A colleague recently came across a piece in which I graded the 2021 head coaching class. At the time, I was high on both Robert Saleh and Brandon Staley, and less so on a coach whom I did not see as adding value as a play-caller on either side of the ball: Dan Campbell. 

I think the psychopathy of our time is the refusal to admit mistakes, which is why I want to be more process focused when it comes to grading this year’s class. Anything can happen when you’re a head coach. You can be struggling one year, then suddenly at your disposal is the greatest nonquarterback playmaker and a handful of perfectly chosen, low-cost free agents, and you can win the Super Bowl. 

You can also be turning your franchise around, then your owner can come back from overseas and torch the entire building to satiate some festering impatience. 

So much of this comes down to ownership, their willingness to spend and their willingness to sit on their hands while a vision is executed. Which is why I’m asking you to take this grade as a kind of whole organizational grade and less a reflection of just one man. That’s part of it, but recognize that Bill Belichick was not viewed as a knockout candidate in Cleveland and nor was Pete Carroll until his third stint in the NFL. 

Coaches are listed in alphabetical order.

The Raiders went from in on Ben Johnson and prepared to make a generous financial offer to arriving at a decision on a general manager that kept Johnson in Chicago. If John Spytek is great as GM, then missing out on a theoretical chance to hire a promising coordinator doesn’t matter. The Raiders ended up going with Pete Carroll, and I’ll have to temper my excitement here because I am prone to overrating staffs that are full of coaches I have a great deal of respect for. On paper, I absolutely love the lineup of Carroll as a tone-setting, vibe-crafting head coach, Chip Kelly as the CEO of the offense and Patrick Graham, perennially one of the most underrated defensive coordinators in the NFL. I’ve been talking about Kelly’s second act in the NFL throughout the winter with his national championship performance at Ohio State standing out as a culmination of his evolution. But I also loved the combination of Frank Reich, Ejiro Evero and Thomas Brown in Carolina, a staff that wound up being incredibly jumbled and ineffective. 

What the Raiders need right now is a firm hand on the steering wheel. We overrate this nebulous idea of knowing what it’s supposed to look like, but Carroll has a real vision and gentle touch to guide the Raiders through what promises to be the second and third phases of a rebuild. That is more than Las Vegas could say about the staff last year, which was a splatter painting of veteran coaches and different ideals. My one true gripe is that, with a coach on a truncated three-year contract, there should be some kind of succession plan on the staff. I don’t see that here. 

Grade: B- 

Coen is a gifted play-caller who was high on the Jacksonville Jaguars’ list to begin with. However, the route they took to get to this point was less than ideal. Insisting on hanging on to GM Trent Baalke until it looked as though it would cost them Coen—and take them out of the running for Ben Johnson period—limited the scope of Jacksonville’s search and likely forced the Jaguars to spend extra to get a coach they could have had earlier. Coen was able to bounce back to Tampa Bay, secure a massive contract, and have that security when dealing with Jacksonville at the bargaining table. If the Jaguars come out of this with Coen and Ian Cunningham as general manager, I think that should be considered a win despite how the Coen hiring took place and cost Jacksonville the chance to surround the 39-year-old with more experience on the staff. Coen’s offensive coordinator, Grant Udinski, is incredibly talented and highly sought after. He’s also 29. Anthony Campanile is also a first-time coordinator on the defensive side. Sometimes this can be a benefit for a coach finding his voice, but we also have plenty of examples of former head coaching experience, or tenured coordinators, taking a lot of pressure off a first-time head coach and play-caller.   

Grade: C+ 

Glenn comes in at a fortuitous time. After the New York Jets’ franchise was embarrassed, it turned to Glenn, a former player, for help cleaning it up. With that responsibility, Glenn is allowed something his predecessor, Saleh, was not: the ability to create a high ground for himself when dealing with the likes of Aaron Rodgers and ownership. Glenn has established a tough-guy facade for himself early on, no doubt in line with the organization’s hopes of recreating some of the magic Campbell conjured in Detroit. The Jets are in a similarly perilous place as the pandemic-era Lions, beginning Glenn’s tenure with a handful of talented players but little in the way of answers at some of the most critical positions. 

The Jets’ hiring process was incredibly robust and while I heard some grumbling about the scope of this process, I also heard praise for interviewing the likes of Mike Locksley at Maryland. No doubt, the franchise, after a handful of misses at the position (and really, organizational rot that clouded the ability for the coaches they did hire to succeed) needed a restorative interview process that will supply ownership with real information on a host of candidates that can inform future searches and hires. That was certainly accomplished this time around. 

As for Glenn, the Jets again start over with a first-time play-caller in Tanner Engstrand. Defensively, the well-liked and respected Steve Wilks should allow for Glenn to take a larger role in every other facet of the organization. 

Grade: B 

Johnson has been one of the most coveted head coaching candidates in football since 2022 and has turned down multiple opportunities to run his own team. He’s an incredibly hard worker and brilliant play-caller, though we have gotten to know Johnson with a league-best set of tools (elite offensive line and skill-position players) at his disposal. This represents the great promise and risk of hiring Johnson for the Bears. If the Lions were elevated because of Johnson, this is a tide that lifts Caleb Williams to unseen heights in the NFL. If Johnson’s creativity was merely a byproduct of having a veteran QB, an unstoppable offensive line and a whirlwind of receiver and running back talent, he’s going to be swimming upstream against the current of perception. 

All that said, I think Chicago did the best job of any team in terms of creating a broad and valuable spectrum of interviews (including the offensive coordinator of the division-rival Packers). The Bears interviewed coaches in the college and NFL space, they got time with the most sought-after candidates this cycle and made a strong pitch to Johnson, which prevented the Lions’ offensive coordinator from shopping around in Las Vegas or Jacksonville. There’s obviously a long way to go, but Johnson also succeeded in my mind by securing Dennis Allen as defensive coordinator. Allen offers an important sounding board for Johnson and the ability to help Johnson craft team messaging. Declan Doyle is also a sharp choice at offensive coordinator. Doyle rose quickly in the Sean Payton system and was, at one point, the youngest coach in the NFL to take charge of a position room while in Denver. Holding on to Richard Hightower should not be overlooked, either. When I completed my list of future head coaches in 2024, the omission of Hightower was by far the one I received the most comments about. Hightower is well-respected with a great ability to relate to players and is looked at as a possible future head coach himself. 

Grade: A-

I thought the New Orleans Saints played this one incredibly smart. This was, according to nearly everyone I spoke to, the worst job available this offseason. While featuring some talented veteran players under contract, New Orleans’s long-term prospects are clouded by its ability to clean up its financial situation and turn over the roster. Moore is going to have to carve out a say in this process with a general manager that seems closer to ownership than an employee able to be hired and fired. 

Still, Moore did a masterful job simplifying life for the Philadelphia Eagles this year. He pared down an offense that was beautiful but insistent on featuring every aspect of itself instead of honing in on the central idea of effectiveness through the easiest available route. A.J. Brown can block well, too. As the season went on, having the weight of the sun removed from Jalen Hurts’s back allowed him to lean in on a few deadly deep-strike opportunities that were almost exclusively designed one-on-one shots and weaponize himself as a runner in a smart way. 

Waiting to hire Moore gave New Orleans the full run of Super Bowl coordinators. The Saints could have interviewed and hired Moore, Vic Fangio, Steve Spagnuolo or Matt Nagy without any competition. Really, they could have gone after Kliff Kingsbury or Joe Brady as well without feeling the pressure of another team breathing down its neck. This was the only avenue for the Saints that was simply not going to be able to out-compete during the heat of the carousel. And, again, it’s smart because coaches could be feeling differently about the prospect of leaving at the end of the season than they did in the thick of a playoff run.  

As for Moore’s prospects, who knows? His projected defensive coordinator hire, Staley, has head coaching experience and has been forever blessed by the Sean McVay and Kyle Shanahan crew as an able coach with strong roots in the Fangio system. 

Grade: B+

I expanded on my thoughts when the hire was announced, but this was not a real coaching search. Schottenheimer could very well win 10 games next year, but I’d refuse to wear egg on my face because Dallas executed the laziest search I’ve witnessed in modern times. The fact that the Jones family did not even wait out championship weekend to see if Kingsbury would take an interview (I bet he would have), and instead hurled out a candidate who has not been talked about as a potential head coach since the 2010 season, not only puts the candidate at a disadvantage but the team as a whole. While Schottenheimer’s staff has come together reasonably well, especially with the hiring of former Arizona Cardinals offensive line coach Klayton Adams, the Jones family followed up its greatest hit to date—not signing a wildly affordable Derek Henry—with the latest example of aggressive penny pinching. The Jones family doesn’t want a ring right now. It wants profit. Act accordingly when it comes to planning your next excursion to The Star.  

Grade: D

While I detested the idea of conducting a pair of sham interviews and firing a hand-selected coach after one season, we cannot praise the Eagles for cutting ties with their coaches and quarterbacks early, then knock the New England Patriots for believing that something was not right with the Jerod Mayo regime and ignoring Mike Vrabel’s return to the market. 

Sometimes, good for a franchise comes out of something reprehensible and deleterious for the league as a whole. And, certainly, New England has cared little about outside perception as it’s built the winningest franchise in modern NFL history. Vrabel allows the Patriots to hand select the most sustainable part of their roots, while eschewing the less impactful parts of Bill Belichick’s regime. Vrabel has worst-to-first potential as a head coach and the gravitas to attract big names to work with his ascending star quarterback. For now, that’s manifested in the hiring of Josh McDaniels, though Vrabel—and New England—are clearly not married to any idea except for one that results in winning at all costs. 

Again, there was nothing warm and fuzzy about this slash-and-burn process. But, how often are the teams around at the end of the season concerned about that kind of thing? 

Grade: A-