The first and last teams on this list are set in stone for me; the order of the four middle teams could flip every day. The New England Patriots, with a highly promising young quarterback and an owner who really wants to throw money at him, are the obvious dream destination, whereas the New Orleans Saints are in an inescapable $56.3 million hole, and Derek Carr is holding the shovel. The four-team purgatory features an awkward mix of squads with polarizing quarterback rooms—or lack thereof in Las Vegas—and loud, embarrassing leadership decisions. Any NFL pundit worth their salt can see both heaven and hell in the head coach openings for the Chicago Bears, Jacksonville Jaguars, Las Vegas Raiders, and New York Jets. Every fan with a mock draft simulator and a dream can put together a glass-half-full pitch for why their vacancy is the best opportunity. That same fan can also visualize exactly how whichever coach they hire will get the boot in one to two years.
To sort through the mess, I tried (again) to rank the NFL’s six head coach openings by the following standards with the assumption that all offers (money, contracts, ownership stake?!) are the same:
- Leadership: Who actually runs the team? How much is their son involved? How much is their dad involved? Do you report to the owner, general manager, or some random guy named Chad Brinker? Does ownership even believe it’s important to have contractual alignment between the general manager and coach? What’s their track record with hiring/firing coaches? Perhaps most importantly, what are the leadership’s expectations for the team over the next x years? Do they want to win now? Do they want to fix their quarterback? Do they want to just hang out with their kids?
- Quarterback: How good is the existing quarterback situation? Are you pot committed to fixing a former no. 1 pick? Or do you need to blow the quarterback room up entirely? Leadership’s commitment to fixing the quarterback room with existing talent versus new talent is one of the most important factors in the decision-making process.
- Non-quarterbacks: Does the team have any talented players still under contract, and how many of them want to be on the team in 2025 and through the rebuilding process? Blue-chip or even near-blue-chip players at premium positions aren’t as important as the quarterback and leadership standards, but they’re definitely valuable enough to be tiebreakers in close situations.
- Capital: How much cap space does the team have, and what is it willing to spend? And how much draft capital does it have to play with this April?
OK, let’s get on with it before Mike Vrabel or Ben Johnson, the cream of the crop in this year’s rat race, pick their new digs. I don’t want to be caught trying to punch up Robert Kraft jokes in a Google Doc when Tom Brady’s “collaborative committee” starts googling to see whether the Raiders fired Antonio Pierce or Tom Telesco yet.
All cap and contract information is courtesy of Over the Cap.
1. New England Patriots
Point: Rookie Drake Maye’s stats won’t wow you. Mac Jones had a better rookie season in New England than Maye by most metrics, but the tape is very encouraging. Maye showed he can win with the deep ball, create plays with his legs, thrive in the clutch, and, probably most importantly, make chicken salad out of chicken shit. The Patriots had the worst supporting cast in the league this season. Full stop. But somehow, in a swamp of bad skill players, worse offensive line play, and routine coaching malpractice, Maye’s success was instant and obvious, making Kraft’s next steps also instant and obvious.
Kraft fired Jerod Mayo, his handpicked Bill Belichick successor, not even a full calendar year after announcing the 16-year Patriots linebacker and staffer as the new head coach. Hell, Kraft approved an announcement on X calling the decision “one of the hardest” he’s ever had to make, completed interviews with two candidates seemingly only to fulfill the league’s Rooney Rule, and scheduled an interview with Mike Vrabel all within 48 hours of firing Mayo. Kudos to Kraft for avoiding the sunk-cost fallacy with an obviously struggling first-year head coach, but it’s still hard to fathom how quickly Mayo went from handpicked legacy hire to rushed out of the building. To be fair, that doesn’t make Kraft any worse than the five other owners on this list. All of them have hired and fired coaches with questionable speeds and relatively zero consequences. Kraft’s mistake feels fresh only because he had the league’s best coach of all time for 24 years. But now Kraft’s just like the rest of them: old, desperate, and rich.
Kraft, coming off of one of the loudest failures of his career, thinks he has his quarterback of the future and will dip deep into his burning pockets to support Maye and whoever is leading the new regime after the Mayo fiasco. The Pats currently have the most effective cap space of any team in the league and four picks inside the top 80 in the 2025 NFL draft (including no. 4). They’ll be players for Colorado wide receiver/cornerback Travis Hunter, Arizona wide receiver Tetairoa McMillan, or soon-to-be free agent wide receiver Tee Higgins as they pursue better pass catchers for Maye. They could also chase LSU offensive tackle Will Campbell at no. 4 and/or possible free agents like the Kansas City Chiefs’ Trey Smith or the Baltimore Ravens’ Ronnie Stanley if those offensive linemen avoid tags and become available in March. Kraft will spend anywhere and everywhere if he’s convinced it will help Pats fans forget the Mayo experiment ever happened.
Counterpoint: New England is a dream destination because of what it could be, not what it is right now. The offensive line is an unmitigated disaster, and no player on the roster had 700 receiving yards this season. Even if Maye is the next Brady, the next head coach won’t win shit without significant personnel upgrades across the board. Kraft, of course, has all of the necessary means to add blue-chip players on both sides of the ball, but it’ll be up to the new regime to nail player evaluations and development to maximize Maye’s rookie contract (unlike when Kraft-Belichick tried to do the same thing with Jones a few years ago).
2. Chicago Bears
Point: Caleb Williams is talented. We obviously can’t say he’s good yet given how low the roller-coaster ride’s lows were for Williams and the offense this season, but he is talented. Williams and Houston Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud, who was as highly regarded as any young quarterback in recent league history after a stellar rookie season in 2023, both ranked near the bottom in expected points added per dropback and success rate this season. That’s not to say either quarterback is a bust; it’s to emphasize that production isn’t consistent for a lot of talented quarterbacks. Hell, Bryce Young went from one of the worst picks of all time to a capable starter in a few months. Success is volatile. Though we know it won’t be Mike McCarthy, whoever Chicago hires as head coach will need to ride the Williams roller coaster to new heights or die trying with a hit-and-miss general manager in Ryan Poles, who is in win-now mode. There are worse general managers to try to rebuild a team with, and it also helps that the Bears have some talent already on the roster (cornerback Jaylon Johnson, wide receiver DJ Moore, defensive end Montez Sweat, safety Jaquan Brisker, tight end Cole Kmet), three top-50 picks in 2025, and the fifth-most effective cap space of any team in the league.
Counterpoint: Williams is a double-edged sword for a prospective head coach. He, Maye, and Trevor Lawrence all have enough buy-in from their leadership and fan bases that they’ll more than likely be favored over the new coaching staffs. If you’re the coach and he fails to develop, you might get the blame. The highlights or “wow” plays on Williams’s tape should be encouraging enough for the Bears brass (and fan base) to want to lean into the experience with a coaching staff that can maximize his talents, like the Jaguars’ pipe dream with Lawrence. But the Jaguars just fired a Super Bowl–winning head coach because he couldn’t fix Lawrence. Maybe Doug Pederson has devolved into a worse coach over the years (obviously possible) and a Ben Johnson or Liam Coen type can easily fix Lawrence or Williams. But the new staff in Chicago will have to do it quickly, or maybe in a lifetime if Bears president Kevin Warren thinks a year in the NFL is a lifetime. Poles will need to push all of his chips in to keep his job, which will either improve the roster overnight or blow up in the new staff’s face. “It’s a fuckin’ tightrope walk on a straight razor, 500-foot reputational drop.”
3. Jacksonville Jaguars
Point: I know it’s hard to imagine a world where the Jaguars are a smart organization capable of hiring good coaches who can maximize an objectively talented (if also flawed) quarterback like Lawrence, but let’s try our best. There’s an argument to be made for Urban Meyer as the worst NFL head coach of all time. Pederson was worlds better than Meyer right away only because Meyer was an unparalleled disaster; his outfit was an unfathomable comeback win over Brandon Staley’s Chargers (another failed coaching experiment that lasted too long) away from finishing with zero playoff wins for three seasons. Now, for this point to hit home, there’s a common denominator in the Meyer and Pederson regimes that we’ll have to pretend isn’t an anchor dragging the Jaguars franchise to the depths of purgatory from within. General manager Trent Baalke, from an optimistic perspective, is on the start of a heater after landing rookie phenom wide receiver Brian Thomas Jr. after a trade down in the first round of last year’s draft. There’s a world in which Lawrence’s Jaguars are a smart head coach/offensive play caller and a couple more BTJ-level offseason wins away from being an AFC threat in 2025. The problem is we don’t live in that world; we have to imagine it because Baalke and owner Shad Khan somehow can’t be separated, even by a history of constant failure.
Counterpoint: In San Francisco, Baalke survived a power struggle with Jim Harbaugh in 2014 and with two more coaches after him before being fired. Baalke is now the last one standing with Khan after the Doug Marrone, Urban Meyer, and Doug Pederson regimes. Baalke’s combined record in those seven seasons—the two after Harbaugh left San Francisco (2015-16) and the four with Jacksonville (2021-24)—is 32-68 (32 percent). We can argue over every good and bad roster decision he’s made in that span, but the sum of Baalke’s efforts is obvious. He loses games and wins power struggles. That’s a dangerous proposition for head coaching candidates who will have to be talented enough to maximize Lawrence and brave enough to make the Baalke relationship work as the seventh head coach in 10 years.
4. Las Vegas Raiders
Point: Tight end Brock Bowers, wide receiver Jakobi Meyers, defensive end Maxx Crosby, defensive tackle Christian Wilkins, and offensive tackle Kolton Miller are all under contract next year. Those are five legit starters at premium positions (if you rightfully consider Bowers not a tight end, but instead a true unicorn immeasurable by man’s AAV or EPA). The coffers aren’t completely barren like they have been for the Raiders for most of the 21st century, and while owner Mark Davis has yet to make a successful coaching hire in five swings of the bat since taking over for the late legend Al Davis in 2011, maybe the greatest quarterback of all time can finally help make the sixth time the charm.
Tom Brady bought a 5 percent minority stake in the Raiders in October. Fast-forward three months, and Brady is seemingly the most important decision-maker in the organization. It’s been made clear by Davis (and others) that Brady will have a significant influence on picking the head coach and quarterback of the future in Las Vegas. The jokes write themselves, but for all of Brady’s on-field success, no one knows how his foray into a front office will go. All Raiders Nation can hope for is that Brady and Davis chase the best candidate possible with an offer that includes a lot of cash and security, and none of Brady’s FTX ideas. The good news is Davis probably doesn’t want to fire another head coach anytime soon, considering he is still on the hook for tens of millions of dollars for the past three head coaches he fired. The challenge, however, won’t be offering a hefty multiyear contract to Brady’s favorite candidate; it’ll be setting realistic (low) expectations for the staff inside an über-competitive division.
Making the Super Bowl, hell, even the playoffs, will be difficult regardless of how much the Raiders improve with Brady and Davis at the helm because they’ll always be chasing the fifth seed (or worse) in the AFC as long as Patrick Mahomes, Andy Reid, Justin Herbert, Jim Harbaugh, and Sean Payton are all in the division. Winning the AFC West simply can’t be the expectation for the new coaching staff. The Raiders have made the playoffs just twice, losing in the wild-card round both times, since Jon Gruden and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers blew them out in the Super Bowl in 2003. They have the second-longest active streak without a playoff win in the NFL. Publicly, yes, the Super Bowl is always the goal. LFG, to steal from Brady. Privately, the goal is losing the fewest games possible while they desperately pursue a quarterback and coaching staff capable of rescuing the Raiders from their self-made black hole.
Counterpoint: The Raiders have arguably, if not definitely, the worst quarterback situation of any team in the league, let alone this list of six losers. If Brady and Davis can’t mitigate the candidates’ fears of expectations to compete in the division with a multiyear commitment to the new staff and promises to help solve the quarterback problem, no coach will want to take the job regardless of all the non-quarterback talent that doesn’t churn off the roster in March.
That churn shouldn't involve the team's top talent, but a lot of important depth could just walk out of the building. Linebacker Robert Spillane, a captain with a nose for the ball, will be a free agent in March. He, slot cornerback Nate Hobbs, safety Trevon Moehrig, defensive tackle Adam Butler, linebacker Divine Deablo, pass rusher K’Lavon Chaisson, and even 31-years-young running back Ameer Abdullah, who all made significant contributions to the team over the second half of the season, are on expiring contracts. Davis will need to ask Brady or his “collaborative committee” to help him re-sign some of the team’s players with its ample cap space—second most behind the Patriots—to build on the talent they already have before this Raiders-Brady venture becomes a rescue merger with Nobull or, worse, another pump-and-dump crypto scheme.
I don’t think any dad-aged Raiders fan who lived through the Tuck Rule wants to see Brady puppet Al Davis’s son to another decade-plus of tragedy after the worst 20-year stretch in franchise history, but that’s (very sadly) in the range of outcomes. Brady will need to pick the right head coach for arguably the worst job in the league, identify the quarterback of the future, call the Super Bowl with Kevin Burkhardt, star in these riveting social clips, and create whatever bad content Fox Sports tries to squeeze out of his 10-year, $375 million contract. Asking Belichick to come work for you when he’s not even a month into a five-year contract with UNC makes for a good story, but Brady will need to be a lot more than a buzzword for Davis if he’s going to save this sinking pirate ship. Now, why did Mark, a man clearly obsessed with the Patriots regime, not even interview Belichick when he was available in 2023 just to sell 5 percent of the team to the devil (in a lot of grudge-holding Raiders fans’ eyes) and have Brady call Belichick a year too late? I can’t even pretend to understand what goes on between Davis’s ears and below the bowl cut.
5. New York Jets
Counterpoint: Owner Woody Johnson and his teenage son Brick are trying to fix what one Jets player called “the most dysfunctional place imaginable” with Madden ratings and impromptu game balls. If you're the type of person who enjoys a terrifying joyride and can convince others to go on it with you, then the Jets are a favorable destination. I just don’t think the Jets will find a candidate desperate enough for an opportunity to take this job until they get to Rex Ryan and similar names, way down their wishlist.
Another counterpoint: I don’t really understand why the Jets want to conduct 15 head coach interviews. I know they started paying former general managers Mike Tannenbaum and Rick Spielman to help with their head coach and general manager hiring processes in November, but something about Brian Griese, Josh McCown, Darren Rizzi (?), and Rex Ryan (??) being on this list feels more like silly billables than serious pursuits. But, to be fair, it’s hard to understand much of anything happening with the Jets right now. Aaron Rodgers is a better content creator than a quarterback (derogatory and derogatory), yet he’ll cost the team at least $49 million in dead money regardless of how they move forward with the Enigma. Former OROY Garrett Wilson could already be on his way out. Former DROY Ahmad Gardner is clowning the team on Instagram. Multiple starters on both sides of the ball will enter next season on expiring contracts, and the Jets currently rank 19th in effective cap space. The Patriots, Jaguars, Bears, Raiders, and Saints all have more total draft capital than the Jets, per the Fitzgerald-Spielberger NFL Draft Trade Value Chart, with New York owning just three top-100 picks. The next head coach will have middling capital to fix an imploding roster under the fire of the New York media. My gut says the best head coaching candidates would rather play with their kids at home after a long day of work somewhere else.
6. New Orleans Saints
Counterpoint: As cringe as the Brick-Woody relationship would be to navigate in New York, it would still beat out trying to win with Saints general manager Mickey Loomis managing the old, mediocre roster with the worst cap situation in sports and Derek Carr at quarterback. The only way to have a rose-colored view of the Saints’ situation would be if you believe their aging veterans still have playoff-competitive gas in the tank and that the NFC South is a very winnable division. Everything else about the job is an abject disaster, because there’s no clear way out of the $56.3 million hole the Saints find themselves in.
Another counterpoint: The Saints will have to cut, trade, or restructure essentially every veteran on the roster to get under the cap before next season. They currently rank 32nd in 2025 effective cap space (negative-$56.3 million) and dead cap ($48.4 million), and they have 12 players on expiring contracts who played more than 20 percent of the team’s snaps in 2024. A lot is going to have to change with the roster before the Saints are successful, but not much can change at all with Carr anchoring the cap and the quarterback room.
Carr’s $51.5 million cap hit in 2025 ranks fourth among all NFL players and accounts for more than 18 percent of the team’s cap space, and he’s already made it clear that he won’t take a pay cut on the three-year, $150 million contract he signed in 2023. The Saints will need to either restructure Carr’s contract or cut him with a post-June 1 designation, allowing them to spread the $40 million in dead cap charges over multiple years, to get under the cap. Or, in a worst-case scenario, the contract could make the decision for them: It includes a clause that would guarantee Carr $30 million if he can't pass a physical on March 14, the third day of the new league year. It’s a lose-lose situation for the Saints and for whichever coach they eventually pick from the bottom of the pile.
