It’s a good time to be Ben Johnson. The Lions’ offensive coordinator has the Detroit offense thriving as Jared Goff & Co. push toward a Super Bowl. In between drawing up Leak variations in which Goff and Jahmyr Gibbs pretend to slip to fool defenders, Johnson might be giving some thought to the variety of head coaching jobs likely to be thrown his way this offseason.

Of course, Johnson can take only one job. With three teams having already fired their coaches and more presumably expected after Week 18, not every franchise can land its preferred candidate (and some teams might prefer somebody else to the Detroit wunderkind). Which job should Johnson and his peers prefer? Which jobs would be most desirable? Least desirable?

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Let’s take a look at that very topic and run through the various actual and potential coaching openings coming due across the NFL. Though there’s usually a surprise opening that pops up — like the Titans after 2022 and the Seahawks after last season — I’ve tried to focus on opportunities with teams that have been rumored to be considering a coaching change.

Keep in mind, though, this isn’t an argument in favor of any of these particular coaches being fired. There are teams such as the Dolphins and Titans, where I’d argue it would be foolish or premature to move on from the existing option. These rankings are taking the extremely aggressive assumption that these nine jobs will all come open over the next couple of weeks.

I’ll start with the least appealing job and finish with the most appealing one and describe what might be exciting or underwhelming about each:

Jump to a team:
Bears | Dolphins | Giants
Jaguars | Jets | Patriots
Raiders | Saints | Titans

Pros: Ownership, division
Cons: Roster, salary cap

The Saints are roughly where the Raiders were in 2011, when they were holding on for dear life with the league’s worst cap situation in the hopes of being competitive. That team had an excuse: They were attempting to win one for Al Davis while the legendary owner was still alive, which was made more difficult by the fact that the octogenarian was the one making key decisions, including hiring Hue Jackson to be the new coach.

The Saints don’t have that excuse or really any reason to operate the way they have over the past few years now that Drew Brees and Sean Payton have both left town. This season has continued the slide down the drain for New Orleans, which followed the firing of longtime Payton assistant Pete Carmichael during the offseason by dismissing coach Dennis Allen in midyear. Darren Rizzi has gone 3-3 as the interim coach, but this organization desperately needs to accept that the glory days aren’t coming back until it gets a fresh start.

It seems as if there are two paths to take, and those paths might require two different kinds of coaches. One would be the path the Saints have taken over the past few years since Brees’ retirement in 2021, the idea they can compete for a division title and host a playoff game if things break their way. While acknowledging they have been brutalized by injuries this season, it’s more difficult to make that case than ever before. Cornerback Marshon Lattimore is gone, and offensive tackle Ryan Ramczyk is expected to retire because of a knee injury. Defensive end Cameron Jordan has five sacks over the past two seasons. Safety Tyrann Mathieu has looked a step slower this season. After a hot start to the season, running back Alvin Kamara has averaged 3.9 yards per carry and scored three touchdowns since Week 3. Tight end/offensive playmaker Taysom Hill tore his ACL earlier this month. These guys aren’t likely to get better in 2025.

And there isn’t as much as the Saints would hope to serve as the core of the next generation. Wideout Chris Olave has dealt with concussions this season. First-round picks Taliese Fuaga and Trevor Penning are works in progress at tackle as opposed to immediate solutions, with Penning’s fifth-year option looming as a difficult call. Kool-Aid McKinstry has taken his lumps as a rookie corner, which isn’t concerning, but Alontae Taylor has given up more expected points added (EPA) than any cornerback in the league. Paulson Adebo, another corner, broke his leg in October. The Saints have dropped from seventh in EPA allowed per play a year ago to 20th this season.

The other path would be to accept reality and begin a difficult rebuild. It’ll take two years to get the bad contracts off the long-abused Saints’ cap sheet, and what happens over that time span won’t be pretty. This Mickey Loomis-led front office had an all-timer of a draft in 2017, but the results since then have been mixed. It remains to be seen if ownership lets Loomis and assistant GM Jeff Ireland handle the rebuild when it does come. The Benson family has been willing to pay massive bonuses up front year after year as part of restructures for the Saints to keep their cap afloat and shown plenty of patience as the organization tries to rebuild a post-Brees identity. Unfortunately, it might have been too much patience.

Pros: Young core
Cons: Ownership, quarterback, cap space

Well, you saw what happened over the past two years. A Jets team that attempted to shoot for the moon with Aaron Rodgers at quarterback landed in the darkness instead. At 4-11, they are guaranteed a worse record with Rodgers this season than they had with Zach Wilson & Co. in 2022 or 2023, a fate that even the most skeptical of Rodgers cynics wouldn’t have predicted. Though he has been better in recent weeks, it’s painful to even imagine the Jets running it back for another season with the now-41-year-old. For cultural reasons alone, it should be time to move on. Still, it’s tough to rule out anything in New York.

The “quarterback” section in the cons above considers both the possibility of Rodgers returning and the difficulty the Jets will have in replacing him. With a top-10 pick in a draft that isn’t expected to have many upper-echelon quarterback options, the Jets probably will be locked out of the top prospects. Sam Darnold is expected to be the best option available on the free agent and trade markets, but he will have the ability to dictate his next destination. After his disastrous run with the Jets, nobody would fault him for not wanting to return. Rodgers’ best chance of returning might be the lack of suitable alternatives.

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Rodgers jokes with McAfee about Woody Johnson’s teenage son releasing him

Aaron Rodgers joins Pat McAfee and has a laugh about owner Woody Johnson’s son possibly cutting him.

The new coach and general manager will need to reckon with a roster that needs work. The Jets will need to restructure or outright release wideout Davante Adams, who has a $38.3 million cap hit. There’s an excellent young core from the 2022 draft in cornerback Sauce Gardner, receiver Garrett Wilson, edge rusher Jermaine Johnson and running back Breece Hall, but they all will be eligible for extensions this offseason amid murky circumstances. Gardner and Hall have struggled through disappointing 2024 seasons, Johnson tore his Achilles in September and Wilson hasn’t been happy with his role. Those players were the core of what was supposed to make this team work around Rodgers and his band of merry friends last season; now, they are all about to get much more expensive or leave town.

Signing those guys would eat up much of the $31.65 million in cap space the Jets have to work with this offseason. Cutting Rodgers with a post-June 1 designation would free up $9 million more, although it would also add $35 million in dead money to their 2026 cap. Whomever comes in will have to make a big-picture decision quickly: Are the Jets a good coach and a better quarterback away from competing again in the AFC East, or does this team need more wholesale changes and a financial reset in the hopes of taking aim at the Bills in 2026?

The bigger question, perhaps, is how ownership will affect that decision-making. Recent reporting has laid bare the dysfunction at the root of the Jets organization, with team owner Woody Johnson reportedly relying on his sons and video game ratings to help influence decisions. We can grapple with the idea of whether Madden ratings count as analytics another day, but it’s clear whomever takes charge will be worried about having their hands tied by the one person in the building who can’t be fired. The embarrassment of 2024 might do enough to push Johnson away from football decisions for some period of time, but bad owners usually find it impossible to resist getting involved for long. Those reports are going to make the head coach and general manager jobs less appealing to potential candidates and more difficult to do once they get to Florham Park.

Pros: Location, young roster, cap space
Cons: A generation of draft whiffs, division

Young doesn’t necessarily equal good, which is the unfortunate case with the Raiders. General manager Tom Telesco has correctly leaned into rebuilding the roster in Las Vegas, but it’s going to take time. There just isn’t much in the cupboard. I’ve repeatedly explained the toll the mistakes of the Jon Gruden/Mike Mayock and Josh McDaniels/Dave Ziegler regimes has put on the Raiders, and that reality has set in as part of a 3-12 season. Antonio Pierce’s game management blunders haven’t helped matters, but this isn’t all on an inexperienced coach. Teams can’t win when they are drafting useful starters once every presidential regime:

Here are the Raiders draft picks from 2016-23 – the final year of McKenzie, the Gruden/Mayock era, and the two McDaniels drafts. Guys crossed out in black aren’t in the league, guys crossed out in red are in the league but no longer with the Raiders.

Eight drafts that appear to… pic.twitter.com/HYVNpObLVQ

— Bill Barnwell (@billbarnwell) October 15, 2024

Las Vegas’ 2024 class has been better. Tight end Brock Bowers is a superstar. Offensive linemen Jackson Powers-Johnson and DJ Glaze have been works in progress, but they’ve shown enough to start next season. The Raiders have mostly resisted the urge to sign stopgaps on defense after years of doing so, and given young guys such as Jack Jones, Isaiah Pola-Mao and Decamerion Richardson regular reps in the secondary, albeit with painful results. At the very least, Telesco lived up to his reputation with the Chargers and held onto his draft picks in 2024, which is a major upgrade on the habits of the previous decision-makers during their time in charge.

There’s also enough to win games up front, where the Raiders didn’t get a great look at free-agent addition Christian Wilkins because of injuries. Maxx Crosby and Malcolm Koonce return next year after being put on injured reserve. Though 2023 first-rounder Tyree Wilson appears to be a disappointment, there have been signs of life down the stretch from 2020 Jags first-rounder K’Lavon Chaisson.

The difficult part for the Raiders is they get squeezed on all sides. In a division with Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid, Justin Herbert and Jim Harbaugh, and Bo Nix and Sean Payton, they’re not one player or even one draft away from competing with the rest of the AFC West. Fans who haven’t witnessed a playoff victory since the Rich Gannon era understandably want to win now, and the previous regimes have made decisions that have attempted to cut the line without getting any results. The one time they did fully commit to a rebuild was in the Reggie McKenzie era, which eventually produced a 12-4 season in 2016. But after a disappointing follow-up, team owner Mark Davis fired Jack Del Rio, hired Gruden and sidelined McKenzie in the process.

The new factor is the presence of Tom Brady in a minority ownership role, where he reportedly will have more say over Vegas’ processes. We don’t know much about what happens next with Brady, which is why his presence isn’t considered a pro or a con above. Will he quit his announcing role and work on improving the Raiders on a full-time basis? If he does, will that be a good thing? Bill Belichick’s assistants and personnel men haven’t had much success building rosters away from the legendary coach, with Nick Caserio’s run in Houston over the past two years as an exception. Even if Brady knows what he’s doing, the Raiders need to commit to excellence by committing to a rebuild.

Pros: Division, youth
Cons: Missing talent in key spots, cap space

The Titans have quickly fallen from being a perennial contender under former coach Mike Vrabel and general manager Jon Robinson into what feels like an irrelevant franchise, and that might put the jobs of coach Brian Callahan and GM Ran Carthon in jeopardy. I would argue both deserve more time and didn’t inherit a great situation from Robinson after some subpar drafts toward the end of his time n Tennessee, but the results this season have been difficult to watch.

The core of most great teams are the players they select in the first three rounds of the draft. Owing to mistakes from Robinson, who was fired in December 2022, and disappointing picks by Carthon, those core guys consist of two defensive linemen, 2018 second-rounder Harold Landry and 2019 first-rounder Jeffery Simmons, both of whom are on second contracts. There’s nobody left on the roster from the 2020 draft. The only person left from 2021 is Dillon Radunz, who hasn’t impressed at tackle or guard. The 2022 class, led by the disastrous decision to essentially trade wideout A.J. Brown for Treylon Burks, appears to have delivered one starter in Chig Okonkwo, as Burks has dealt with injuries, cornerback Roger McCreary has fallen out of favor and offensive tackle Nicholas Petit-Frere has given up 8.5 sacks amid benchings this season.

Carthon’s drafts, unfortunately, haven’t been much better than Robinson’s. Peter Skoronski, a first-rounder in 2023, hasn’t been consistent as a pass blocker, and 2024 first-rounder JC Latham leads the league in sacks allowed (13). Some blame for those protection issues can be put on the quarterback, but that’s 2023 second-rounder Will Levis, who appears to be finished with the organization after 20 starts. All of this is happening with legendary offensive line coach Bill Callahan running things up front, so it’s difficult to pin the problems on coaching. The only Carthon pick who looks like a solid starter is defensive tackle T’Vondre Sweat.

On top of that, the Titans already have been aggressive in adding veteran talent with mostly disappointing results. Receiver Calvin Ridley has one 100-yard game in his first season with the team and just turned 30. Cornerback L’Jarius Sneed has sat out most of his debut season in Tennessee because of injuries. Center Lloyd Cushenberry tore his Achilles in November and could be limited to start 2025. Corner Chidobe Awuzie has played only six games this season and might not be the same player we saw before he tore his ACL with the Bengals in 2022. He also turns 30 before next season. Other midtier signings such as linebacker Kenneth Murray and offensive tackle Andre Dillard have been disasters, with running back Tony Pollard and edge rusher Arden Key as pleasant exceptions.

There’s a scenario in which the Titans are competitive in 2025. The veterans stay healthy on defense, Bill Callahan’s methods root into the offensive line in Year 2, the offense stabilizes behind a quarterback who isn’t getting sacked 11% of the time, and one good draft propels the franchise forward. If ownership goes after a new coach, though, it would be the fourth consecutive season in which it fired either the head coach or general manager. Would this really be an appealing opportunity if Tennessee is further away than it believes and is prone to making aggressive changes? For that reason alone, I wouldn’t be surprised if Brian Callahan got more time.

Pros: Likely No. 1 overall pick, players in key positions, young roster
Cons: Lack of talent around those spots, ownership

Maybe it’s a bad idea for a coach win a playoff game in his first season in charge. Giants fans fell in love with Brian Daboll when he took over a 4-12-1 team and got them to the 2022 postseason. With two years of hindsight, though, it’s clear that season set expectations irrationally high and caused the franchise to commit to quarterback Daniel Jones for two more seasons. When Daboll and general manager Joe Schoen arrived and declined Jones’ fifth-year option, they probably expected to be drafting a quarterback in Year 2 of their reign. It turns out they — or whomever takes over from them — probably will be doing so two years later instead.

In a 2025 draft class that doesn’t appear to have great quarterbacks, the Giants at least find themselves in position to take the best of those passers with the No. 1 overall pick. ESPN’s Football Power Index (FPI) gives them a 61.1% chance of landing the top selection, and an algorithm might overestimate the front office’s desire to try to win games over the final two weeks of the season.

With Drew Lock, Tommy DeVito and Tim Boyle at quarterback, the Giants will play two extremely motivated teams over the next two weeks. The Colts are competing for a playoff berth and were embarrassed by the Giants around this time two years ago, and the Eagles could be attempting to land the top seed in the NFC and get former Giants star Saquon Barkley to an MVP and the single-season rushing record in Week 18. ESPN’s FPI gives the Giants a 43% chance of winning one of their final two games, but that seems optimistic.

If New York lands the top pick, a new coach would have options. He could draft Shedeur Sanders (Colorado) or Cam Ward (Miami), the top passers in the 2025 class. He could make a move for a veteran such as Sam Darnold or, if the Vikings sign their new starter to a long-term deal, attempt to trade for J.J. McCarthy, who just sat out his rookie season because of a knee injury. I’m not willing to even countenance the possibility of Aaron Rodgers moving to another New York team, but the franchise will have options under center.

Beyond quarterback, the Giants are locked in with good-to-great players at the most important spots in the lineup. Wideout Malik Nabers has looked great as a rookie outside of the occasional drop. Offensive tackle Andrew Thomas has sat out most of 2024 because of a foot injury, but he’s a very solid left tackle when healthy. The pass rush was running a league-record sack rate around midseason before injuries and regression toward the mean bit back, but with Brian Burns, Dexter Lawrence and Kayvon Thibodeaux all returning, they should have no problem getting after the quarterback again in 2025.

Beyond that? The roster is unsettled. This is the league’s second-youngest roster on a snap-weighted basis, which helps, but Schoen & Co. don’t have many players who look like hits from the top of their drafts beyond Nabers and Thibodeaux (and the latter has taken a step backward this season). Tyler Nubin has been solid at safety this season, but cornerback Deonte Banks, wide receivers Wan’Dale Robinson and Jalin Hyatt, guard Joshua Ezeudu and cornerback Cor’Dale Flott haven’t lived up to expectations as top-100 picks.

Typically, a young team with two difficult seasons in their past would be in great cap shape. The Giants rank only 15th in cap room, a product of both the dismal situation they inherited from the Dave Gettleman regime and the failure of the Jones signing. A new coach would get some time to rebuild the roster to their liking, but 2025 might be another frustrating season before the Giants can propel themselves forward around their new quarterback in 2026.

There’s also the perennially difficult question of dealing with an ownership group that has quietly become one of the league’s most frustrating. How much input did they have in the decision to extend Jones after one solid season? This is the same group that encouraged former coach Ben McAdoo and general manager Jerry Reese to bench Eli Manning for Geno Smith and Davis Webb in 2017, then reversed the call and fired their coach and GM a week later when there was a fan uproar. The best news for the Giants, frankly, is that they’ll be smart enough to never, ever do the offseason version of “Hard Knocks” again.

Pros: Quarterback, cap space, coming regression toward the mean
Cons: Talent

If Jerod Mayo ultimately becomes the Patriots’ one-and-done buffer between a franchise legend and his long-term replacement, the new regime will have its work cut out for them. As exciting as rookie Drake Maye has been in moments this season, this might be the league’s worst roster in terms of talent surrounding the quarterback. The Patriots are projected to lead the NFL in cap space heading into 2025, but they might need to sign half a roster’s worth of players to sufficiently surround Maye with solutions on both sides of the ball.

The questions everyone had about the offense heading into this season have not been resolved heading into 2025. The offensive line has been battered by injuries and the sudden retirement of Chuks Okorafor, but I’m not sure the Patriots landed a single new starter they can feel good about despite handing 11 different players at least 50 snaps up front. In addition to replacement-level linemen whose legacy with the Patriots will be as Immaculate Grid favorites, Mike Onwenu has struggled, David Andrews has sat out most of the season and Cole Strange just returned from his torn patellar tendon last Sunday, which means 2024 will be a wasted season for an already struggling former first-round pick.

Receiver also hasn’t been solved. Second-round pick Ja’Lynn Polk has managed to play his way out of the rotation, getting only three offensive snaps against the Bills in a situation in which the Patriots should theoretically be giving their young players reps. Polk is averaging a scarcely believable 0.4 yards per route run, the worst mark for any Day 1 or Day 2 pick who has run at least 100 routes as a rookie. The guys immediately ahead of him include Braxton Miller, Devin Smith, Terrace Marshall and J.J. Arcega-Whiteside, all of whom had brief NFL careers. Pop Douglas appears to have settled in as a viable No. 2/3 receiver, but the Pats will be back in the wideout market again this offseason.

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Schefter to McAfee: Patriots want to keep Jerod Mayo

Adam Schefter explains to Pat McAfee the Patriots’ thinking in wanting to keep Jerod Mayo past this season.

What’s really concerning and perhaps the biggest strike against Mayo is the decline of the defense. Over the second half of last season, the Patriots led the league in expected points added (EPA) per defensive snap and gave up the fewest points per drive of any other team. They pulled that off without edge rusher Matt Judon or cornerback Christian Gonzalez and historically bad average starting field position. That was with Bill Belichick, of course, but the hope was that Mayo would be able to retain some of that defensive sparkle, especially with better field position and the return of the two defensive stars.

Gonzalez has returned and been excellent, but with Judon in Atlanta and Christian Barmore sadly sidelined by a heart condition for most of the season, the defense has collapsed. The Patriots rank 30th in EPA per play and 24th in points allowed per possession. Trading Judon made sense for a rebuilding team, but New England hasn’t been able to form a pass rush without him, as two players have five sacks and nobody else has more than 2.5. The Pats have been too susceptible to mental mistakes in the back end, something that seemed to never happen with Belichick in charge. In addition to all the work that needs to happen on offense, a new coach would need to get the defense back on track and find a pass rusher or two in free agency.

The Pats were on my list of teams likely to improve, and they’ll probably be back again in 2025. They’ve gone 2-6 in one-score games, losing a pair of overtime contests and a game that came down to a two-pointer against the Colts. They’ll be better in the red zone on offense next season, and the roster will improve with a top-three pick and the likely coming spending spree in free agency. Maye might be the most appealing quarterback available from the teams on this list. But there’s just a lot of work to be done here.

Pros: Quarterback, cap space, patient ownership
Cons: Division, top-end talent

The Bears find themselves in third, the same place the Jaguars landed in 2021 after their highly touted No. 1 pick endured a difficult debut season amid coaching changes. Like Trevor Lawrence after the 2020 season, Caleb Williams‘ struggles are going to be chalked up to what was around him. The offensive line hasn’t been good enough. Wideouts Keenan Allen, Rome Odunze, and DJ Moore never seemed to mesh. Shane Waldron was the wrong choice as offensive coordinator, and after he was fired, coach Matt Eberflus followed shortly thereafter. Write off the entire season as a bad dream and start over in 2025.

There certainly have been hints and teases of the Williams whom everybody was excited about as a potential franchise quarterback. When the coaching staff has given him the ability to play within structure and pushed him to get the ball out quickly, the results have been great. When he tries to build the entire game out of hero ball — as we’ve also seen at different points — the Bears have been a painful watch, with Williams both let down by his teammates and sharing some of the blame.

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Kimberley A. Martin: Caleb Williams needs to master the simple

Kimberley A. Martin and Mike Tannenbaum discuss Caleb Williams’ rookie season with the Bears.

The overwhelming expectation is the Bears will hire a coach with a background on offense, with the city of Chicago ready to start a GoFundMe to bring over Johnson from the Lions. Regardless of who takes over, the new coach will have to reimagine the offense and add players accordingly. Allen, a free agent, is unlikely to return. Moore has looked uninterested all season and has a tradable contract. The only lineman who should be guaranteed a starting spot is right tackle Darnell Wright. The Bears project to have the fifth-most cap space of any team in the offseason, so they can afford to target replacements. They need to get those moves right, though.

The reality is there aren’t many superstars on this roster beyond cornerback Jaylon Johnson. Edge rusher Montez Sweat was miscast as one a year ago, and factoring in the surplus value of the second-round pick the Bears sent to acquire him in a trade with Washington last October, he’s being paid like a superstar without any history of that level of production. Odunze is having a competent debut season, but he hasn’t immediately stepped in and proved he’s a No. 1 wideout moving forward. Moore and linebacker Tremaine Edmunds are good and sometimes very good, but they’re already on veteran deals and in their prime.

All of that is to say that even if Williams pans out and lives up to expectations, there’s still a lot of work to be done in building this roster. It remains to be seen whether Ryan Poles will return as general manager, but no matter what, the new coach is about to step in and face a critical offseason without having spent time inside the locker room. Sometimes those hires stick the landing: Look at what went down for DeMeco Ryans in Houston in his first offseason in 2023. Johnson — or whomever the Bears end up hiring — needs to both develop Williams and land game-changers around his young quarterback before Williams gets his second contract.

Pros: Quarterback, core talent, location
Cons: Age of roster, cap space

I’ll start by saying I’m not sure the Dolphins should be looking to move on from Mike McDaniel, whose job could be in jeopardy if his team misses the postseason. McDaniel is 27-22 and made the playoffs in each of his first two seasons in charge; the last full-time Miami coach to finish his run with the Dolphins with a winning record was Dave Wannstedt, who left 20 years ago. This franchise hasn’t won a playoff game since 2000. Moving on from McDaniel would be an aggressive decision.

And yet, sitting here three years after the Dolphins hired the former 49ers offensive coordinator, there’s a sense the party’s over. The previous version of the Dolphins had quarterback Tua Tagovailoa on a rookie deal for years to come and a bevy of first-round picks from trades for Laremy Tunsil and ahead of the 2021 draft. Some of those picks ended up becoming veteran stars in wideout Tyreek Hill and edge rusher Bradley Chubb in separate deals.

The window for the version of that team might be closed. Tagovailoa is on a much more significant contract now, and there’s always going to be an unease about his future given his history of concussions. Chubb has sat out all of 2024 after he tore his ACL last December, while Hill took a major step backward after signing an extension before the season. Other key contributors in Miami, including offensive tackle Terron Armstead and cornerback Jalen Ramsey, are on the wrong side of 30. This is the league’s second-oldest team on a snap-weighted basis, trailing only the Vikings.

There aren’t really obvious paths toward the Dolphins getting drastically better, either. Tagovailoa is locked in for years. They didn’t have a first-rounder and made only four selections in the 2022 and 2023 drafts. Rookie Round 1 pick Chop Robinson has been awesome over the second half of the season and looks like a potential superstar, but shedding Ramsey, Armstead and Hill would lead Miami to take a step backward before it can move forward. Maybe that’s an argument for trying to shuffle the coaching staff in the hopes of getting more out of the current players on the roster.

At the same time, a new coaching staff would mean yet another refreshed playbook for Miami’s roster. Since the 2018 season, the Dolphins have had five offensive coordinators and five defensive coordinators across a seven-year span. The players were thrilled to see Vic Fangio run out of town after one season, and while the veteran defensive coordinator has thrived in Philadelphia, his replacement, Anthony Weaver, finally has this unit in the top 10 in scoring defense after it was below average in McDaniel’s first two seasons. Would moving on from Weaver reset the defense’s progress?

Stephen Ross can be an impulsive owner, and given past reporting and his background, he might regret not being in position to hire Jim Harbaugh when the now-Chargers coach decided to leave Michigan a year ago. Would the Michigan booster really countenance hiring a Buckeye and go after Mike Vrabel? Firing McDaniel would only seem to make sense if Ross has a definite, landable target in mind. That coach would take over a talented roster and have a quarterback in place, but would he be facing unrealistic expectations?

Pros: Quarterback, weak division, (generally) patient ownership, location, high draft pick, regression to the mean coming
Cons: Culture rot, significant spending over previous three seasons, general manager

When I put together a version of this list toward the end of the 2021 season, the Jaguars ranked third with virtually the same pros and cons. That came at the end of the brief Urban Meyer era, when just about anybody would have been considered an upgrade over the brutally overmatched former college coach.

Though Doug Pederson won over fans with a playoff victory in his first season, what has happened since has left the Jaguars somewhere close to the Meyer era in terms of recent results. Meyer went 2-11 (.154) in his lone season. Since Trevor Lawrence‘s ankle injury seemed to spur a tailspin last season, Pederson has gone 4-17 (.190) in the past 21 games, including a 3-12 mark this season.

It was easy to write off Jacksonville’s second-half collapse last season as a product of Lawrence’s injury. While he has been in and out of the lineup this season, the Jags haven’t been good with or without their quarterback on the field. Backup Mac Jones has an identical winning percentage to the 2021 No. 1 overall pick after beating the Titans two weeks ago.

The present parallels the past. Three years ago, it was easy to break down Lawrence’s dismal rookie season and chalk it up to Meyer’s influence and poor preparation. Now, while I have issues with this offense, that isn’t quite as clear. Lawrence has put together stretches of great play, but he ranks 18th in Total QBR since the start of 2022 and is middle of the pack by most other metrics.

Lawrence has been solid enough when healthy to attract coaches who will be impressed by his talent, but after the 2021 season, those coaches were looking at the possibility of taking on a phenomenal college prospect who still had untapped upside one year into a rookie deal. Now, Lawrence appears to have settled in as a league-average starter on a market-value contract, one that pays him $55 million per season. That’s still a positive, but it’s nowhere near as appealing of an opportunity as it was three years ago.

The disconcerting thing for a potential coach has to be that the Jaguars have invested heavily throughout the roster and received so little in return. They used a first-round pick on running back Travis Etienne in 2021 and now prefer to play Tank Bigsby. They’re spending more than $40 million per season on Christian Kirk, Gabe Davis and Evan Engram, yet the trio was combining to average just over 36 receiving yards per game before they each went down injured. Brandon Scherff, one of the league’s highest-paid guards, has been disappointing, while 2024 addition Arik Armstead has two sacks in a part-time role along the defensive line. They’re each making more than $14 million per season. Devin Lloyd, a first-round pick in 2022, has been one of the worst starting linebackers in football this season.

It’s worrying to see so many high-priced or highly drafted players fail to impress. That could speak to subpar instincts from general manager Trent Baalke, who hasn’t had many fans in the stands during his time in charge. It could also speak to a coaching staff that hasn’t been able to get the most out of those players. (Worryingly for Jags fans, “both” is also a plausible answer.) I have to say that the Jags have less give-a-damn in their performances than any other team I’ve watched this season. There are too many mental gaffes, too many moments in which players aren’t on the same page, too many times when a player ends up out of the play and seems to turn his controller off. Those issues pop up on offense and defense, so it’s not just contained to one side of the field.

A good coach would back his chances of fixing those culture issues, the same way Pederson did when he took over Meyer’s team in 2022. Will ownership be as aggressive spending to support a culture reset when free agent class after free agent class has failed to pan out? The Jags rank 18th in cap space heading into 2025, although they’re surely going to explore releasing players such as Kirk and Engram, which could free up millions more.

There’s talent in key positions. Brian Thomas Jr. looks like a superstar at wide receiver. The Jags appear to have made the wrong choice in selecting Travon Walker over Aidan Hutchinson with the first pick in the 2022 draft, but Walker has settled in as a good pass rusher, combining to make a very solid front two with Josh Hines-Allen. The organization feels good about newly resigned Walker Little at left tackle. Those are some of the league’s most important positions with solid players in place. Florida always appeals to free agents, which makes attracting talent easier.

An astute coach (one who reads this column, of course) would also be taking over a team that projects to be better in 2025. The Jags have been without Lawrence for chunks of the season and have gone 2-9 in games decided by seven points or fewer. They’ve forced a league-low eight turnovers, three of which came in a narrow loss to the Vikings. In addition to that game against Minnesota, they’ve played the Chiefs, Eagles, Texans and Packers close, albeit alongside blowout losses to the Bills and Lions. If they can find a coach who believes in Lawrence, there might be enough here to launch a quick turnaround.