There's little joy to be had around the league on the first weekday after Week 17, commonly known as Black Monday. While a few fans will be excited that their teams are moving on from coaches who had subpar seasons, Black Monday's a day when failure comes home to roost. It's the day you get past all the clichés about taking things one game at a time and the coachspeak surrounding development and process to punish the football operations department for its subpar performance. It's the end of one era for a football team and the beginning of a new one. Outside of changing the quarterback for teams that have an entrenched starter at the helm, there's not a more serious change an NFL team can make.
This year's Black Monday was quieter than last year's, when seven head coaches lost their jobs. The racket wasn't quite as loud this year, thanks to the firing of Gary Kubiak earlier in December and Rob Chudzinski's dismissal on Sunday night. On Monday, four head coaches were relieved of their duties, none of whom were much of a surprise. In fact, it was more of a surprise that the likes of Dennis Allen, Mike Munchak, and Jason Garrett went to bed Monday night without having to update their LinkedIn profiles.
Now, I probably don't need to explain why the likes of Mike Shanahan and Jim Schwartz lost their jobs Monday. You watched their teams play this year. What I think would be interesting, though, is to talk about the possible replacements for these deposed coaches while trying to figure out who makes the best fit for each of these jobs. I'm going to stick with people who seem likely to consider NFL jobs, so while Tony Dungy or Nick Saban might be a great candidate for a given team, they're not going to come up here.
In order of relative job attractiveness
Houston Texans
The Texans were the worst team in football, but they've got the first pick in the draft, at least two of the 50 best players in the league (Duane Brown and J.J. Watt), and enough of a defensive core to suggest that their turnaround could be a quick one. They've also been relatively patient with their coaches, as owner Bob McNair will be hiring just his third head coach in the franchise's 13-year existence....
Detroit Lions
Detroit, almost unquestionably, has the most talented roster among the six currently available coaching gigs. Nobody can compete with a core of Matthew Stafford, Ndamukong Suh, and Calvin Johnson, with Stafford and Megatron both locked up for the long term and Suh about to join them. With a second tier that includes Reggie Bush, Nick Fairley, Larry Warford, Louis Delmas, DeAndre Levy, and Stephen Tulloch, there's just not much reconstruction to be done here. A coach could step in and win immediately.
At the same time, that can also be a negative....
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Tampa Bay's roster isn't quite as talented as Detroit's, but there's still plenty to like about the situation a coach would be inheriting here. The Buccaneers' season was scarred by the dual impacts of the MRSA outbreak and the Josh Freeman circus over the first half of the season; they went 4-4 in the second half...
Washington
There are 32 head coaching jobs in the NFL. Talent and salary-cap situation being equal, if you took a vote among coaches around the NFL, I'm guessing you would hear that Washington represented the least appetizing opportunity of the 32 possible gigs. That's the power of Daniel Snyder...
Minnesota Vikings
There's a huge step down in job desirability between Washington and the final two teams on this list. The Vikings' collapse this season after making the playoffs in 2012 was an unpleasant sign for an incoming coach. There are a lot of young players here, especially considering that Minnesota had three first-round picks in last year's draft, but...
Cleveland Browns
This is currently the least desirable head coaching gig in the league, thanks in part to the fact that the organization just fired Rob Chudzinski after a lone season at the helm. Uprooting your family for the right coaching gig is part of the job, but nobody wants to move away from where they're comfortable if it's only going to be for a year...
