Gang Green Nation
There’s a perception around the league and in the media that firing a head coach after just one season is an inherent negative for the franchise. It’s perceived as creating instability and scaring away quality candidates from jobs. I want to take a look at how true that has been since the turn of the century.
Let’s start with how frequent this happens. Since 2001, there have been 18 one and done head coaches. That’s less than once a year, so it must not happen often right? Well, it’s a little more complicated.
In the early part of the 2000s it was rare for a team to fire their head coach after one season. After all, it was an almost never seen taboo, with only one head coach fired after a single season in the entire 1990s.
From 2000-2005 only two one and done head coaches. The first, Al Groh, was a one and done by choice. The New York Jets were going to go through an entire hiring cycle after Groh coached the team in 2000 with the intern title following the departure of Bill Belichick. Groh didn’t want to stick around and potentially miss out on another job, so he instead resigned and left the team for the University of Virginia.
The other was Marty Schottenheimer. The legendary offensive mind was in his third stint as a head coach when he joined Washington in 2001 as the Head of Football Operations. Despite winning 8 of his first 11 games that season and finishing with an 8-8 record, Schottenheimer was fired.
After that you have to wait until 2006 when the Raiders fired Art Shell after one year at the helm of a 2-14 team. The firing of Shell kicked off a whole new era of one and dones. from 2006-2009 there were 3 one and dones. 2008 is the only season over that four year span where there wasn’t a one and done. That’s a shock to the system after the league went from 1990-2005 with three one and ones total.
Then from 2011-2024 there were 13 one and dones. Nearly one every year. This was a massive change for a league that for so long considered the move taboo.
There seems to be a split that in some cases it’s okay to fire a head coach in their second or third term after one year. These are guys with track records beyond your team and that means they’re easier to evaluate. So let’s remove those coaches that have had previous head coaching stints and only look at first year coaches for a second.
Here’s the list of first year coaches who were one and done as a head coach:
2000 Jets: Al Groh
2007 Dolphins: Cam Cameron
2011 Raiders: Hue Jackson
2013 Browns: Rob Chudzinski
2015 49ers: Jim Tomsula
2018 Cardinals: Steve Wilks
2019 Browns: Freddie Kitchens
2021 Jaguars: Urban Meyer
2021 Texans: David...
