Ranking the new NFL head coaching hires

With the Washington Commanders hiring Dan Quinn, the NFL’s head coaching cycle has officially concluded. Barring any unforeseen firings, eight coaches have new jobs, and none of them are Bill Belichick, Pete Carroll, or Mike Vrabel. With the dust finally settled, it’s time to see how each team fared in the coaching carousel.

This was the right hire for the Raiders. It was just a hire that only the Raiders could make. Antonio Pierce did everything necessary to ace his interim head coaching tryout. He led the Raiders to a 5-4 record over his nine games, highlighted by a historic drubbing of the Los Angeles Chargers and an upset over the Kansas City Chiefs. He won the locker room over to the point that Maxx Crosby threatened a trade request if Las Vegas didn’t hire Pierce. He won the locker room over, reset the culture in Vegas, and has a chance to start 2024 with some positive momentum. He’ll need it. Since 2000, interim coaches promoted to full-time roles combined for a .435 win percentage. Even that number is positively skewed by Jason Garrett’s 80-64 run in Dallas. Most coaches last just a handful of seasons, with five of the 10 lasting two seasons or fewer. Pierce also comes into the role with just two years of NFL coaching experience, and that includes the trial-by-fire stint as an interim. If Pierces’ vibe shift can continue willing the Raiders to victory, fantastic. History is just not on his side.

It’s impossible to follow up Bill Belichick. It feels even tougher to follow up the only Patriots coach of the 21st century with a first-timer at the position. Jerod Mayo offers a refreshing change of pace from the curmudgeonly six-time Super Bowl champion. He just gets his start with one of the least desirable head coaching opportunities on the market. The Patriots roster is one of the worst in the league on the offensive side of the ball, and the OC spot Mayo has to fill is considered one of the least desirable on the market. His defensive coordinator spot is being filled by another first-timer in Demarcus Covington, and his special teams coordinator just assisted on a Rams unit that finished 32nd in special teams DVOA. That’s a lot of inexperience for one coach to handle. Mayo was sought after last year, getting a head coaching interview request with the Carolina Panthers and a defensive coordinator request with the Cleveland Browns. The Patriots linebackers coach would have gotten even more in 2023 had New England not put head coaching successorship language in Mayo’s contract when they retained him last year. He is a good candidate who is getting co-signs from recent Patriots like Cam Newton and long-time legends like Tom Brady. It just seems like a massive undertaking for a first-time head coach, even if he’s been the heir apparent for quite some time.

Don’t get me wrong. Dan Quinn is deserving of a second opportunity as a head coach. He finished 43-42 over six years in Atlanta and made a Super Bowl, then followed it up with three straight seasons of top-five DVOA finishes for the Dallas Cowboys defense. He is a proven defensive mind and one of the better head coaching candidates on that side of the ball. It’s just such a safe, dull hire for a Commanders team that felt like it was close to doing a full-on reset. They spent the regular season jettisoning both their top-end edge talents to other teams. Washington now enters the 2024 offseason with the league’s most cap space and a surefire swing at a new quarterback in the draft. But the two favorites for the “young, fun, offensive mind” head coach archetype – Detroit’s Ben Johnson and Houston’s Bobby Slowik – both rescinded their names from consideration and returned to their coordinator gigs. Because they were the last at the table, they went with the same thing they had just let go of in Ron Rivera: another older, mild-mannered defensive-minded head coach on his second go-around that made one Super Bowl in the NFC South.

Brian Callahan is a weird one. On one hand, the former Cincinnati Bengals offensive coordinator has spent the last four years building up one of the better offensive schemes in the NFL. The group didn’t even fall off that badly when forced to swap out Joe Burrow for Jake Browning after a season-ending injury. Callahan has experience developing young quarterback talent, perfect for Tennessee taking a swing with Will Levis. On the other hand, Callahan was able to work with an elite wide receiver trio of Ja’Marr Chase, Tee Higgins, and Tyler Boyd, with a top-end running back talent in Joe Mixon to boot. Tennessee does not have the luxury of those resources yet. The best receivers Callahan inherits are 31-year-old DeAndre Hopkins and a floundering former first-rounder in Treylon Burks. Maybe new general manager Ran Carthon can give Tennessee the kinds of receiver drafts San Francisco had for years to bolster the corps. Until this roster fleshes out a little more, suspend judgment on what will likely be a strong offensive scheme not executed to its fullest potential in Year 1.

The Falcons get a reunion with their interim head coach, and it’s a solid place for the Los Angeles Rams defensive coordinator to end up. Atlanta’s defense looks a lot different than the group Raheem Morris led in 2020. They overhauled their defensive personnel during the 2023 headlined by safety Jessie Bates and defensive tackle David Onyemata. The moves helped turn around a defense that finished 31st in defensive DVOA in back-to-back seasons. The move, however, is one of the rare cases where it gets more exciting when imagining the side of the ball Morris doesn’t specialize in. The Falcons should have the makings of an elite offense, with top-ten picks spent at running back, tight end, and wide receiver. Morris now brings in Rams quarterback coach Zac Robinson to be offensive coordinator, plucked straight from the highly-coveted McVay coaching tree. The group is still a quarterback shy in a draft full of interesting projects, but this hire is a two-birds-one-stone move that keeps the defense’s momentum up while jumpstarting an offense in desperate need of revival.

Dave Canales is one of the riskier hirings of the 2023 coaching cycle. The former Tampa Bay Buccaneers offensive coordinator has just one year of coordinator experience, and is taking on one of the hardest jobs in football right now. That being said, there aren’t many head coaches better equipped to fix Bryce Young. Canales was the passing game coordinator during the heyday of the “Let Russ Cook” movement. He helped earn Geno Smith a Comeback Player of the Year award the same year he took over as quarterbacks coach in 2022. He got Baker Mayfield to a career-high in passing yards, completion percentage, and touchdown passes while holding him to the second-lowest interception rate of his career. This man knows quarterbacks, and he knows how to maximize their talents. No hire more perfectly matches the needs of the team quite like Canales does. It’s definitely a risk, given his inexperience and David Tepper’s notoriously short runway, but Canales’ six-year deal offers a hypothetically long runway, and keeping Ejiro Evero as his defensive coordinator means that side of the ball is in good hands.

If you’re going to hire the youngest head coach in the league, he better be a good one. Mike Macdonald is definitely a good one. When Macdonald left Michigan in 2021, they were eighth in the country in defense, and he planted the seeds for their nation-leading, near-historic performance in 2023. He then joined the Baltimore Ravens coming off a season they finished 28th in defensive DVOA. In the two years under Macdonald, the Ravens finished eighth in 2022 and first in 2023. What Macdonald excelled at most this year is attacking Shanahan offenses. Baltimore wreaked havoc on the 49ers, Dolphins and Texans, all directly pulling their offense from the Shanahan system. That’s a great hire for a team that has to face off against Kyle twice a season. Does he get the Roquan Smiths, Jadeveon Clowneys, and Kyle Hamiltons Baltimore was equipped with? Certainly not, but the Seahawks’ consistent investment in defensive talent has left Macdonald with a strong starting core to work with. Not only that, but the hire comes as a complete pivot from 72-year-old Pete Carroll. Swinging from the league’s oldest coach to the league’s youngest allows Seattle to put down a foundation at the head coaching spot for a long time if the hire pans out.

Come on, who else was going to be first? Harbaugh has worked wonders on football teams before. He took a hapless Stanford team to a win over USC in his first year. He made the conference finals his first year with the 49ers, who previously hadn’t been to one since the Steve Young days. Harbaugh came up just shy of a ring and bounced for Michigan, finally taking the Wolverines over the hump for the first time since 1997. Squeezing any competency out of the Chargers would be nothing short of a miracle. The Chargers don’t need a culture change, they need a sage cleansing. Justin Herbert has been all but wasted his first four years in the league. The defense is a cap nightmare. The team is constantly hampered by injuries and colossal bad luck. Harbaugh can be the exorcist this team needs. He can change the culture. Hell, he might even bring some Chargers tans to SoFi Stadium. Harbaugh was going to be a solid fit wherever he ended up. He just waited for an NFL return long enough to land with the one team that exactly needed him.