Nathaniel Hackett doesn’t even get a full season at Denver, ouch!!! Someone’s got to pay for the Russell Wilson fiasco.
Anyway, the hot seats are getting hotter as the NFL regular season comes to an end and the annual coaching carousel begins to spin. Here’s a thread for speculation and actual news.
How unattractive is the Denver job?
Well, there are worse places, but I suspect it’s not too attractive in the near term:
Shitty teams who can’t score points tend to get inflated defensive numbers because you don’t have to score a lot to beat them.
I don’t see Jeff Saturday lasting longer than the end of this season in Indianapolis. I don’t know who would be a feasible replacement. I’ve heard through the TwitterVine that Mike Tomlin may not be long for Pittsburgh, but it was Twitter, so take that for what it’s worth.
The cap hit for Wilson is so large, basically any coach is going to get hired on the basis of “How do you make Russ work?”
Speaking of unattractive situations: a team with a meddling, doofy owner isn’t likely to attract top coaching prospects.
Thank you – I’d thought I’d remembered that, but when I was reading up about the Broncos while writing that post, I missed mention of it.
Not unless they throw a metric fuckton of money at him, anyway.
I can never remember, is the metric fuckton larger or smaller than the fuckton avoirdupois?
You’re forgetting your conversions. A metric fuckton is equal to two shitloads
Ron Rivera may have gone overboard on the river.
Are there? Where? As you pretty effectively summarized it’s an absolute shitshow over there right now. A confluence of events that are pretty singular. I will note that you didn’t itemize all the problems with Russ…he’s not just bad on the field but it seems like he’s made everyone hate him too.
There’s really only 2 ways out.
Both are incredibly painful for different reasons. There are probably a few coaches who might sign up for option 1, Sean Payton maybe. Maybe Brian Schottenheimer could partner up with a defensive minded guy as recapture some of the magic. I think it has a low likelihood of success but it’s probably the most likely outcome. Of course there’s always someone willing to take an NFL head coach job no matter what the situation and any number of untested guys will sign up to be a placeholder under option 2, especially with certain promises being made about expectations in years 1 and 2.
All that said…I can’t see another job with as many risks (and outright unpleasantness) as this one.
Well, Washington, for one, as long as Snyder still has ownership.
I’d also put Las Vegas, Cleveland, and Houston on the short list of dysfunctional franchises.
The Broncos are in a deep hole right now, no doubt, but the other teams I mention above have longer-term issues with front-office idiocy as well as on-field futility.
The one advantage in Denver is that the new owner is the richest in the NFL. Which might potentially mean that whoever is hired could be the highest-paid head coach in the league as well. And they might need to dangle that kind of cash to get someone to come on board.
The problem is that even as rich as the owner is, you can’t get that cap to go away. If you can’t make it work with Russ, then you don’t have much for a replacement QB for at least a couple of years, probably longer. It’s not like MLB where you can just outspend your opponents. Here are some numbers:
Plenty of people would love the shot at making it work in Denver, but it’d be a tough sell for any established names.
The issue seems to be Wilson thinks of himself as a shotgun QB and having a Brady-esque ability to make pre-snap reads of the defense. Any coach who tailors the offense to that nonsense is doomed to continue losing (and seeing Wilson miss totally wide open receivers game after game after game).
But good luck finding anybody who can ‘work with’ Wilson on convincing him otherwise when his contract means the team can’t ditch him for a while. The losses will pile up and I can’t see ownership picking any coach, no matter how good, over that massive 8-9 figure cap hit.
ETA: confirmed - cutting Wilson this season means a cap hit of $107 million (either all of it next season or spread over the next 2). Cutting him after the 2023 season is still a hit of over $80 million. Denver’s stuck with him for at least 2 years and more likely for at least 3. No team can devote half its salary to a player who isn’t even on the roster.
The Synder-Washington situation is a mess, but I’m not sure these are the types of issues that really matter to a head coach. Certainly, there are going to be questions and media coverage he doesn’t want to deal with but I’m not sure coaches are all that progressive. Does he care, day-to-day, if there’s a sexual harassment investigation? Does he care if he’s at war with other owners? It’s probably not ideal of course, but I think it’s mostly noise. Coaches care about draft capital, cap space, rosters and authority. I think Washington is as good as any other spot in that context. Maybe the job security is a little dicey if Snyder gets the boot, but Denver is under an ownership change too.
Cleveland has a bad QB situation and loss of draft capital that’s pretty similar to Denver. It’d be interesting to hear the unfiltered opinions from coaches about Wilson vs. DeShaun. I’m betting that the real honest opinion is that they’d rather have a guy who pressures girls into happy endings but is a popular teammate and locker room leader versus a guy who seems to alienate everyone around him at all times. DeShaun is a lot younger with a higher ceiling too.
Houston is actually in a pretty decent spot with the 1st overall pick plus a bunch of picks from trades in 2023 and 2024. The leadership is pretty dicey, and the best they could do was Lovie, so they are certainly a contender. But now that the Watson situation is resolved I think the circumstances are a lot different.
Vegas I think is pretty much no different than any other financially bottom/middle-of-the-pack team. The owner is weird, but they are in Vegas, with a new staidum and have a winning legacy.
The new stadium probably helps with cash flow, but they’re also coming off of a terrible stretch of draft choices under Gruden and Mayock, and didn’t have a first or second round pick this year (due to the Davante Adams trade), so their talent cupboard is pretty bare, I think. They’ve had a lot of churn, both in the front office and at head coach in the last decade, as well.
That winning legacy is a long time removed now – they haven’t won a playoff game in 20 years.
You’re right about the Adams picks, I forgot that was a trade and not a FA signing, but the Raiders were in the playoff hunt up until a couple weeks ago. They may end up drafting in the 10-12 range after week 18, they aren’t uniquely terrible like the Texans. Most open HC positions are on teams with terrible rosters due to bad drafting and age…so I still don’t think that they would fit in the discussion of worst gigs. They will probably land in the top 5 for cap space in 2023 after Carr is released.
The Raiders also lost a top draft pick due to a DUI Manslaughter charge against Henry Ruggs III