- The Buffalo Bills fired head coach Sean McDermott despite his consistent winning record and multiple playoff appearances.
- Ten NFL teams, nearly a third of the league, will have new head coaches next season.
- Even Super Bowl-winning coaches like John Harbaugh and Mike Tomlin are no longer with their long-time teams.
Apparently, winning in the NFL isn’t enough. Apparently, winning consistently in the NFL isn’t enough. Apparently, winning consistently in the NFL with class isn’t enough.
And here we are.
The Buffalo Bills’ surprisingly unsurprising decision to dump head coach Sean McDermott on Jan. 19, two days after his team’s gutting – and controversial – overtime loss to the Denver Broncos in the divisional round of the playoffs means 10 teams, basically a third of the league, will be turning over what’s typically the most high-profile and high-pressure management post of any professional football operation.
(And maybe it’s just me, but I’d think Payton is in imminent jeopardy here. Not only did he allow McDermott’s Bills to break his quarterback’s ankle, Payton had already been outflanked by the Indianapolis Colts for clear and obvious replacement candidate Philip Rivers. I’d expect 47-year-old Drew Brees to be boarding a plane for Dove Valley at any minute, though who knows if the Broncos have the salary cap room to execute a trade with Fox after Payton mind-numbingly allowed Brees to take one of the network’s open analyst’s job a few months back rather than stash him on the practice squad in the aftermath of the Rivers debacle? But I digress.)
McDermott didn’t get the job done in Buffalo. Most coaches don’t.
Irreverence aside, here are some facts. Every NFL owner wants to win the Super Bowl every year − you don’t get to be a multi-billionaire able to obtain one of these franchises without a competitive streak. But, by that standard, only 3% of them are going to be completely satisfied annually when Valentine’s Day rolls around.
Send flowers and chocolates to a coach like McDermott, who made the playoffs eight times in nine seasons (including five AFC East titles and two berths in the conference championship game) – that after the Bills had missed the playoffs for 17 consecutive seasons prior to his arrival? After he fostered a familial atmosphere around a team that previously hadn’t held much allure for free agents? Nah, he never really got the job done. The team’s statement announcing his firing explicitly signaled someone new was required in order “to give this organization the best opportunity to take our team to the next level.”
McDermott’s ouster comes on the heels of other ringless bums getting whacked. Mike McDaniel, formerly of the Miami Dolphins, and Kevin Stefanski, a two-time Coach of the Year – for the Cleveland Browns – both made multiple postseason trips with organizations that have reeked of dysfunction for the entirety of the 21st century … and longer. Stefanski wasn’t out of work long, scooped up by the Atlanta Falcons over the weekend, and McDaniel doubtless won’t be – whether he gets another head job or becomes one of the league’s top-compensated offensive coordinators.
Let’s move on to John Harbaugh and Mike Tomlin, who spent nearly two decades embroiled as adversaries in one of the league’s great border wars … while becoming pillars in their respective communities. And, while throwing figurative haymakers at one another twice – and sometimes thrice – per season, both of them did get it done, the Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens each earning a Lombardi Trophy during each presumptive Hall of Famer’s tenure.
Wait, pearls clutched – just one Super Bowl win, you ask? Per guy?
Yes, that’s correct. Harbaugh and Tomlin each have one massive ring. Meaning, by the time Super Bowl 60 concludes next month, they’ll account for 8% of those won over the past quarter century, a period in time when Tom Brady, Patrick Mahomes and the Manning brothers have 56% of them. The bling is pretty hard to come by, folks.
Regardless, Harbaugh was shown the door after 18 seasons (three of them sub-.500), 13 years removed from his apex and having blown too many fourth-quarter leads – maybe not a champagne problem, but not one encountered by bad clubs. Tomlin left of his own volition after 19 years, Pittsburgh owner Art Rooney II characterizing it as something of a family matter after he’d planned on having Tomlin back for Year 20. It should also be noted that Rooney expressed his distaste for the term “rebuild” while expressing this philosophy: ‘I think you try every year. Some years you have the horses to really get there. Some years you don’t, but you try every year, in my view.’
You’ll recall Tomlin never had a losing season, perhaps an accomplishment that will never be replicated over the entirety of a 19-year stint. But the consistent winning also precluded the Steelers from getting into position for the young franchise quarterback they so desperately needed to succeed Ben Roethlisberger. Tomlin absorbed tremendous heat for his seven consecutive playoff losses, all coming in decisive fashion. But now you know he didn’t exactly have – nor probably wanted – the luxury of a 2-14 season that might buy you Andrew Luck or whomever atop the draft.
NFL coaching carousel devolving into absurd shell game
See how freaking hard this job is? If you’re good at it, you stick around a while … so you can get lambasted on talk radio … so you can work 100 hours a week … so you can deal with 26-year-olds who might have infinitely more money, organizational influence and far less maturity than you probably do.
And Tomlin was one of the lucky ones. He left on his own terms. He worked for a patient, supportive, (mostly) realistic owner. Tomlin also won out of the chute. If predecessors Chuck Noll and Bill Cowher were hired nowadays, they’d already be begging for defensive coordinator interviews.
At least high-quality coaches like Harbaugh and Stefanski – and, most likely, Tomlin, McDermott and McDaniel, if they so choose – don’t have to look long to find another shot in what’s seemingly devolving into an absurd shell game.
“You can’t say that timing is perfect in anything,” Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti said last week of his agonizing call to relieve Harbaugh, revealing that his former coach wound up consoling him.
“But I got to the point that I didn’t believe that I would feel regret after I made that decision. And that’s what instinct is. When you finally get to the point that you’re pretty damn sure that you are not going to regret the decision a day or a week later, then that’s the time to make the decision. Is that fair?”
Coming from one of the league’s truly great owners? Yes. Despite the seismic nature of the move, Bisciotti afforded Harbaugh the humanity, advice and help to move forward that few of his peers ever reap.
As for most everyone else? Jerry Glanville, who split nine seasons coaching the Falcons and Houston Oilers from 1985 to 1993 couldn’t have been more prophetic when he so perfectly summed up the league writ large while chewing out an official.
‘This isn’t college. You’re not at a homecoming. This is the NFL, which stands for ‘not for long.’”
A statement truer now than it’s ever been.