Anatomy of a Hot Seat. (Mailbag Part 2)

This is Part 2 of a three-part Mailbag. Part 1 is here. Part 3, which will cover many of your esoteric, goofy or personal questions, will drop on Friday morning.

Hot Hot Hot Seats!

I see the usual commenter chorus on The Athletic insisting John Harbaugh should go. Do you think that’s reasonable? If not, pretend you’re Bisciotti for a day, what would you need to see to take that step? – Person Man

There may be some logic to the theory that Harbaugh has been on the job too long, has been tuned out by veterans, has suffered coordinator brain drain, and so on. I don’t buy the theory, but I’m not completely dismissive of it.

That said, let’s look at the Lukewarm Coaching Candidates List, shall we? Round up the Usual Suspects:

Ew.

See anyone you like better than Harbaugh? See anyone your angry Harbaugh Must Go neighbor or message-board commenter could seriously advocate for? Do any of the offensive coaches even strike you as an upgrade over Todd Monken? Klint Kubiak may be the best name on that list, and his offense – with most of its starters healthy – couldn’t score a touchdown against an opponent starting Dick Van Dyke at quarterback last week.

If I am Steve Bisciotti, I need to see Ravens losses where the team looks dispirited and out of answers. I have not seen that. I see injury crises. I see interceptions getting dropped and touchdowns disappearing from the scoreboard. I see a perennial contender suffering through a snakebit season. Smart organizations don’t change coaches for that.

Somebody already asked a Ravens based head coaching question, so I’m going to ask a broader question. What is the ideal head coach succession plan? Do you just hope that the coach is willing to gracefully retire and hope one of the coordinators carries on the torch well? Andy Reid is 67 years old. What should the Hunt family be doing now to prepare? I’m assuming not too many people are blaming Reid for this year’s playoff-less season, so firing him isn’t an option. – Mike Schobazaford

In my mind, a Super Bowl-winning coach earns benefit-of-the-doubt for one BAD (last place, let’s say) or two DISAPPOINTING (missed the playoffs with extenuating circumstances, one-and-done in the playoffs with a championship-caliber roster) seasons. Success buys at least one opportunity to turn failure around.

During this grace period, I also envision an ideal situation where senior management meets with the head coach and outlines clear expectations and benchmarks. Maybe the coach doesn’t get a Super Bowl or Fired ultimatum, but he’s aware of what bare minimums he must achieve, while also given the chance to advocate for what he needs (staff changes, NO staff changes, a big-time free agent, whatever).

For older living-legend types like Andy Reid, it’s clearly a case-by-case situation. Dick Vermeil positioned Mike Martz to replace him. (Then returned to coaching a year later.) Bill Belichick reached the point where his relationship with ownership had soured and his staff was overloaded with cronies. Pete Carroll is showing that he’s more the drag me screaming from the sideline than retire gracefully type. Sometimes, you just gotta fire the guy. This isn’t Death of a Salesman. He’ll be fine.

I would also be a little leery of any coordinator willing to hang around for an indefinite period of time, waiting for his mentor to retire. If he is good enough to replace a legend, shouldn’t he have received an offer he couldn’t refuse?

Is there any chance that the Steelers will actually make a coaching change even if they lose all of their remaining games and miss the playoffs? The Rooney family has not conducted a coaching search since before the moon landing and are seem ill-equipped for modern job applications. – Nicholas

One corollary of Adam Schefter’s mysterious early-December report about Mike Tomlin’s 2027 contract option is that Tomlin’s job was safe for 2026. That’s the way the report was carefully framed: this offseason’s discussion will be about the future option year, not the 2026 season.

This question was submitted before the Steelers beat the Dolphins on Monday night. Tomlin probably erased all doubts about his 2026 employment status over the last two weeks.

The only variable we can’t account for: a surly Aaron Rodgers spreading dirty-laundry rumors and secrets through his Ministry of Truth. If Rodgers has something he can skunk-spray Tomlin with, all bets could be off. But again: Rodgers is playing well and appears to be as content as Rodgers can possibly be right now.

I’m starting to think Miami should keep Mike McDaniel. Am I losing my mind? – James C.

(This question was submitted before the Dolphins lost badly to the Steelers on Monday night.)

The Dolphins played well for about six weeks after general manager Chris Grier was fired. They were clearing a rather low bar – They can beat the Brady Cook Jets and are actually taking some baseline pride in their vocation! – but at least they shook the vibe of diffident hopelessness that defined them in the offseason and the first half of the season.

McDaniel benched Tua Tagovailoa in the wake of Monday night’s loss. That’s an indicator of how fragile the Dolphins’ recent success really was.

If the Dolphins keep McDaniel, who in turn keeps Tagovailoa (chunky contract, tanking trade value), they risk establishing yet another Unholy Trinity: a new general manager building a roster for a coach he did not hire, led by a shaky quarterback neither of them selected or have much faith in. It’s a guaranteed way to create internal friction that keeps the franchise paddling in circles. And the Dolphins do it ALL THE TIME.

How much of Tua’s poor performance this year is due to deficiencies with the players around him (thinking largely of Tyreek Hill’s injury, but also his offensive line), and how much is Tua? His accuracy seems to be way down this season. – Geoff Green

Wait, we’re still talking about Tua? We haven’t written him off as a lefty junkballer who can only enjoy moderate success in a highly-customized system yet? Alrighty then.

Seeking a useful measure of Tua’s accuracy, I turned to Expected Completion Percentage over at Next Gen Stats. Tua throws so many micro-passes that I wanted a metric that compares his completion rate to what it should be, given the depths of his targets. Next Gen Stats then uses a Plus/Minus figure to compare the real rate to the expected rate. The league leaders usually have a Plus/Minus over 5.0. A figure lower than -2.0 or so is a yellow flag.

Here are Tagovailoa’s Plus/Minus figures in the Mike McDaniel era:

• 2025: -0.3
• 2024: 1.7
• 2023: 1.8
• 2022: 0.2

It appears that Tagoavialoa has indeed gone from slightly above average to incrementally below average accuracy this season.

Tagovailoa’s pressure rate has also increased a bit. He was pressured on 31.3% of dropbacks entering Monday night, up from 23.5% in 2024 and 27.9% in 2023.

Tyreek Hill’s absence has obviously hurt the Dolphins offense. The Dolphins suffered some really shaky interior line play early in the year; that situation has stabilized somewhat. But Tua remains Tua. Give him the fastest playmakers on the planet and an offense that’s more frosting than cupcake, and he’ll peak at “slightly above average.”

Is there any way to strap Tua into a rocket and have him never return to south florida? – manuma

Now, this is the Dolphins content I expected to see on Tuesday morning!

A Tua Rocket would be incapable of leaving South Florida. It would flutter harmlessly to the ground somewhere near Hallandale Beach.

Is Zac Taylor really on the hot seat, or does frugality among Bengals ownership mean Taylor remains next year despite a poor 2025? – PAUL VIEIRA

I think Taylor is on the hot seat. Jake Browning’s utter failure when he took over for Joe Burrow in Week 2 may have been the final indictment for Taylor. Browning was an experienced, veteran backup with years in Taylor’s system. His unreadiness was a direct reflection on Taylor’s coaching. An almost historically bad defense cannot be pinned exclusively on the coordinator.

Frugality might give Bengals ownership pause. Also, take another look at the Lukewarm Coaching Candidate list. It might as well say “Zac Taylor” ten times. And yes, your former defensive coordinator is on it.

Based on a combination of rumours and what’s been said (and subsequently walked back) in public, it can be reasonably inferred that the Bengals will allow Joe Burrow to have some say in the hiring of a new head coach. While this is obviously not an ideal way to run a football team, as a Bengals fan what’s the best I can hope for in this scenario? – SD

Giving the franchise quarterback “say” on the coaching search is all the rage right now. It’s a little bit of a blogosphere chewtoy. Veteran quarterbacks have had some “say” in coaching searches since Norm Van Brocklin said “I want to be the head coach!” Such input often boils down to, “Let’s talk through what you might prefer in a new boss” or “We are keeping you in the loop as a courtesy.”

I know veteran teachers who have been on superintendent hiring committees. It’s not a terrible procedure, so long as it’s an actual procedure.

The best you can hope for, as a Bengals fan, is that Burrow’s very presence makes the Bengals job extra-appealing to the best available candidate.

Even More Coaching Questions

Mike, Giants fan here. I observed that, for the first two years of Brian Daboll’s tenure (2022-23), you seemed optimistic about him, especially after Joe Judge’s two awful years.

Sometime in 2024, your tone shifted toward “Daboll should be fired.” I was more patient: I supported Daboll having the chance to develop a QB. (And we’d seen more than enough of Daniel Jones.) But (1) Daboll’s willingness to create game plans that PUT Jaxson Dart in harm’s way (rather than help Dart refine his skills while dialing back his intensity a bit) and (2) his refusal to fire Shane Bowen (because that would be two DC’s fired in four years) showed me he was laser-focused on keeping his job at all costs, rather than doing what was best for Dart or for the organization as a whole.

My questions: First, what would you say was the turning point for you with Daboll? Second, what causes that shift in your opinion with teams in general? (Is it insider info, or more just observation and knowing the signs of when a coach moves into Self-Preservation Mode?) Finally, which teams’ leadership -- for better OR worse -- would you say you feel most differently about at the end of 2025 than, say, back in August? – Jay

First, my change-of-heart with Brian Daboll came after his fallout with defensive coordinator Wink Martindale. All sorts of stories surfaced about what a pain-in-the-ass Daboll was to deal with; I don’t recall which stories made it to the public and which were whispered around the campfire. Daboll’s relationship with Mike Kafka also started getting weird at that point: Kafka wasn’t allowed to call plays, but he wasn’t allowed to interview elsewhere, either. I had heard and seen enough to be highly skeptical of Daboll.

Second, sometimes I get nuggets of insider info. More often, following all 32 teams closely – reading local reporters, listening to press conferences, scouring injury reports – can provide a pretty clear snapshot of what’s really going on. It’s not hard to tell which direction the Todd Bowles administration is heading in right now. And I try not to be too precious about my priors, while at the same time not chasing every Fire the Coach! pitchfork mob.

Third, since I brought up Bowles: I thought he did a fine job for years in Tampa. Bowles has not suddenly become a bad coach, but I think coordinator brain drain has set in for the Bucs, and the veterans need a new voice.

On the positive side of things: I was certain the Mike Vrabel era in New England would be a glorified nostalgia tour. Vrabel is clearly doing for the Patriots what he did for the Titans, plus developing Drake Maye.

How do you feel about the difference between a former player in the league as a coach, compared to someone who never did play at that level? In baseball it seems that every manager was once a MLB player, in the NBA it varies. How successful are former players as coaches? What do you prefer? – BlueMoon73

Say, did you ever notice that every defensive head coach/coordinator is a former linebacker or defensive back who played 5-10 NFL seasons, while every offensive head coach/coordinator was a quarterback at Directional State for one year, then became an assistant quality control coach at age 22.5, and/or is some former head coach’s son?

Go ahead: look for the counterexamples. There are some scattered around. Not many!

Also, did you ever notice that all of the top offensive coaches are white, while a high percentage of the defensive coaches (under 60, anyway) are black? Do you want to think very hard about that? Neither do I.

All I can say on this matter is that the NFL head coaching pipeline is what it is: having played or not played at the NFL level is more of a covariable than a factor in and of itself.

Also, I cannot speak for other sports. I have no idea what a baseball manager even does besides play Strat-o-Matic with real people.

Are there cases where coordinators who look like Kevin Patullo go from “fire this guy ASAP” to a workable coordinator over time? Or is play calling in game something you either have or don’t? – Gareth

Offensive coordinators who fail in their first gigs generally get tossed into the assistant pool for their coaching “family” and paddle around there for years. Sometimes, they reemerge long after the details of their initial failure are forgotten. A few lucky ones become an established head coach’s “guy:” Press Taylor for Doug Pederson; Dowell Loggains for Adam Gase.

Looking around the league, I don’t see any examples of top offensive coaches who failed at their first coordinator gig. One caveat, though: “failure” is relative. The Eagles rank 18th in points and 22nd in total yards through Week 15: bad, but hardly “leap off the stat sheet” bad, especially if these were numbers from, say, 2016.

Speaking of Press Taylor, he is now on Ben Johnson’s Bears staff. Brian Johnson, the Kevin Patullo of 2023, is now on the Commanders staff. Remember John DeFilippo, the Pederson/Frank Reich assistant who got a lot of credit for the 2017 Eagles Super Bowl run? He lost two coordinator jobs, then spent a few years trying to salvage Justin Fields, then slipped into the UFL. I wouldn’t be surprised if we hear from Taylor as a coordinator again.

Mediocre coordinators who stick around long enough become like Greg Olson: the trustworthy old guy who can be counted on to get the players to line up properly, if nothing else.

Bad Divisions, Bad Divisions: Whatcha Gonna Do?

The Colts have not won the Sunbelt Division in over 10 years. Worse, they’ve fallen from the division’s only real NFL team to being one of the flagbearers of its typical buffoonery. It’s not just that Richardson was a bust, it’s that we never even got a chance to see if he woulda been *able* to develop. And to cap off his Indianapolis career — ending up on IR due to an injury caused by pregame warmup equipment — is a microcosm for modern Colts football and/or is the silliest workman comp fraud ever. So what would you do now, if you were the I-Threes? – Chillzilla

If I were Carlie Irsay-Gordon, I would gut the franchise.

Chris Ballard was my dad’s “guy,” and my dad didn’t have the most reliable judgment. Ballard’s crowning achievement after nine years was one early-season hot streak. At the first sign of real peril, he dragged a grandfather out of his BarcaLounger to play quarterback. C’mon.

I have a soft spot for Shane Steichen. But yes: three years with Anthony Richardson and you get a guy who can’t even get through pregame warmups without serious incident. Oh, and the Colts were starting to fade offensively even before Daniel Jones started playing hurt.

The Colts have an older roster. They have no first-round pick in 2025 due to the Sauce Gardner trade. The only viable quarterback under contract for 2026 is Ralphie Richardson. Jonathan Taylor is about to be a seventh-year running back. The Colts didn’t look like contenders on Labor Day. They look like they have missed their chance now.

Gordon-Irsay has the chance to push the New Owner Plunger while getting some degree of benefit-of-the-doubt. She should seize the opportunity.

What’s wrong with the Bucs? It looks like injuries to key players are mostly in the rearview mirror, but they can’t seem to win a game against their ACC competition level opponents. Bonus - who will win the NFC South? - Ori Lauterbach

There are still some key injuries on the Bucs interior offensive line. They are a factor, but hardly an excuse for losing to the Saints and Falcons.

The Bucs went 2-of-7 on fourth-down conversions against the Saints. Emeka Egbuka dropped a touchdown pass in that game. The Falcons recovered two of their own fumbles in their comeback against the Bucs last Thursday night.

Baker Mayfield is playing too much Hero Ball: running himself into peril and making risky throws. Todd Bowles’ blitzes are getting picked up, and opponents are finding the weak links in coverage behind them. The lack of a top-tier edge rusher has hurt a bit.

I think of the Bucs as a weaker version of the Ravens: bad luck and a handful of high-leverage mistakes make everything look worse than it really is. But again, that does not exonerate Bowles or Mayfield, who should have salted away two easy wins in the last two weeks.

There are no winners in the NFC South.

Might be too long for a mailbag question, but it’s equal parts fascinating and horrifying to watch entire divisions such as the NFC South stay so consistently terrible for so long. Is it a weird coincidence, or something about that division that makes them so efficiently inefficient compared to the other exciting and competitive divisions? - KeithTNC

My hypothesis about the NFC South is that all four teams have been so mediocre for so many years that it has created a self-scouting problem.

Here’s what I wrote about the Falcons in the FTN Almanac this summer:

The woeful NFC South creates its own set of distortions. When a team plays a mid-major schedule for years, it becomes hard to self-scout players like [Drake] London, Bijan [Robinson], [A.J.] Terrell or the stalwarts on the offensive line. Sure, they’re good. But none of the home-grown Falcons have ever appeared in a playoff game. The Falcons have never beaten the Patrick Mahomes Chiefs, Josh Allen Bills or Lamar Jackson Ravens. They never beat Tom Brady’s Bucs. They haven’t faced the 49ers since 2022 or the Lions since Dan Campbell turned the franchise around. The “big wins” that Falcons veterans have been a part of – last year’s Week 2 comeback against the Eagles, a similar Week 2 comeback against the Packers in 2023, various early-season nail-biters against the Bucs – weren’t exactly championship-caliber tests of strength.

In other words, it’s hard to evaluate how even the Falcons’ best players will fare if they are ever removed from their climate-controlled hothouse. The Falcons may be purposely-building a wild-card also-ran in ways even DVOA cannot quite tease out.

In retrospect, the Buccaneers were probably doing the same thing the Falcons were doing, with the added distortion of having a bunch of guys with Brady Rings. The Panthers are gassed up by a pair of wacky upsets; they are likely to walk away from 2025 with a false impression of how close they are to actual contention.

If my hypothesis is indeed true, then I am not sure how the cycle ends. The Bucs probably need a new head coach. The Falcons need a new regime. The Panthers need to do something at quarterback which I am 99.997% certain that they won’t do. We shall see.

If the Vikings win out and McCarthy puts together a strong set of games, how many draft picks should they trade for Joe Burrow? – MT

You have it backwards. The Vikings should trade McCarthy to the Jets for a bunch of their extra draft picks.

TOMORROW: More snappy answers to highly-informed and thoughtful questions!