Three NFL coaches have been fired during this season. New York Jets head coach Robert Saleh was the first one to get fired after three plus years with the franchise. He was 2-3 at the time of his dismissal. Dennis Allen was canned after the New Orleans Saints’ 2-7 start to the season, and the Chicago Bears parted ways with Matt Eberflus less than 24 hours after he butchered clock management and cost his team a win against the Detroit Lions.
Coaches such as Brian Daboll of the New York Giants and Antonio Pierce of the Las Vegas Raiders will at least get to finish out the season but are likely candidates to be among a potential seven to 10 head coaches terminated come Black Monday.
“The coaches that got fired this year I think the writing was on the wall that they were going to get fired,” former NFL linebacker Jonathan Casillas said on The Shadow League “Locker Room” podcast.
Jonathan Casillas Says Firing Coaches Midseason Is Problematic: How Do They Learn?
Firing a head coach midseason is not a tactic that all franchises believe in, but many do it, and there are football minds who believe that the short hook for coaches these days is actually part of a broken system that hinders coaching development.
“But nowadays this is what I have a problem with,” Casillas continued. “Rookies are going to make mistakes. How long do you allow that to happen is the question. Rookie head coaches, just like a rookie player or GM, whatever you are new at. You have to learn and how do you learn? Most of the time it’s by making mistakes.”
Casillas didn’t necessarily mean first-year coaches, but ones who have never been head coaches before or have very minimal experience. He says they aren’t allowed the proper learning curve.
“They’re not giving them enough time,” the former linebacker said. “(Organizations) are only usually giving them a year, year and a half. For me, how is that enough time for a guy who never did that before?”
Jonathan Casillas Says New Head Coaches Should Be Allowed To Make Mistakes Like Young Players
“We allow rookie players to come in and make mistakes,” he continued. “But we’re not giving rookie head coaches or GMs time to go through that process of making those mistakes. That’s the way you learn. There’s wins and lessons and you learn from your losses. They aren’t giving them time.”
To be fair, both Eberflus (22-67 with Chicago Bears) and Saleh (19-34 with the Jets) got three years with their teams, although you can say neither got his franchise quarterback until this season. Caleb Williams has been inconsistent, and Aaron Rodgers has been non-available or a shell of his former self for the Jets, which contributed to the aforementioned sideline stalkers’ coaching demises.
In 43 games as New Orleans Saints head coach Dennis Allen compiled an 18-25 record in 2.5 seasons with the Saints. Prior to that, he pretty much bombed in just over two seasons with the Oakland Raiders.
All of the tenures were longer than two seasons, but there are plenty of examples of guys such as it can be argued that none of the coaches were given enough time to get the proper pieces in place and build a winning culture.
‘Not For Long’ League Doesn’t Allow Coaches To Grow and Become Great
Between 2011-2023, 12 NFL coaches were fired after just one season.
“Overall, it’s foul because the turnover in the league is so crazy nowadays,” Casillas said. “You literally got like seven or eight head coaches that are safe. Everybody else is in the same category as these other players – Not For Long.”
Such is the NFL, where coaches are exchanged like new pairs of sneakers and the average life expectancy in the league for a player (3.3 years) isn’t much shorter than that of a coach (4.3 years).
“And I don’t think that’s OK,” concluded Casillas. “You’re not going to be able to develop these young coaches into great coaches.”
He has a point, because the premier head coaches in the game today such as Andy Reid, who’s been on the job for 26 years and spent many of those years being criticized for certain coaching moves, and Mike Tomlin, who has been around 18 non-losing seasons, needed all of that experience to become the forces they are today.
