THE NEW COACH FASHION SHOW 2026
Things are finally settled and everyone has filled their openings. This was a doozy of a coaching shift, so lets talk about it all in one big post.
NY GIANTS – JOHN HARBAUGH
To be honest no matter who the Giants hired I would be skeptical. The rot comes from within, at the top, with an incompetent and now sick John Mara, his family, and recently revealed Epstien creep Steve Tisch. What the Giants needed more than anything was a coach with the ability to fight that power, to bulldoze the nepotism and upset the system. I was shocked to see them do exactly that. Harbaugh comes in as a CEO type coach, with enough clout and influence to get his way, and the results were immediate. Several longtime bad Giants institutions got fired or let go, Joe Schoen has been pushed to the side, and Harbaugh has remade the staff in his image.
Will this work? I don’t know. Harbaugh has his flaws. But we needed a foundation layer, not a new second story. This is now Harbaugh’s franchise and I’m happy with that. I’m happy about the DC hire Dennard Wilson. I’m less thrilled about Matt Nagy, which felt like a panic hire after Monken took the Browns gig. But also adding Harbaugh groupie Greg Roman to boost the run game is okay with me. Those two guys together can build at least a partially effective offense, and I love the idea of a run-heavy Giants team. Don’t make Dart do it all. The Giants also hired former Titans HC Brian Callahan as Passing Game Coordinator, which, whatever.
ATLANTA FALCONS – KEVIN STEFANSKI
I love this hire for Atlanta. Kevin is going to know how to get the best out of Bijan Robinson. It remains to be seen how much of the Watson era was Stefanski’s fault, and he might share more blame than expected, but for now I love it. The Falcons are set up to take a good step forward with proper coaching, so I have somewhat higher expectations here.
BALTIMORE RAVENS – JESSE MINTER
It’s going to be really hard for all of us to adjust to seeing a new guy on the Ravens sideline. But this hire feels like the Ravens saw Macdonald go to Seattle and win and regret letting such a talent go. They basically went out and tried to hire their own Macdonald in Chargers DC Jesse Minter. Minter was stupendous for LA and should be able to whip that woeful defense into shape. Smart hire by the Ravens.
PITTSBURGH STEELERS – MIKE MCCARTHY
I feel like I’m softer on McCarthy than most judging from reactions, but this is still an odd hire to me. The Steelers don’t search for coaches much but they’ve always gone for defensive guys. McCarthy is an older, established offensive guy, and the Steelers have no QB as of writing. I don’t think Rodgers is coming back (Everyone who does seems to forget they didn’t seem to like each other at the end in GB), and I don’t know who the Steelers will target in the offseason. Kyler? Malik Willis? Do either of those guys feel right for McCarthy?
TENNESSEE TITANS – ROBERT SALEH
The Titans have been a joke since the AJ Brown trade so my expectations were low. They made a good decision! I think Saleh was doing an okay job in NY building a foundation but was stuck with Zach Wilson, and then Rodgers hopped over and kicked everything pre-built to the curb to take over. The results were a disaster and Saleh took the first jab. I’m glad he’s getting a second chance. What really pushed me over was the hiring of Brian Daboll as OC. Daboll was not suited to be a head coach but he was still a good OC, and he loved Ward coming out of college, so now he gets to work with his guy. Good for you, Titans.
Also of note, the Titans have maybe the baldest coaching staff of all time. The thumbs are gathering. Something is happening.
MIAMI DOLPHINS – JEFF HALFEY
It’s always funny how teams will frequently hire a type of guy opposite to the guy they just fired. Mike McDaniel was a weird little gremlin offense nerd, so now the Dolphins went out and got a defensive guy who looks like he walked right out of a military academy. He was only DC in Green Bay for 2 years, seemed to do a good job, not much to judge. The Dolphins are a mess, so we shouldn’t expect much this year.
ARIZONA CARDINALS – MIKE LAFEUR
I was not well aware of the second LaFleur until this hire. It’s the Cardinals, who cares. It won’t work out. He hired Nathaniel Hackett as OC, come on, let’s not pretend we have to take this seriously.
LAS VEGAS RAIDERS – KLINT KUBIAK
I kinda of talked about him on the previous comic, so I’ll keep it brief: Seems fine, Raiders feel like poison recently, don’t really know what to think. Klint has bad neck scruff in his official picture, I think that’s a bad sign. Have some grooming standards, Klint. I know it’s Vegas, but you can’t look like you’ve been on a week-long bender there till year 2.
CLEVELAND BROWNS – TODD MONKEN
Look, Todd, I get it. Head coaching opportunities don’t grow on trees, and this might be the best chance you get. I don’t blame you for taking your shot. Get that bag. Just saying, when Haslam drunk fires you in two years because you can’t turn Shedeur into a reliable starter, Harbaugh will gladly take you back, and we can pretend you came along the entire time.
BUFFALO BILLS – JOE BRADY
Sean McDermott being a good to great coach is a hill I have repeatedly died on this offseason and everything the Bills have done since firing him has only built a stout defensive perimeter around the base of that hill. Sean McDermott was not only a good coach, he might have been one of the few people saving this franchise from itself.
Pegula basically admitted McDermott got fired due to an emotional reaction after the playoff loss, when he saw Josh Allen crying. He quoted the controversial interception, which had nothing to do with McDemott. GM Brandon Beane, who almost everyone agrees deserved his share of the blame for the state of the team, was instead promoted. These men would then publicly trash Keon Coleman (A player who WAS STILL ON THE TEAM) and act like general boobs during the aftermath. They would interview Philip Rivers for the job, and Rivers would pull out for the first time in his life. They would then promote OC Joe Brady, proving all of this shit was worthless. If you are going to take the bold leap to move on from McDermott, why are you essentially just running back the same team anyway? McDermott was scapegoated and all of these idiot Bills fans pushing for his firing over the past several seasons are now going to see how fragile consistent success actually is in this league, especially when you have incompetent ownership.
Josh is still there, and as long as he’s healthy, the offense should be at least okay. I have no opinion on new DC Jim Leonard. I do not think 2025 was a hiccup year for Buffalo, I think it was the first slip at the top of a flight of stairs. There is always the possibility that this was the correct move, but generally all the rationalizations read like cope to me. When a team does something that feels stupid, it probably is.
OTHER NOTABLE THINGS
10 openings, 1 minority HC hire, Saleh (Lebanese). The NFL is not beating the systemic racism allegations anytime soon. Though I’m sure Tomlin would have gotten a job had he tried for one.
The Rams Chris Shula and Nate Scheelhaase got a lot of buzz during the cycle, but neither got hired. Kliff Kingsbury also decided to hop on board the Rams train and join the staff after bailing on Washington.
The cycle featured a LOT of new coordinators. Notable ones are Mike McDaniel joining Jim Harbaugh on the Chargers, which I love. Eric Bienemy is back in KC, and the last time the KC offense was fun was when he was there, so that might be interesting. The Broncos hired Davis Webb as OC, and that still boggles my mind because to me Davis Webb will always be the Giants rookie who got passed over for Geno during the Eli benching fiasco.
The Lions hired Drew Petzing over Mike McDaniel, a move that left most of us puzzled. Petzing didn’t seem particularly special in any way compared to McDaniel. The Packers replaced Hafley with Jonathan Gannon, which I think is fine. The Dolphins hired Bobby Slowik at OC, which might be an interesting case study to see if Slowik really was such a problem in Houston.
The Jets hired Frank Reich at OC, and yeah we can pretty much count on Glenn and company getting fired next year. The Eagles replaced Patullo with Sean Mannion, who is a hot commodity but still mostly unproven. I’m curious to see if the shade being thrown at Hurts lately ends up being anything.
McDaniel going to LA will be easier to commute for his shifts at Dutch Bros.
The Bills situation feels like the Pats 2 years ago. The fired a long time coach, hired an internal candidate who was a complete flop but we’re at least able to admit it and hire a real coach. Hope it works out well for Buffalo.
Hafley is such an odd choice. Going from coaching a .500 Boston College team to an NFL team two years later.
“If you are going to take the bold leap to move on from McDermott, why are you essentially just running back the same team anyway?”
EXACTLY.
The Bills fans that wanted McD fired generally point to this notion that McD chose all the players he wanted in the draft and Beane acquiesced. Their best example is when we took Greg Rousseau in the first round in 2021 and then Boogie Basham in the second round instead of Creed Humphrey.
Yeah, at least we just traded for DJ Moore, which is fine. Spent more than I wanted for a guy who is going to be 29, but whatever. The receiver corps is still meh.
The defense is completely devoid of talent at this point. All our stars are aging (Taron Johnson, Tre White, Matt Milano, Terrell Bernard) and the holes have been patched with mediocre backups like Dane Jackson or Daquon Jones. This is on Beane.
This will be a pivotal offseason.
Sadly the Titans failed to account for their being the Titans.
The stuff thrown at Hurts during the season seemed to be two-fold. First, yes, there was an element of “Jalen doesn’t want to do that”, but then again, he might have looked at the scheme they were trying to draw up and been like “you just want me to get killed”. Secondly, the fact that it came out mid-season, and then *after* the season, Jeff Stoutland left because, apparently, Sirianni blamed him for how inconsistent the offense was… Well, there’s more than a few Philly reporters and personalities that are starting to wonder if Nick was going overboard in trying to protect Patullo from further criticism.
FWIW the Bills probably didn’t want to resort to promoting Brady. Most of the candidates this cycle pulled their names from contention after Pegula got on a mic and basically told everyone he knee-jerk fired McDermott, Beane was untouchable, and when the Bills don’t make a SB in the near future as the roster deteriorates the coach will, in fact, be the go-to scapegoat.
Klink Kubiak feels like a great pokemon bet drawing for the future