The Usual Dark Monday

Yesterday was the usual dark day for coaches in the NFL. To date, eight head coaches have been fired. Two were fired during the season:

Cleveland Browns: Browns : Hue Jackson
Green Bay Packers: Mike McCarthy

Six were fired in the last 24+ hours:

New York Jets: Todd Bowles
Miami Dolphins: Adam Gase
Cincinnati Bengals: Marvin Lewis
Denver Broncos: Vance Joseph
Tampa Bay Buccaneers: Dirk Koetter
Arizona Cardinals: Steve Wilks

One general manager was fired during the season:

Raiders: Reggie McKenzie

The Raiders have hired Mike Mayock as general manager. This is a terrific opportunity for Mayock but it's a loss for everyone that's devoted to his terrific draft analysis for NFL Network. I miss him already.

It was a particularly sad day for a group of coaches that are somehow still struggling to gain the slightest traction in the profession. As Damien Woody tweeted yesterday: Black Monday is literally...black. Of the eight head coaches and one general manager that were fired six are African-American. Entering the 2018 season there were eight minority head coaches. Now there are three: Mike Tomlin, Ron Rivera, and Anthony Lynn. If the Rooney family wasn't so loyal to their head coaches Tomlin might've been gone after a disappointing 2018 season. There's still time. For what it's worth, the Cardinals firing of Wilks is the most frustrating to me. How do you hire a head coach and then only give him a single year to coach? That's ridiculous. A fist-time, defensive-minded head coach saddled with a rookie quarterback? It's a difficult combination and they were only given a single year to make it work. It's also further proof that the Bidwills are one of the worst owners in the league. It shouldn't be this hard for qualified minority coaches to receive and maintain head coaching opportunities in the NFL. At least promising coaches Eric Bieniemy, Brian Flores, and Kris Richard are getting some interview opportunities.  Hopefully those aren't just token, Rooney Rule opportunities. Perhaps there will be the annual check-in with David Shaw. Considering the NFL's track record with minority head coaches why would Shaw ever leave the comforts of Stanford? Even if Bieniemy, Flores, Richard, and Shaw are all head coaches in the NFL next season it's still a net loss for minorities.

It's interesting and revealing, and won't be the least bit surprising, that McCarthy could have another head coaching chance perhaps as early as this week or next.

One head coach that didn't lose his job is Minnesota Vikings' Mike Zimmer. I found it ridiculous that anyone even thought that he was on the way out. The Vikings had a very disappointing season but Zimmer has completely turned around the football team. I think people forget how horrible things were in 2011. The Vikings were 3-13 in 2013, the year before he was hired. Zimmer turned things around in a single season and made the playoffs in 2015. Through the ridiculous NFL discipline of Adrian Peterson, Teddy Bridgewater's freak knee injury, his own multiple eye surgeries, Norv Turner walking out midseason, Sam Bradford's unreliable knees, and Tony Sparano's sudden, tragic passing, Everson Griffen's break down, Zimmer has consistently gotten a competitive football team ready to play. He's coached the Vikings for five seasons and has yet to have a quarterback for consecutive seasons. For five years I've wondered what Zimmer could do with this team if he only had to deal with his whole team on the field.

Anyway, it's the usual dark day for NFL head coaches. My hope for all those that lost their job is that a better opportunity is around the corner. For Steve Wilks, any opportunity is better than the one he just had.