No NFL owners have hit the panic button yet, despite some incredibly disappointing starts. All 32 men who began the season as head coaches are still employed. But that could change soon.
With bye weeks coming and patience running out, the heat is getting turned up on several coaches whose teams have been caught in an unrecoverable downward spiral. And several others probably already know that they’ll spend the second half of the season playing out the string, knowing their time is short, too. So which head coaches' seats are the hottest after the first month of the regular season?
Here is my revised list. The first three years of the DeMeco Ryans era in Houston have been both fantastic and disappointing. The Texans had double-digit wins each year, won at least one playoff game each year, and still managed to come off as underachievers.
That was especially true the last two years when their offense and young quarterback couldn’t keep up with their league-best defense. And now the bottom has completely fallen out. The defense has regressed.
QB C.J. Stroud has been stuck in neutral since his rookie season. They still don’t score many points.
And, worst of all, they’re 0-4. Firing the 42-year-old Ryans would be harsh, and he’s probably more likely to be nudged into some major staff changes. But the window is about to close on having a promising quarterback on a rookie contract.
And whether they start over at the position or give Stroud a lucrative contract, don’t be shocked if they at least think about hiring a coach who can make that investment pay off. There’s probably a way this season could have started worse for Jim Harbaugh’s team, but it’s hard to see how. QB Justin Herbert, the cornerstone player of the franchise, is regressing under his direction.
He brought in a new, high-profile offensive coordinator, Mike McDaniel, to get Herbert going and they look like a terrible match. And given Harbaugh’s strong influence in personnel, it doesn’t help that his offensive line is still struggling, his receivers can’t catch, and the defense doesn’t look the same now that DC Jesse Minter is gone. In other words, they might be even worse than their 0-4 record indicates, and Harbaugh has looked like a deer in the headlights at some of his press conferences, where he obviously has no answers to offer.
He’s got two years and $32 million or so left on his deal after this season, and he did go 11-6 in each of his first two years. But look at the schedule, an 0-9 start might not be out of the question. That’ll make owner Dean Spanos wonder if the 62-year-old coach still has what it takes to turn the sinking ship around.
Matt LaFleur was thought to be on the hot seat last year when a team with Super Bowl expectations stumbled to a 9-7-1 record and then blew a game at Chicago in the wild-card round. But apparently that was good enough for the Packers' ownership board to grant him a contract extension. That probably signals he’s not going anywhere, again — good luck getting a board to agree to eat a contract that is believed to run through 2029 at about $15 million per year.
However, the Packers also can’t ignore what’s happening to his team. They are regressing offensively even though they have an outstanding young quarterback in Jordan Love and an array of good receivers. And the defense has taken a huge step back after the loss of DC Jeff Hafley.
Maybe the return of Micah Parsons will help that, but there’s nothing coming to help the offense, which was supposed to be LaFleur’s specialty. They’re only 2-2, so there’s no panic yet, but they are at risk of being buried in a very dangerous division. Whether the board likes it or not, there will be a lot of calls in Green Bay for LaFleur’s head.
Nick Sirianni has won three division titles, two NFC titles and a Super Bowl in his five seasons as Eagles coach, while winning nearly 70% of his regular-season games (61-28). But if you don’t think he could take the fall for a season gone wrong, you don’t know Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie and the high standards he sets. This season hasn’t gone completely wrong yet, but they’ve opened the door to competition in a weak NFC East.
For the second straight season, their offense is struggling, too — a reminder that Sirianni has been very hit-or-miss picking coordinators for most of his tenure. That’s a big part of why they had two disappointing, first-round exits from the playoffs over the last three years. He’s also always been under scrutiny for his sometimes questionable coaching decisions, which really hurt him last Sunday in a crushing loss at home to the Rams.
Lurie thinks his team should make a Super Bowl run every year, and he usually has a roster good enough to do it. If he thinks the coach is holding him back at all, he’ll make a switch. After all, he at least considered doing it to Sirianni three years ago.
Dan Quinn began this season atop this list because his Commanders went 5-12 one year after making a miracle run to the NFC Championship Game. Now they’re 1-3 and don’t look like they’re much better at all. The only thing keeping him from still being in the top hot spot is the injury to QB Jayden Daniels, which was a big part of what ruined 2025 too.
Daniels is expected back soon, though, with plenty of time on the schedule for the Commanders to turn this around. And lucky for them, it looks like a pretty down year in the NFC East, so the door is definitely open. If they can’t get it together and at least make a run at the division title, or at least the playoffs, owner Josh Harris and GM Adam Peters have what seems like an easy decision to make.
Quinn already blew up his coaching staff in the offseason, so it’s all on him now. And they can’t let the window they opened when they went 12-5 in Quinn’s first season suddenly slam shut. The bar and the expectations are low in New York, where Glenn isn’t really expected to win with the team he and GM Darren Mougey assembled.
They are expected to be more competitive and more professional, and there was a hope that Glenn wouldn’t look so overwhelmed anymore, especially when questioned by the media about what was going wrong. At times, things have looked good. They beat the Titans in the opener and hung with the Packers and Lions.
But they were basically a no-show against the Bears on Sunday, and Glenn’s decisions, time management, and reactions to criticism are back under a microscope again. It’s a long season; they don’t have a very good quarterback (Geno Smith) and they’re already inundated with injuries. Glenn has to stop this spiral before it gets out of control.
If not, there will be enormous pressure on Woody Johnson to bring in a new coach — maybe a high-profile one like Mike Tomlin — especially if they land yet another franchise quarterback, as expected, in the 2027 NFL draft. If you’re waiting for the first coach to be fired, keep both eyes on Tampa, where the wheels seem to have come off the Buccaneers. It’s not just that they are 0-4, it’s that they’ve also looked absolutely terrible, particularly on offense.
And now, with QB Baker Mayfield out with an injured thumb, there is definitely room for things to get worse. It’s also not like Bowles was playing with any house money. They have waffled between eight and 10 wins in each of his first four seasons, and they only have a terrible division to thank for the fact that they made the playoffs three times.
Bowles rarely looks like he has many answers — if any at all — and so far this season it’s hard to argue that his players have responded to anything he’s tried. None of their next five opponents are unbeatable — at Dallas, vs. the Steelers, at Carolina, vs. the Falcons, and at Chicago — but it’s not exactly a marshmallow march either. If Bowles’ Bucs can’t steal a couple of wins there, he might not survive their Week 10 bye.
