Head-To-Head:
Hiring in the NFL

Jim Tomsula offered the San Francisco 49ers experience (his first coaching job was in 1989) and stability (he was the team’s defensive line coach the previous nine years and served as interim head coach for a game in 2010), but Teryl Austin turned the Lions into a top-3 defense in his first season as D-coordinator. Turns out there’s more to coaching than stability: The Niners had the lowest-scoring offense, went 5-11 and Tomsula was canned after just one season.

There’s no downplaying Jack Del Rio’s résumé: He coached the Baltimore Ravens’ linebackers when Ray Lewis & Co. ran the league and helped turn the Denver Broncos’ defense into a top-5 unit starting in 2012. While the Oakland Raiders had the worst defense in the league in 2014, their offense was just as bad, and Pep Hamilton was just coming off a season as the Indianapolis Colts’ O-coordinator, where quarterback Andrew Luck had one of the best seasons of his career (4,761 passing yards, 40 touchdowns). Del Rio won double-digit games in just one season and was fired in 2017.

The Miami Dolphins made Adam Gase the youngest head coach in the league (age 37) after he worked with Jay Cutler in 2015, with the quarterback throwing 11 interceptions and 21 touchdowns. Gase was the Denver Broncos’ O-coordinator when Peyton Manning threw 55 touchdowns in 2014. Teryl Austin’s unit with the Detroit Lions declined from third to 23rd in 2015, which was the same ranking of Gase’s unit with the Chicago Bears. Gase never repeated his previous success, and was fired three seasons later in 2018 by Miami after going 23-25.

Matt Patricia had the benefit of being a branch on the Bill Belichick coaching tree, but as New England Patriots D-coordinator from 2012 to 2017, his units never ranked outside of the top 10, won two Super Bowls and appeared in a third during that time frame. Most of Belichick’s assistants haven’t panned out as head coaches, however, including Patricia, who was fired after a 13-29-1 record across parts of three seasons in Detroit. After a three-year hiatus as a D-coordinator, Austin returned in 2022 with the Pittsburgh Steelers and his unit finished 10th.

Pat Shurmur was named assistant coach of the year in 2017 for his work as the Minnesota Vikings O-coordinator in getting a Case Keenum-led offense to the NFC Championship Game. That same offense, however, scored zero points in the final 54 minutes of that title game. Shurmur had an opportunity as a head coach in the past, winning just nine games in two seasons with the Cleveland Browns from 2011 to 2012. Steve Wilks, who ended up being hired as head coach by the Arizona Cardinals, was the assistant head coach and DB coach for the NFC champion Carolina Panthers in 2015 and was the D-coordinator for a unit ranked 11th in 2017.

Kliff Kingsbury was fired as head coach of Texas Tech in November 2018, hired as USC O-coordinator a month later, and then hired by the Arizona Cardinals to be their top guy another month after that. Kingsbury won just 16 games in three seasons with Patrick Mahomes as his quarterback in Lubbock, Texas. Jim Caldwell had nearly half a century of coaching experience, won 14 games and the AFC championship in his first season as Indianapolis Colts head coach in 2009, and had a winning record with the Lions from 2014 to 2017. Kingsbury was fired in January.

No matter his 23-25 record with the Miami Dolphins the previous three seasons, the New York Jets hired Adam Gase to replace Todd Bowles. Gase had Miami offenses that finished 18th, 29th and 27th in points per game during his tenure. Jim Caldwell was fired after barely missing the playoffs in 2014 and 2016 and making it in 2017, which a Detroit Lions coach had done only once since 2000.

Freddie Kitchens was bumped up from assistant head coach/RB coach to interim O-coordinator to head coach in less than three months after being credited for the development of quarterback Baker Mayfield, the 2018 No. 1 overall draft pick, who threw for a rookie-record 27 touchdown passes. When Kitchens was hired, he asked, “Who the hell is ready to be a head coach?” He was fired after one 6-10 season.

After 13 years as a Minnesota Vikings assistant coach, Kevin Stefanski was promoted to O-coordinator in 2019, leading the eighth-ranked unit in the league. That offense sputtered in the playoffs, though, managing just 147 total yards in a 27-10 loss to the San Francisco 49ers. Meanwhile, in two seasons as the Kansas City Chiefs’ O-coordinator, Eric Bieniemy’s units finished first and fifth, the team went to back-to-back conference championships, and Patrick Mahomes won the MVP award. Stefanski has finished under .500 twice in three seasons.

Joe Judge had been a special teams coordinator for five seasons with the New England Patriots before being hired as head coach of the New York Giants in 2020, having spent the previous 10 years as a combination of graduate assistant, special teams assistant and LB coach (at Division III Birmingham-Southern). What Judge lacked in experience, he more than made up for in proximity: he coached under both Belichick and Alabama’s Nick Saban. Judge lasted just two seasons, winning just 10 games.

Raheem Morris had the advantage of previous head coaching experience (Tampa Bay, 2009-11) and familiarity with the franchise: He served as interim head coach the season before, going 4-7 in 11 games. But team owner Arthur Blank said when Morris was promoted that he’d “certainly” be a candidate for the job if he went 11-0. So, instead, the Atlanta Falcons hired Arthur Smith, whose offense, led by running back Derrick Henry, ranked fourth in 2020. The Falcons have finished 7-10 in back-to-back seasons under Smith.

Dan Campbell never worked as a coordinator before being hired as the Detroit Lions’ head coach, though he served as the Miami Dolphins’ interim coach for 12 games (5-7 record) in 2015. An ESPN report of Campbell’s hiring said that the former 10-year pro was not considered an “X’s-and-O’s guru,” compared with Marvin Lewis, who had nearly 40 years of coaching experience, including 16 years as the Bengals head coach from 2003 to 2018, appearing in the playoffs seven times. Campbell won nine games in 2022, the Lions’ first winning season since 2017.

The Chicago Bears hired a coach with a top-10 defense in his recent path, at least 30 years of coaching experience, and at least 12 years as a coordinator. But that choice wasn’t Leslie Frazier, who was a head coach in the past (Buffalo, 2010-13), played five seasons in the NFL, and whose unit in Buffalo the previous season was tops in the league. Matt Eberflus, whose defenses with the Indianapolis Colts ranked in the top 10 in three of his four seasons as D-coordinator, went 3-14 in his first season with Chicago last season, allowing the most points in the entire league.

In just two seasons as Philadelphia Eagles O-coordinator, Shane Steichen took a unit that ranked 26th in the league in 2020 and turned it into the third-best offense in the league last season. Along the way, Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts went from completing 52% of his passes with a 2.7% interception rate to 66.5% and 1.3%, respectively. It just so happens that Eric Bieniemy has led a top-5 offense in his five seasons as the Kansas City Chiefs O-coordinator, complete with three Super Bowl appearances (two wins) and two MVP awards for his quarterback, Patrick Mahomes.