Pro Football Rumors
Eight head coaching jobs have now opened, with the prospect of more coming after this weekend's set of wild-card games. As a fourth of the NFL is making changes at head coach, only two teams have general manager vacancies.
The Titans showed in the fall how front office-coaching staff misalignment can affect a team. Brian Callahan was gone six games into GM Mike Borgonzi's tenure. Several examples over the past decade have seen these overlaps backfire, yet a peculiar batch of teams is trying this strategy this year.
Lever pulls by owners in Arizona, Cleveland, Las Vegas and New York have left the HC market crowded and the GM carousel sparse. Each of these franchises hired the GM and HC together, yet only the coach has paid for the franchise's recent struggles. Jonathan Gannon, Kevin Stefanski, Pete Carroll and Brian Daboll are out, but these four ownership groups have respectively retained Monti Ossenfort, Andrew Berry, John Spytek and Joe Schoen in GM roles in deeming the execs less responsible for on-field failure.
While the Raiders' dysfunction is well known by this point during a decade that has seen the team employ five HCs and four GMs, Spytek was not a firing candidate due largely to his relationship with minority owner Tom Brady. The retired QB/conflict of interest embodiment having played college football with Spytek and reunited with him in Tampa made it clear who would take the fall for the latest Raiders struggles. GMs are rarely ever one-and-dones, but Brady fired Tom Telesco after one season -- after the Raiders canned Dave Ziegler after less than two years on the job.
The Raiders join the Browns, Cardinals and Giants as NFL basement bastions, and each launched HC searches this week. With the lowly operations proceeding in the same fashion by breaking up HC-GM combos, it is worth examining these situations.
