NFL Coaching Carousel Goes Pow!, Wham! Blough!
While teams and head coaching candidates continue speed dating, the spotlight shifts to the coordinator and executive carousels.
The coaching carousel is a creaky, unamusing amusement ride. It turns slowly enough to bore a preschooler. Everyone is waiting for the Seahawks to be eliminated, because Klint Kubiak is now Bill Walsh or whatever. Whee.
Fortunately, there is some actual news elsewhere in Funzieland.
New Kid on the Blough
Here is everything that anyone on earth knows about new Commanders offensive coordinator David Blough:
- It’s pronounced “Blawwww,” not “Blah,” “Bloff,” “Blug,” “Blechh” or like a Scotsman trying to tell you to go around the corner. So no, this segment header doesn’t work audibly. It looks amusing on the screen, though.
- He threw a 75-yard touchdown pass to Kenny Golladay as Matthew Stafford’s backup in a Thanksgiving loss to the Bears in 2019. Congratulations to all colleagues who fired off their Maybe this kid could be a starter next year takes before the turkey left the oven and Blough was immediately forgotten.
- He served as a backup quarterback for Dan Campbell’s Lions in 2021 and Kliff Kingsbury’s Cardinals in 2022. He spent 2023 on the Lions practice squad.
- He joined the Commanders staff as assistant quarterback coach in 2024.
- He got promoted to actual quarterback coach when Tavita Pritchard leapt the sinking Commanders ship to coach at Stanford in December of 2025.
- Campbell wanted to hire Blough for the Lions’ offensive coordinator vacancy last week. Or at least wanted to interview him. Or at least wanted the Commanders to think he wanted to interview him.
- He inherited Kliff Kingsbury’s hairstyle and stubblebeard. Seriously, these men cannot help but imitate the alpha narcissist. Middle school cheerleaders would counsel NFL assistant coaches to acquire a healthier sense of self.
That’s it: the entire Blough portfolio. I assure you that Blough’s wife couldn’t write a more comprehensive biography.
I checked Ben Standig’s outstandig Commanders newsletter, Last Man Standig, for more details about Blough. Standig has some stray press-conference quotes about Blough from Kingsbury and Dan Quinn, a reminder that the Washington franchise was once a breeding ground for offensive masterminds (it once won Super Bowls, too), and one crucial insider detail: Jayden Daniels likes Blough.
So Blough is Quinn’s sad divorcee Kingsbury surrogate. Or he’s the hamster that mom and dad bought to replace poor Mister Whiskers, who escaped his cage and died behind the sofa. He looks so similar that maybe Jayden won’t notice. Or Blough is the next Sean McVay, but even more precocious. McVay, after all, needed three years as a tight ends coach before he got promoted to offensive coordinator. Blough was only a full-fledged position coach, working mostly with third-stringer Josh Johnson, for about three weeks.
Quinn probably didn’t want to fire Kingsbury. But Quinn certainly didn’t want to get fired himself. Sometimes, you gotta yeet a buddy who never stood a chance to succeed (the Commanders offense was obliterated by injuries) to save yourself. That’s just leadership, NFL-style.
So Quinn sought a Five Below Kingsbury knockoff, preferably one who posed no threat to his waning power. The Campbell interview gave Blough a credibility bump. The Daniels relationship and “continuity” were additional selling points, though isn’t “continuity” supposed to be Quinn’s job? Why gut senior management, then promote senior management’s prized proteges from within? That’s the sort of thing venture capitalists do to cut costs before tearing a once-proud corporation down to the studs and selling it for scrap.
Kingsbury has lots of faults. But he was a clever play designer, he deserves a great deal of the credit for Daniels’ (and the Commanders’) 2024 season, and he brought gobs of college and pro coaching experience to the table.
Blough is the blankest of slates. He appears to have been overpromoted in the sort of backroom political maneuver that inevitably backfires. But if Quinn, Daniels and the Commanders are lucky, Blough could turn out to be just about anybody.
Heck, he could even turn out to be the next Kliff Kingsbury.
What if He Promises Not to Bite the QB’s Head Off This Time?
The Commanders plan to interview Brian Flores for their defensive coordinator vacancy. Which prompts the question: why isn’t Flores getting interviews for head coaching vacancies? Flores interviewed with the Ravens last week, but if that went well we would not be hearing about coordinator interviews this week.
The simple answers:
- Flores is black, so he swims against the same ceaseless undertow of implicit bias which will inevitably pull Brian Daboll (who blithely tried to cripple his quarterback this year) and Matt Nagy into another welcoming harbor.
- Flores sued the Dolphins and NFL for discrimination after he was fired. That case (or its procedural details, at least) was elevated to the Supreme Court last week, so it was fresh in the minds of executives scanning their Rolodoxes for head coaching candidates. And,
- Flores mishandled Tua Tagovailoa’s early career in Miami very publicly and memorably. He also burned through four offensive coordinators in three years.
That’s a rather potent trifecta, don’t you think? You don’t have to be racist to want to avoid hiring someone who is literally taking his former employer to the Supreme Court. You don’t have to be vindictive about litigation to wish to avoid a head coach whose past history suggests that he thinks the offense has cooties. You don’t have to be the last of the Tua apologists to think, Well, Mike McDaniel got Pro Bowl seasons out of Tua before reaching the point where he wanted to throttle him; maybe we should just interview McDaniel.
Granted, I would interview Flores for a head coaching vacancy, because I am an enlightened soul with nothing but inclusiveness, redemption and lollipops in my heart, plus zero self-preservation instincts. But I can’t bring myself to tsk-tsk at executives who take a long, hard look at the 2019-21 Dolphins, then allow their eyes to scroll down toward a safe, likeable Jesse Minter.
Flores-to-the-Raiders was the tealeaf-reading shipper’s favorite last week. But Flores was not on the Raiders’ long (and largely boilerplate) interview docket. There’s scuttlebutt that Tom Brady floated Flores’ name to gauge league reaction but then retracted it as a favor to the league that’s allowing him to serve as both Raiders showrunner and Fox broadcaster. It’s just as likely, however, that the Raiders/Brady pairing was always just fanfic.
A deeper explanation of the Flores situation came from Ryan Fitzpatrick, Flores’ starter in 2019 and Tagovailoa’s long reliever in 2020, on a Jets-centric podcast last week.
“Which version of Brian Flores are we getting?” Fitzpatrick rhetorically asked.
Fitzpatrick noted that Flores was initially demanding-yet-approachable during the infamous Tank for Tua year. But “halfway through that year, we hadn’t won a game yet. And there was a shift in the way he was approaching his job … As his tenure went on in Miami, he kind of became unrecognizable.”
Fitzpatrick noted that Flores burned through a bunch of veteran coaches, including some who arrived with him from the Patriots. Fitzpatrick did not name names, but the list includes Chad O’Shea, Patrick Graham, Chan Gailey, Jim Caldwell and Eric Studesville. “When people say, ‘Give me somebody from Miami that coached under you as a reference, so we can talk to them…’ I think he burned a lot of bridges there. I think he alienated himself from the entire staff.
“I think by the end of his time there he became a dictator. He ruined a lot of those relationships.”
It sounds like Flores, who was accustomed to 18-hour days as a Bill Belichick assistant, cracked and went cuckoonanners under the strain of 20-to-26 hour days. That happens often. It’s probably what happened to Daboll, as well as predecessor Joe Judge. Some coaches get second chances. Very few strive to speak truth to power. It’s a tall order to try to do both, especially after ticking off your players, bosses and peers. That’s not a political statement, merely an obvious one.
The Vikings have been very vocal in their efforts to sign Flores to a new contract. But the Flores negotiations raise a question that I do not know the answer to: who is in charge of contract negotiations for an assistant coach? Kevin O’Connell can decide whether to keep a coordinator or let him go, but not how much to pay him. General manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah? Probably, put perhaps this unusual staffing/budgetary issue falls under COO Andrew Miller’s purview, or might even get kicked up to the Wilf tier. It’s rare for a coordinator’s contract negotiations to become a point of contention or a news item.
Highest paid coordinator in the NFL would be a worthy consolation prize for Flores and a boon for the Vikings. As for another head coaching opportunity, he’s exactly as deserving as Daboll or Nagy. That’s not really an endorsement.
Sullivan’s Non-Travels
Wanna see an impressive dossier for an incoming general manager? Check out the CV for new Dolphins showrunner John-Eric Sullivan, as cut-’n’-pasted from Wikipedia, where it was probably cut-’n’-pasted from a Packers media guide:
- Operations: Green Bay Packers (2003)
- Training camp intern: Green Bay Packers (2004–2007)
- Football operations department employee: Green Bay Packers (2008–2011)
- Central Plains region scout: Green Bay Packers (2012–2015)
- Southeast region scout: Green Bay Packers (2016–2017)
- Director of college scouting: Green Bay Packers (2018–2021)
- Co-director of player personnel: Green Bay Packers (2022–2025)
- Vice president of player personnel: Miami Dolphins (2026–present)
Talk about a methodical rise through the ranks! I love the specifics. “Operations” to “intern” to “employee:” from the back of the mailroom to the front! And then a promotion from the Central Plains to the Southeast, where the college players, autumn weather and food are much better. Finally, eight years in the rooms where it happens, just in time for a momentous franchise-changing quarterback decision.
Sullivan served through the Mike Sherman, Ted Thompson and Brian Gutekunst administrations in Green Bay. He lasted, in some capacity or another, from Sherman through Mike McCarthy to Matt LaFleur, Brett Favre through Aaron Rodgers to Jordan Love. He never moved on but has never had to: the Packers have been a competitive franchise for Sullivan’s entire tenure, and he has been steadily advancing.
It’s easy to January-morning quarterback many of the Packers’ front office decisions over the years. Heaven knows that a certain former Packers quarterback did it. Thompson could have spent a little more money in free agency. Gutekunst could have gotten Rodgers that first-round receiver he wanted, especially when it might have been Justin Jefferson. The Micah Parsons trade was certainly a windmill swing. But the Packers have made few WTF personnel mistakes over the last quarter century. If that “high floor” is what Sullivan brings to the table – and let’s be clear right now that it’s impossible to tell if a career front office functionary is Will Riker or Dwight Schrute until they start making the big decisions – the Dolphins will take it.
Top coaching candidates will probably also take Sullivan. The Dolphins reportedly didn’t reach out to John Harbaugh – some intern must have hidden Stephen Ross’ phone behind the toilet – until the Sullivan hiring was finalized. Harbaugh never had full personnel control in Baltimore but certainly wants to see at least the skeleton of a professional front office in place. Harbaugh is also letting the Giants and Titans wine and dine him while reportedly “watching film” on Jaxson Dart and Cam Ward; nothing he sees on film will make him hang up on Ross.
Harbaugh is such a popular candidate that the Dolphins media barely shrugged when the team reached out to Chris Shula. The usual suspects (Klint Kubiak, Kevin Stefanski, Robert Saleh) are also on the Dolphins call list. That list indicates that Harbaugh can spend at least another week with his family before choosing who to abandon them for next.
(Thursday morning reports indicate that Harbaugh is close to a deal with the Giants. We’ll see. The Giants have a knack for messing these things up.)
The most encouraging element of the Dolphins regime change so far is not Sullivan or the pursuit of Harbaugh but the fact that they are doing things in the proper order. Sullivan will be in the room for the head coaching interviews. He might be pushed to select Harbaugh if the Giants deal falls through, but how much pushing would that really take? Sullivan and the new coach can then replace Tua Tagovailoa, who has already merrily packed his bags.
The general manager picks the coach, both pick the quarterback (and/or the offensive coordinator who helps pick the quarterback). Sounds simple. Yet the Dolphins have been finding ways to mix that order up for nearly 20 years.
Fresh Out of Takes
Mike Tomlin’s departure from the Steelers left me feeling a little hollow inside. The parting-of-ways feels like an “amicable” divorce. Anyone who has seen a few friends go through “amicable” divorces – or has gone through one – knows how surreal and dislocating they can be. No tragedy. No toaster-throwing melodrama. Just a divergence of paths, ambitions, goals, feelings, desires and values, handled with maturity and responsibility.
And then, when no one can see and judge you, maybe a toaster throwing.
Tomlin can now do whatever Tomlin wants. Television producers want to gobble him up like toffee popcorn. The Titans should have already left 50 messages by now. But the Steelers retain his rights. Amicable partings often come with extra financial/emotional strings. I’ll finish paying the mortgage. You won’t introduce the kids to any of your new “special friends” for a few years.
Or he can chill for a year. His sons and daughter are in college. His daughter, Harley Quinn Tomlin, is a gymnast at University of Georgia. Have I mentioned before that Tomlin’s daughter is named Harley Quinn? Maybe he can spend a year writing a Batman run for DC comics. It would probably be better than anything written by that other famous father of a Harley Quinn: Kevin Smith.
(COME AT ME FOR THAT ONE.)
As for the Steelers, here’s ESPN’s Marcus Spears on general manager Omar Khan: “The pressure is on Omar Khan. Like, that’s the name everybody should be paying attention to. We’re only two years removed from Russell Wilson and Justin Fields being on the Pittsburgh Steelers football team. This has been an abject failure at trying to figure out what the future of your franchise is going to be, at that position. So the general manager, now, is under the most amount of pressure.”
Khan has been with the Steelers since 2001. He was the protege of Kevin Colbert, who retired in 2022. He’s part of the vaunted continuity that has been a blurse for the Steelers for at least half a decade. Before finding a quarterback, he must find a head coach who shares the Steelers’ vision, but not too much of the Steelers vision. Embracing change is the whole point behind a parting-of-the-ways.
It is going to be weird reading headlines like, “Steelers interview Anthony Campanile to replace Mike Tomlin.” It will be strange to see a new face on the podium at the scouting combine. Everything is going to feel askew for a while, if not just wrong.
It will pass. And once the Steelers have new coaches and a new quarterback, different will feel, at least temporarily, a lot like better.
