A Comprehensive Grade for the Open NFL Head Coaching Jobs

As the NFL Playoffs are taking place, we’re also in the coaching hiring season for the vacant positions. Beat reporters have reported so many candidates interviewed or that someone has been requested to have an interview.

Chances are, if you have heard of the sport of football before, you may have already gotten a phone call regarding an opening.

There’s usually a lot of crossover between the hot names out there in coaching- typically the coordinator of a standout unit (Aaron Glenn, Ben Johnson, Brian Flores) or some retread veterans giving it another shot (Mike Vrabel, Pete Carroll(?) or possibly a shocking move of a college coach making the leap (like Matt Campbell, the Campbell, the Lions once decided NOT to hire)

The jobs are all open for a variety of reasons, so if you were someone to receive multiple phone calls, there should be some grading scale in terms of looking at the actual “attractiveness” of the job.

We’ll look at it through these categories:

• Resources (the roster, money to play with, open-minded ownership)
• Path to victory (Is your division winnable? Could you be set up for early success?)
• A positive wildcard factor (Something unique to the organization that is a plus)
• A negative wildcard factor (Something unique to the organization that is a plus)

There are six vacant positions currently (although, who knows, maybe a postseason flameout causes another job to come open, Nick Sirianni!) after the Patriots have hired Mike Vrabel.

We’ll score the remaining five with points out of 10 for each category and negate points for the negative wildcard factor to evaluate the job market like we’re Glassdoor.

Chicago Bears

• Resources: 9/10
• Path to Victory: 4/10
• Positive Wildcard Factor: You have Caleb Williams on a rookie contract, and if you figure him out, you’re a legend forever (+7)
• Negative Wildcard Factor: You have the pressure of the entire city to make Caleb Williams a generational talent (-6)
• Score: 14

Last year, the Bears were hailed as having “the best talent on a roster for an incoming #1 overall picked quarterback ever” for Caleb Williams. It wasn’t so easy with him facing the most sacks despite his flashes.

After starting 4-2 and promptly melting down with some of the most inexcusable losses we’ve ever seen, given that Caleb was hailed as the “chosen one” to save the franchise that had never had a 4000-yard passer, he was the first coach fired in Williams’s opening season. Williams will be on play-caller #3 heading into year 2.

The Bears’ job will have Williams with what we hope is a clean slate, a top-10 draft pick with what we hope will be spent on protection for him, and a lot of cap space to work with. However, you BETTER have a plan to set him best up to be the savior that he was touted to be given the NFC North, sending the other three teams to the playoffs as Super Bowl contenders; it has to click with Caleb fast, but if you save him, you’re a legend!

New York Jets

• Resources: 4/10
• Path to Victory: 5/10
• Positive Wildcard Factor: If you turn the franchise around, you’ve killed an unkillable demon (especially if you do it without Aaron Rodgers) (+9)
• Negative Wildcard Factor: The media circus of a cursed franchise (-10)
• Score: 8

PHOTO: ClutchPoints

Please refer to Sauce Gardner telling someone on Instagram, “No, I will NOT be telling him that,” about whether or not Tee Higgins should join his team.

It’s a cursed franchise in disarray with questions about whether or not the quarterback wants to go on another darkness retreat, little cap space, and a media circus around it. HOWEVER, Miami might actually be in more disarray somehow, and if you can come in, be the boring “safe” hire that can just not have New York Post headlines blow up in your face, you’ll be exactly what they need! With the way the fans talk about Aaron Rodgers, you could even possibly get revenge on their own quarterback!

New Orleans Saints

• Resources: 2/10
• Path to Victory: 6/10
• Positive Wildcard Factor: Football-hungry town that is committed to the team and their excellence (+6)
• Negative Wildcard Factor: Consistent disagreements between the ownership and the GM, who for a decade thought debt didn’t exist (-7)
• Score: 7

New Orleans is such a football-crazed town with one of the best home-field advantages in the league when the Superdome is rockin’ during the Brees glory days. Still, they just happened to max out their credit card maybe a decade ago and now are over $60 million over the cap with one of the worst rosters in football that is either old or injured.

Good luck with Derek Carr?

Las Vegas Raiders

• Resources: 7/10
• Path to Victory: 3/10
• Positive Wildcard Factor: Players and Tom Brady want to play in Vegas! (Sometimes a little too much) (+7)
• Negative Wildcard Factor: The franchise run by the owner who eats PF Chang’s for every meal is so unstable and cash-poor that he’s paying 4 coaches (-6)
• Score: 11

We keep looking at the “once John Madden-coached Raiders with the iconic uniforms now playing in Las Vegas!” and waiting for it to happen, especially after now Tom Brady apparently has stepped in and is going to have some sort of say in their coaching search. Mark Davis has been eating P.F. Chang’s in his suite, firing coach after coach after they’ve never been able to figure out the quarterback situation, and they’ve struggled to get out of irrelevance ever since “that one Derek Carr season.”

It’s a pivotal offseason in that they have human Infinity Gauntlet Brock Bowers on a rookie deal, a (currently disgruntled) Maxx Crosby, who is THE guy on the defense, the second-most cap space, and are one of the few teams at the top of the draft poised to take one of the top quarterbacks. It doesn’t help that they have to face Patrick Mahomes, Justin Herbert, and even Bo Nix in the division, but they have the chance to look competent for once and build something here.

Jacksonville Jaguars

• Resources: 8/10
• Path to Victory: 8/10
• Positive Wildcard Factor: The expectations probably could not be lower! You’re a blank canvas! (+5)
• Negative Wildcard Factor: There is no commitment to winning, and for some reason, they brought back Trent Baalke after EVERYONE asked, “Why?” (-7)
• Score: 14

There may not be a more divided community in the judgment of Trevor Lawrence, the once “generational” top-picked quarterback who won a playoff game and is now paid like it for the next 5 years. However, the “most talented roster in Jacksonville history” just went 4-13 and fired Doug Pederson.

The belief is that Lawrence can figure it out for what he was billed at. Brian Thomas Jr. may be the face of the league at wide receiver, and you’ll have a top-five draft pick in an AFC South that looks like anyone could win it, per usual. There’s no history or commitment to winning in Jacksonville as of late, but the rebuild here is much more suited to winning now than many of the other options starting from scratch.

Just make sure Trent Baalke isn’t shopping for the groceries to cook the meal.

Dallas Cowboys

• Resources: 8/10
• Path to Victory: 6/10
• Positive Wildcard Factor: You’re “America’s Team” (+5)
• Negative Wildcard Factor: You’re expected to be “America’s Team” (-10)
• Score: 9

Jerry Jones officially had the most awkward way of letting Mike McCarthy go with a “mutual parting of ways” as they couldn’t come to an agreement.

The Dallas Cowboys head coaching job is not a coach opening; it is a circus lion tamer position opening.

Jerry Jones, yes, the man with more money than God who is older than Joe Biden and wants to see one last Super Bowl, has made every coach his mouthpiece, puppet on a string, whatever you may refer to it with the petri dish that comes with the responsibility of coaching America’s Team where it is a pressure cooker unlike any other. On top of that, when you already have the superstars paid on this roster in Dak Prescott, Ceedee Lamb, and potentially Micah Parsons, the expectations are to win now, no matter how delusional that may be because the Stephen A. Smiths of the world can’t wait to dance on your grave the following Monday if you’re not winning the last week of the season in February.

The reality is that the team isn’t built to win now with what it has, and you’re entering the lion’s den working for the Jones family. Knowing Jerry, they’ll likely go for a friend or the veteran retread route within his circle. Or just do something that will get headlines rather than wins. All news is good news when your wallet is fat.

PHOTO: ClutchPoints