The Braindrain of the Lions, the Braindead of the Cowboys, and Liam Coen finally ends Trent Baalke

Quick-hit thoughts on where the coaching silly season stands

We finally began to see some clarity in the NFL coaching world this week as the Lions getting knocked out of the playoffs advanced the other two of the three most desired candidates (along with Mike Vrabel, whom I wrote about here) to the hiring stage. That left us with four remaining jobs.

Then things got silly. After the Jaguars finally cut ties with Trent Baalke in what I’ll call a death row pardon two minutes too late, they ran a reverse. Liam Coen was per Dianna Russini given “Ben Johnson money” by Jaguars owner Shad Khan and given the option to pick his own GM. And sure, he didn’t honor a contract he verbally agreed to with the Buccaneers to stay as offensive coordinator — but also if someone offered me Ben Johnson money and a year ago I was coaching Will Levis at Kentucky, I think I’d become pretty dishonorable myself.

Elsewhere:
-The Saints are asking their candidates to be anchored to their general manager’s increasingly shoddy and ramshackle roster, loaded with salary cap pits and stuck with Derek Carr. The inference here is that Aaron Glenn may have joined them except for, again, what he’d be walking into. My guess is that they’re waiting to get Joe Brady interviewed.
-The Raiders aren’t asking anything, just perform a miracle, maybe find a quarterback, Tom Brady is looking over your shoulder every 15 minutes instead of trying to get better at his day job. No pressure. Pete Carroll seems to be the favorite here.
-The Cowboys also aren’t asking anything, for them this is just a seasonal entry-level occupation. They spent five hours doing a background check on Brian Schottenheimer to make sure he’s not on a student visa before offering him $60,000 and benefits for him and his partner. Think about the upside!

Chicago Bears
—Hired Ben Johnson as head coach, linked strongly to Dennis Allen at defensive coordinator

I understand that there’s a take industry to be made from “is Ben Johnson not enough of a leader of men to be an NFL coach?” and that’s fine. What the Bears did was, in my view, logical from front to back. They held a huge search and turned over every stone they could. They hired the consensus best first-time coach of the hiring cycle, someone who got star-level play out of Jared Goff and — more importantly — is able to deftly handle things like pass protection so easily that sometimes he daydreams what it would be like to have Jamison Williams throw a pass down 10 in the Divisional Round.

Is Johnson going to be a successful coach? Anybody who has that answer for you today is a seer. I think he’s certainly got every element you’d want your head coach to have outside of actual experience in charge. I think he’s exactly the kind of playcaller Caleb Williams needs to get the best out of Williams’ talents. Having these other names ready — the news that Allen was favored to be the DC dropped maybe 10 minutes after reports dropped that he was accepting the Bears offer — tells me he’s thought through this process thoroughly.

And, in a more anecdotal observation: The Bears ripped off the entire building applauding when Johnson came in from DeMeco Ryans arriving in Houston. I liked it then and I liked it now.

New York Jets
—Hired Aaron Glenn as head coach

The insinuation on Tuesday was that the Jets would pair Glenn with Lance Newmark, a Commanders assistant general manager that was interviewing for the GM job the same day, but that has not happened. And the Jets are now actually bringing back Bengals senior executive Trey Brown and Broncos assistant general manager Darren Mougey for second interviews today.

I think the Jets made a logical decision here as well, though Glenn has no background on the offensive side of the ball and will need to make some hires — it looks like a McVay tree might be planted with Rams assistant Nick Caley. I don’t love promoting a first-time non-playcaller as your lodestone at offensive coordinator on paper but I have to admit that also would have made me skeptical about Kevin O’Connell so perhaps I am being too cautious.

The first big question that the Jets have to answer once they nail down the general manager (the fact that Glenn was hired first means he has veto power in my opinion) is: How big of a rocket can we send Aaron Rodgers out of here on?

Jacksonville Jaguars
—Fired GM Trent Baalke, reportedly will hire Bucs OC Liam Coen as head coach

I will give Shad Khan some credit. It is not common for someone holding on to their priors this tightly to see them go this poorly, this quickly, and actually change course. It became obvious that no preferred coaching candidate would work with Baalke. At this point, we even have questions on if Robert Saleh would work with Baalke. He’s created a resume that has more implied backstabbing than a Taylor Swift song, and now that he’s gone the vacuum immediately clears.

I was the low man on Coen this past year, believing that losing Dave Canales would destroy the Bucs offense. Didn’t quite go like that! I’m sort of at the point with the Jaguars where even if I don’t entirely believe in the idea that Coen is worth Ben Johnson money, I am ready to see someone new get a chance to fail. At the very least, this feels like a big rebound point for Travis Etienne’s fantasy football stock given Coen’s love of a good screen game.

With the Raiders reportedly settling on John Spytek as GM, Coen doesn’t have an obvious pull for who his GM would be and nothing has been hinted at yet. They are almost certainly starting that process from scratch.

Las Vegas Raiders
—Hired GM John Spytek

Snark snarf Spy Tech for Brady.

I feel like I’ve been blurbing Rotoworld interviews for Spytek for years. In fact, he was interviewed for a Raiders GM search in 2022. He’s been Bucs director of player personnel — and then higher — since 2016. Brady was familiar with him from that whole “winning the Super Bowl with the Buccaneers” thing.

It’s almost impossible to separate assistant GMs from their bosses, but the Buccaneers certainly have done a good job of pouncing when they can and getting the most out of their cap space. Post-Brady it was widely expected that the Buccaneers would stink for a few years because they went so all-in on the present, and to that point Ryan Jensen’s contract is still counting against their dead money in 2025. Some would use that as an excuse. It has not stopped Tampa from reaching the playoffs each and every season since.

With Ben Johnson off the board after looking at a Ourlads’ depth chart of the Raiders roster, the Raiders have mostly been connected to Pete Carroll and Steve Spagnuolo. I feel like we’ve seen the Spags head coach era come and go already, and like Carroll is both the better pick and someone who can help set up a culture as the Raiders find their actual long-term head coach. Until it’s 2028 and the Raiders are solid and Carroll is 75 and still looks like he’s ready to keep going, that is.

Tennessee Titans
— Hired “GM” Mike Borgonzi

So when sourced people talk about this stuff, they have to be very careful. Albert Breer writes about this and says:

That said, the structure, intentionally, is a little different than what most NFL teams employ. Or a lot different. Callahan will report to Borgonzi, and Borgonzi will report to Brinker in a setup that mirrors what you’d see in other sports. Borgonzi will oversee coaching, scouting, sports medicine, sports performance and player development, and have final say on the roster. The idea, generally, is to allow Borgonzi to focus on building the team and football operation, and take some other newer-age elements of the job off his plate.

I don’t know man, to me it just sounds like Mr. Borgonzi took a job that doesn’t give him much power. The word you keep hearing from the sourced is something along the lines of “interesting” or “fascinating” to create an “NBA or MLB” dynamic upstairs. I mean, I guess? If it works certainly nobody will knock it. But if drafting and developing doesn’t work for the Titans — who again, have no quarterback at this point that they can trust and spent Borgonzi’s opening presser hinting at the idea that he’d just pick a “generational talent” — is that Borgonzi’s fault, or is it Chad Brinker’s?

There are only so many people who get to call themselves “GM” and I get it. I am honestly impressed the Titans managed to get Borgonzi, who looked to be one of the most sought-after candidates this cycle. But each building has one person who is actually in charge, and it doesn’t really sound like that will be Borgonzi.

Dallas Cowboys
—Appear to be inching closer to naming Brian Schottenheimer head coach after giving him a second interview

I wrote about the grander game of this hiring process for D Magazine.

If you didn’t come up in the 2010s NFL Online World, Schottenheimer was a meme creation factory. He coordinated the offense and called the plays for the Jared Goff rookie year Rams under Jeff Fisher, which was one of the worst offenses I’ve ever seen in my life. He coordinated the Russell Wilson Seahawks through several uninspiring seasons that helped cement the Let Russ Cook movement. Let Russ Cook is a fascinating relic of its time — I think knowing what we know today, the idea of letting Wilson throw the ball 40 times a game would have had diminishing returns — but there was little to argue about when Seahawks fans would call Schottenheimer’s schemes a problem.

The Cowboys gave him a nice little role under Mike McCarthy, one where Schottenheimer didn’t even have to call plays. And he is in the running for this job because, well, Jerry Jones doesn’t want to pay someone better to do it. So, uh, yeah, gonna go offload any and all CeeDee Lamb positions I have in my dynasty leagues.

New Orleans Saints
—Let a snowstorm keep them from interviewing anybody all week

I don’t know, this one felt a little on the nose. I get that the Mickey Loomis hiring process once freed Sean Payton and so we have to pretend it’s vaunted or something, but if you’re already putting together a list of guys who you actually know from working with them on the Saints (Joe Brady, Mike McCarthy, and Darren Rizzi are roughly half of the remaining pool after Glenn took the Jets job) do we need to see these guys face to face before we pull the trigger on a head coach?

I get that southern cities do not have infrastructure to deal with snowstorms, but the fact that nobody in their department thought about the idea of “let’s get Mrs. Benson on a plane and go meet some candidates in a different place” as this thing was coming to grind all airport traffic to a halt kind of tells you all you need to know about the current state of the Saints. Was getting Aaron Glenn that important to them? I guess not! What is important to them? It’s hard to say. But sometimes you just have an organization that is living a snow day.

One of the things I keep circling back to with Loomis, who is the second-longest tenured GM in the business behind Jerry Jones, is his press availability after the season. His answer when asked about retirement:

"I've got a passion for the sport. I've got a passion for the Saints. I've got a passion for all of it. I feel like, look, I've got all my faculties here," he said, laughing. "If I ever felt like my acumen or my ability to think and ability to do the things necessary in this job were waning, I'd be the first guy to say, 'Hey, wait a minute.' So no, retirement's not on my mind. Get back to the playoffs and winning football, that's what's on my mind."

I dunno, call this a cherry pick or a reach if you must, but leading with “I’ve got all my faculties” is not exactly an inspiring call to action.

New England Patriots
—Hired Josh McDaniels as offensive coordinator, Terrell Williams as defensive coordinator.

This first part isn’t news: Josh McDaniels has always been the Patriots offensive coordinator. Patriots fans won’t stop talking about how his game plan destroyed Steve Grogan against the 85 Bears.

Williams has never had a real shot at a coordinator position, but was Mike Vrabel’s assistant head coach in Tennessee and even acted as head coach for a preseason game. I don’t think he’ll get to call plays here but I hope he’s able to continue climbing the ranks.

San Francisco 49ers
—Reportedly set to name former Jets HC Robert Saleh as defensive coordinator

Jacksonville’s dramatic reversal leads to something great for the 49ers, who get back their old defensive coordinator. And this unit badly needs some good calls from the DC room, because they struggled up front last year, have said they’ll make Javon Hargrave a free agent after the season, and don’t have much in the way of difference-making talent outside of Nick Bosa and Fred Warner at this point.

The core of the last great 49ers defense has been picked pretty clean by injuries and free agency. Where I’m at is something like: I simultaneously feel good about San Francisco’s ability to rebound to a good record next year, but am struggling to find a scenario where they do more than become a mid-tier playoff team off last year’s results. Maybe McCaffrey rebounds, maybe Aiyuk rebounds, maybe Greenlaw re-signs and is who he was before the injury again with another year to recover. I trust they’ll use their cap space well before locking in Brock Purdy. But … end of the day, nothing degrades a roster faster than long-term injuries and this team has accumulated a lot of them in a short period of time.