Should These Teams Let Their Coaches Walk?
Successfully head-coaching in the NFL is a Herculean task. One has to create a playbook, manage a roster, maximize their team’s strengths, cover their weaknesses, and do it all better than whoever their opponent is, week in and week out. When the team fails to win, all eyes are on the head coach in a league where patience is not a virtue. Countless men have worked their entire adult lives towards finally getting a chance to run an NFL team, only to have that dream snatched away after a few short years of mediocrity. Adding to the stress and pressure of it all is the knowledge that this is a job filled by only 32 people on the entire planet, with literal thousands waiting in the wings for an opportunity to open up. Losing is all on you, even when success isn’t; second chances are rare, and there are always countless others who can be brought in to replace you.
I mention all of this to contextualize just how impressive it is that some coaches can surpass all of these challenges and be consistently good at what they do, season after season. Finding a good, let alone great, head coach at the NFL level is like finding a diamond in the rough. Good coaching is invaluable and can turn bottom-feeding teams into upstarts, upstarts into contenders, and contenders into champions. Considering their rarity and the gargantuan impact they have on a team, once a franchise gets a good coach, they should never let them go, right?
This might sound crazy, but no, not necessarily. Every year in the NFL, there are multiple good, even great teams, but only one champion. In the hypercompetitive world of pro football, it’s Super Bowl or bust; all other accomplishments are secondary. Take a look at the Kansas City Chiefs this past season. They had their best regular season record in franchise history, won the AFC championship, and appeared in their third Super Bowl in a row. That has to be considered an amazing season by any metric, right? Not if you ask anyone who watched them be massacred by the Eagles in Super Bowl LIX. All those wins, all that success, all of it felt like it was washed away by the results of the final game of the year. The mentality, and therefore reality, of the NFL is that it isn’t enough to be good, it isn’t enough to be great, it is all about being the best.
Several teams in the league have good to great coaches, but still can’t cross the finish line of winning the Lombardi trophy. Some of those teams should consider the possibility of moving on from those coaches. I want to emphasize my word choice of “moving on.” I do not think these coaches should be fired, as you should only fire a bad coach, and these are not bad coaches. Rather, I think that these franchises should let their coaches reach the end of their current contracts, inform them that they won’t be re-signing them, and allow both parties to work on an exit/succession plan.
Everything in football, much like any other team sport, is about putting the right people in the right spots at the right time. Peyton Manning is one of the greatest QBs ever to walk a football field; if I put him at cornerback on my depth chart, I’ve made a huge mistake, to the detriment of myself, my team, and Manning. No one would ever say “Kyler Murray is a good football player” if we only got to see him take snaps at offensive tackle. For a far less ridiculous example, look at Drew Brees. Brees is remembered as an all-time great quarterback, one of the best of his entire generation, but you wouldn’t know that if you only looked at his first few years in the league as a Charger. Drew Brees had to leave San Diego and come to New Orleans to become Drew Brees. Sometimes a change of scenery makes all the difference in the world.
This isn’t some weird idea that I’ve pulled from nowhere; this is a move based in recent history, to tremendous positive effect for both coach and franchise. All you have to do is follow the legendary coaching career of Andy Reid. Reid was the head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles from 1999 to 2012. During his 14-season stint with the team, Reid took the Eagles to five NFC title games, a Super Bowl appearance, and only three losing seasons. To this day, Reid holds the Eagles’ franchise record for most wins as a head coach, with 140 combined regular season and playoff victories. Andy Reid was a great head coach during his time in Philly, so what happened that ended his time there?
Put simply, it was time for a change in the City of Brotherly Love. At the time, Reid was known as an amazing regular-season coach who just couldn’t get it done in the postseason. The goal of every NFL team is to win the Super Bowl, and the powers that be in Philly felt that, as good as Andy was, he just wasn’t the guy to get them their first Lombardi. After his final campaign with the Eagles in 2012 ended with a rare losing record, it was announced that the team would not be renewing his contract. Reid was given time to encourage his successor, shop around for his next coaching job, and be honored for his accomplishments as head of the Eagles. Most importantly, Andy Reid was not fired by the Philadelphia Eagles; he finished out his contract and moved on.
What happened in the years after Philadelphia let their best-ever coach walk away? Both parties ended up getting exactly what they always wanted. Just five seasons after Reid left Philly, the Eagles won their first-ever Super Bowl. Meanwhile, Andy Reid went to Kansas City, continued his regular season brilliance, and finally won himself not one, not two, but three Super Bowls. Both the Eagles and Andy Reid wanted to win the Super Bowl, but they had to split apart to make it happen for both parties. Even right now, both parties are far more successful separately than they were together, with the Eagles entering the 2025 season as reigning Super Bowl champions, while Andy Reid faces a limitless future.
That brings me back to my original point: sometimes, everyone should let a good coach walk away. There are three coaches in particular that I feel might do well with a location change, as well as three franchises that could find the promised land of Lombardi without them. The first coach is Cincinnati Bengals head coach Zac Taylor. Taylor has been in charge in Cincinnati for six seasons now, with some very mixed results. In 2021, Taylor took his team to a Super Bowl appearance, just one year removed from an awful four-win season. However, he’s seen diminishing returns every year since, missing the playoffs for the last two consecutive seasons with back-to-back 9-8 records. Zac Taylor’s contract comes to an end after the 2026 season, meaning he has two seasons left to right the ship and return to contending status. If that doesn’t come to pass, Taylor could use a fresh start, and the Bengals could look for a successor who can get the best from the primes of Joe Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase.
The next coach is Sean McDermott of the Buffalo Bills. McDermott has been the man in Buffalo for eight years, posting only a single losing season during that time. His Bills have finished every single year this decade with at least 11 regular-season wins and one playoff victory. It is no secret that the 2020s Bills are a force to be reckoned with in the AFC and that McDermott is a tremendous coach who can put together a fierce roster. It is equally no secret that the Bills just cannot seem to get to the Super Bowl, no matter who they face or how good they are. McDermott is signed through the 2027 season with Buffalo and thus has three seasons left to at least finally win an AFC title. McDermott worked under Andy Reid for 12 years in Philly, and he should consider taking a page out of his old mentor’s book if he can’t get it done in Buffalo. As for the Bills organization, the priority should be getting the reigning MVP, Josh Allen, his first Lombardi, regardless of who leads him to one.
Finally, and most passionately, I believe that an amicable separation between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Mike Tomlin is long overdue. Tomlin is rightfully an icon of the Steelers franchise. He has been the head coach of the organization for 18 years straight and has never once had a losing season. He’s also the only Super Bowl winner of the coaches listed here, something that should be kept in mind when discussing him, no matter what. He is the very standard of consistent competence in the NFL, the iron man of never being bad in the NFL. The word “stability” should have a picture of his steely, bearded visage next to it in the dictionary.
It is time for that stability to finally be broken. The days of the Steelers being a consistent Super Bowl contender have been over for quite a while now. Instead, since 2017, they have been either just edged out of the playoffs, or do enough to get there only to get bounced out in their first postseason game. By the time Tomlin’s contract expires after the 2027 season, it will have been almost 20 years since his Super Bowl victory. The Steelers will be scouting players in the draft who will have been too young to remember that win. Unless Tomlin can recapture the magic of his first few seasons with the team, I strongly believe that 2028 should see the Steelers with a new shot caller and Tomlin in charge of another franchise, particularly one that can’t build a culture of consistent competence. Tomlin is a great coach and the Steelers are a legendary organization, but just as we’ve talked about Reid and the Eagles, sometimes the best thing you can do is walk away from each other.
