) allowed over the second half of 2023.
Brian Callahan, Tennessee Titans
Who he’s taking over for: Mike Vrabel
Who is he? The offensive coordinator who oversaw the end of the Andy Dalton era in Cincinnati and helped orchestrate the rise of Joe Burrow — and a Bengals team capable of actually winning playoff games.
What he’s inheriting: The opportunity to drag an old school offense into the present. The Ryan Tannehill-Derrick Henry days in Nashville are over. Each is a free agent in 2024.
That means Callahan will have to build an offense around a roster currently constructed around quarterback Will Levis, a soon-to-be 32-year-old DeAndre Hopkins and young lottery tickets in Tyjae Spears, Chigoziem Okonkwo and Treylon Burks. He’ll need them each to step up in order to kickstart a rebuild, because the Tennessee defense has generally hovered between “usefully average” to “destructively bad” over the past five years.
Jim Harbaugh, Los Angeles Chargers
Who he’s taking over for: Brandon Staley, who simultaneously served as the biggest proponent for and strongest argument against in-game analytics
Who is he? The milk-drinking, khaki-wearing NFL veteran who’s been a success everywhere he’s gone. He won a national championship at Michigan. He went 44-19-1 in four years with the San Francisco 49ers after inheriting a team coming off eight straight non-winning seasons. He took Stanford from 1-11 to an Orange Bowl win and top five ranking in five years. He went 29-6 coaching non-scholarship Division I-AA players at San Diego.
He’s good at this.
What he’s inheriting: Justin Herbert and a handful of aging stars. Los Angeles can give Harbaugh a franchise quarterback. After that, things get dicey. Austin Ekeler is a free agent. Keenan Allen and Khalil Mack are each on the wrong side of 30. Mike Williams will be 30 next October and played just three games in 2023. Only four teams in the NFL gave up more total yards than the Chargers last season.
On the other hand, Herbert has the capacity to be great and Harbaugh has coaxed big performances out of passers like Colin Kaepernick, Andrew Luck and J.J. McCarthy in various coaching stops. Derwin James remains on the roster and there are a few young pieces who could pan out. Plus, the AFC West is starting to look vulnerable, even with the Kansas City Chiefs at the top.
Dave Canales, Carolina Panthers
Who he’s taking over for: Frank Reich and interim head coach Chris Tabor
Who is he? The offensive assistant who helped restore Geno Smith and Baker Mayfield to above-average starting quarterbacks the last three seasons. Canales went from Seattle Seahawks’ quarterbacks coach to Tampa Bay Buccaneers offensive coordinator and turned Mayfield, 2022’s worst starter, into someone capable of winning a playoff game.
What he’s inheriting: A mess and another first round quarterback in need of rehabilitation. The Panthers gained fewer yards than anyone in 2023 thanks to a depleted roster and clashes behind the scenes that led to Frank Reich’s firing after only 11 games. At the center of this was Bryce Young, the player for whom Carolina mortgaged its future to draft first overall.
Young struggled mightily behind a terrible offensive line and an receiving corps with few reliable options. Canales has proven he can deal with the former, but his success with the Seahawks and Buccaneers came in large part to having a pair of top-notch wideouts who can accelerate his quarterback’s growth — DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett in Seattle, Mike Evans and Chris Godwin in Tampa.
The Panthers will be the biggest test of his career to date, but his track record shows he’s a worthy gamble for a team that badly needs to hit the lottery.
Raheem Morris, Atlanta Falcons
Who he’s taking over for: Arthur Smith, who had promised to bring an offensive overhaul and instead just kept the Falcons lowkey boring for three years.
Who is he? Not Bill Belichick, notably. The former Patriots head coach interviewed twice for the job but in the end Atlanta went with Morris, who spent time with the franchise in 2020 and went 4-7 as interim head coach. He was 17-31 with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in three seasons before that, but helped rebuild his value with three years keeping the Los Angeles Rams defense together despite significant turnover.
What he’s inheriting: A roster whose defense proved to be way more powerful than an offense loaded with former first round draft picks. That veteran unit ranked 12th in overall defensive efficiency (-0.046 EPA/play) and was the league’s best when it came to stopping the run (-0.190 EPA/rush). Adding youth to that unit will be imperative, but given Morris’ ability to turn mid-draft rookies like Kobie Turner and Byron Young into budding stars, Atlanta should be OK.
The question is whether Morris, a proper coordinator who has struggled in a bigger role, can make this offense more than the sum of its parts. Three recent top 10 draft picks dot the skill positions between Kyle Pitts, Drake London and Bijan Robinson. But quarterback is a mess and a combination of middling draft position and salary cap space suggests it won’t get significantly better in 2024.
Mike Macdonald, Seattle Seahawks
Who he’s taking over for: Pete Carroll
Who is he? A longtime Ravens assistant who earned a promotion to defensive coordinator at the University of Michigan in 2021 before earning the coordinator job in Baltimore in 2022. In the two seasons since, his Ravens have ranked third, then first, in points allowed.
What he’s inheriting: A team loaded with young talent that hasn’t always played up to that level. Namely, the Seahawks’ defense had young studs like Riq Woolen, Devon Witherspoon and Julian Love to pair with veterans Bobby Wagner, Quandre Diggs and, after the trade deadline, Leonard Williams. That still wasn’t enough to make the playoffs in a disheveled NFC.
Dan Quinn, Washington Commanders
Who he’s taking over for: Ron Rivera
Who is he? A well respected defensive coordinator who built fearsome units with the Seattle Seahawks and Dallas Cowboys. Also, the Atlanta Falcons head coach on the other end of, sigh, 28-3.
What he’s inheriting: A team looking to excise the demons of former owner Dan Snyder (there are many). Washington made its intentions clear through the first season of Josh Harris’ ownership; this team was careening toward a rebuild. Star defenders were traded for draft picks and a league-high $73.6 million in salary cap space was cleared for this offseason, per Over the Cap.
That’s great, because Quinn is getting the opposite of the stacked roster he’s leaving behind in Dallas. Quarterback Sam Howell progressively got worse in 2023 and Terry McLaurin, while very good, had his least efficient season despite his history of lifting up mediocre passers. The defense ranked dead last in the NFL in both points and yards allowed, in part because of the absence of guys like Montez Sweat and Chase Young but mostly because the secondary was hot garbage.
There’s lots of work to be done but plenty of material with which to do it, including the second overall pick and four draft picks on Day 2. Quinn’s stepping onto a blank canvas. Let’s see what he paints.
