It’s become an annual tradition in the NFL known as Black Monday. The day after the regular season concludes, teams who are upset with the result of their season in one way or another will part ways with head coaches, assistant coaches, or team executives. The carnage isn’t reserved only for Black Monday, though. All throughout the season coaches and other staff are in danger of losing their jobs if it is deemed they have underperformed.
Today the NFL informed team owners that the league’s 32 franchises have combined to spend $800MM on fired coaches and front-office executives over the last five years, according to Adam Schefter of ESPN. The message was delivered with an intent and was certainly strategically timed. The league is imploring teams to exercise patience “with the hopes of trying to cut back on the massive expense of firing people in key, high-profile positions.” The timing of the message was strategically in the weeks leading up to the close of the regular season, when team ownership and decision-makers are starting to formulate how they’d like to attack the offseason.
Each team was provided with spreadsheets detailing employees the team has fired and the resulting costs to the team for each termination. The league wants teams see the unnecessary expenses incurred by instability and the exact cost for the employees they had paid for services that were no longer being rendered. These details were delivered in hopes that each franchise will heavily consider these numbers as they contemplate making significant changes to their staffs in the offseason.
The Giants are a notable example of this. New York is currently paying three different head coaches this season. Pat Shurmur was fired nearly three years ago only two years into a five-year deal. Two years later, the team fired Joe Judge, who also only coached two years into a five-year contract. Both are still receiving paychecks from the Giants, who now employ Brian Daboll as their head coach.
Last year saw nine teams part ways with their head coaches: the Bears, Broncos, Texans, Jaguars, Raiders, Dolphins, Vikings, Saints, and Giants. Five franchises, four of them listed above, found themselves looking for new general managers, as well: the Bears, Raiders, Vikings, Giants, and Steelers. On average, the league sees about seven head-coaching changes each year.
So far this season, two head coaches have lost their jobs. Former Panthers head coach Matt Rhule was fired only three years into a seven-year, $62MM contract. Former Colts head coach Frank Reich also was terminated with four years remaining on his current contract, leaving approximately $36MM to be paid. Additionally, the Titans have fired general manager Jon Robinson with four years left on his deal.
With these gaudy numbers adding up before the offseason has even approached, it’s easy to see why the league is preaching patience. The real question is: will anyone listen? Fanbases don’t care how much a team has to spend in order to move towards success. If team decision-makers are convinced that a change in leadership is necessary to improve their chances for success, is a penny-pinching memo from the league office really going to stop them?
History and reason predict that the answer to that question is “no.” If this turns out to be an average year, we have about five more head coach firings coming our way. No telling how many teams will discover a need for changes in the front office, as well. The NFL may not want it, but one assumes that Black Monday is as inevitable as ever.
Nope, fire away
You only have to exercise patience when a convenient “fall guy” isn’t available.
Sean Kugler could be a poster for this: not coach related but a whole much worse.
Instead of urging teams to ‘have patience’, they should urge teams to attack the problem at the source and stop giving out contracts of ridiculous length. There was no reason to give Shurmer or Judge five year deals. Did anyone think those would work out? Honestly, as a Giants fan, they should just talk to Mara specifically. In addition to those two five year deals, he was instrumental in driving up Rhule’s price/contract length. Daboll also has a five year deal, but he at least looks competent so far.
5 year deals seem reasonable because it will take 2 years just to clean up the mess that a new HC usually inherits. The solution is to reduce staff sizes to sensible levels and get rid of the dead weights.
“Yes, your coach stinks and your team stinks, but it’s a lot cheaper to lose, just FYI!” – NFL memo
Yikes
here is a piece of advice…quit hiring goofballs to be GMs and head coaches
You spelled Bob Quinn and Matt Patricia wrong.
Sounds like collusion
Reich and Robinson probably have pretty good cases to say that they were fired prematurely, but there are some other teams (Denver, LAC, Jacksonville, and Arizona, for instance) who have staff (either executives or coaches, or in Arizona’s case, perhaps both) that are likely unsuited for their jobs. Some teams hang on to staff for too long (Bruce Allen in Washington), some fire too soon (David Culley in Houston), and sometimes an average to below average coach gets bailed out by a talented roster at the last minute (Zac Taylor in Cincinatti). These developments are all individual to their specific situations-patience is always good, but it requires recognition of the direction things are going and the willingness to trust in that recognition, positive or negative. Sometimes, owners are too hasty, and sometimes too lax. It all depends on what they have.
Well stated. It just seems to me this toothless plea for “patience” is ridiculous. Their bosses will do what they want to do. The Arizona firings seem to have merit (although it’s a total sh$t show) while Irsay is like a monkey with a machine gun. Amy Adams cluelessly fired her GM after “studying his moves” the same season they’re trying to get a 2 billion dollar stadium approved and they haven’t won since. smh
The NFL trying to play government now. Ownership hires and fires whom they will. Ownership and ownership groups are writing the checks. I’m pretty sure they know the additional money spent on fired coaches and such.
Owners need outside consultation in their coaching hiring. Too often there tends to be a trend and owners blindly follow it only to have it blow up. Also the idea of the media hot name coordinator being hired needs to end.
Most owners already have a half dozen “consultants” on staff who are generally just as clueless as they are. Outside consultants aren’t much better. The Browns used an independent consultant agency to find them a HC and the agency recommended Hue Jackson as the best option.
Orrrr… and I’m just spitballing here, but hear me out… don’t give out long guaranteed contracts to unproven coaches and GMs.
How about a no hiring until after the Superbowl policy? This might give some coaches an actual chance to get hired instead of teams rushing to fill their opening with someone available rather than wait until a better candidate’s team is done playing. Speaking mostly of Eric Bienemy but could apply to others as well. Treat hiring of Execs and Coaches like Free Agency with a specific start date.
The unintended consequence of this is that if the league pushes this hard enough, teams might only be willing to give coaches a 2-3 year contract
Unintended???
It’s absolutely intended…
What self respecting HC is going to accept a 2 year contract? Even the team mascot and grounds keepers have a longer term deal than that.
What should be expedited is firing Goodell, The Rules committee, The referees, Most of the linesmen, and 90% of the Leagues investigative staff. Now that gambling is rampant some of these brutal calls or no calls by officials should be thoroughly investigated. The Washington calls scream of the NY team was supposed to win and the Washington team was supposed to lose. Justin Fields gets literally punched in the head on a slide and no call right in front of the ref. It’s getting worse not better.
dougdeb. Exactly!!! There’s something very fishy with officiating the past few years. The ref in the Chiefs Texans game was blatant on his calls and no calls against the Chiefs. He definitely has a vendetta against them. His name is Carl Cheffers and he should never referee again.
The hit on Fields was most definitely a penalty and the Hellen Keller ref was right there. Suh strikes again.
At a minimum, the NFL needs to create a rule where no team can even request to interview anyone on an NFL staff until the day after the SB. This will make the playoff games higher quality as well as force a cooling off period for teams who sucked. Mostly for the reason of not distracting playoff coaching staffs in order to cater to poorly run organizations tho. It just doesn’t make sense
Or maybe put an end to the “status quo” hiring practices? Amazing how most of these head coaches look like brothers or relatives including the same mannerisms (body language).
What’s the real point of this exercise? I’m sure every team already knows exactly who they are still paying – and are unlikely to keep underachievers around just to score points with the league office.
Could it be that some cash-strapped owners (e.g., Mark Davis) are having trouble adhering to league financial requirements?