Pro Football Rumors
More than a quarter of the NFL changed coaches this offseason, with a record-tying 10 jobs opening up. Two of those changes shook up the top of his annual midyear list. Mike Tomlin resigned as Steelers head coach after 19 seasons, doing so days after the Ravens ended John Harbaugh‘s tenure after 18. Andy Reid is now the NFL’s longest-tenured HC — by a wide margin.
The three-time Super Bowl-winning Chiefs leader is entering his 14th season in Kansas City and 28th as an NFL HC. The former Eagles honcho — now fourth on the NFL’s all-time wins list (307) — will have split his head coaching career evenly between Pennsylvania and Missouri after this season. As the 68-year-old Reid will attempt to become the oldest NFL HC to win a Super Bowl — a mark Bruce Arians holds at 66 — he is the only active sideline boss to be hired before 2017.
Tomlin fell a few years short of Chuck Noll‘s storied 23-season Pittsburgh tenure, and playoff losses mounted for a coach that established one of the highest floors in the history of professional sports. A one-sided wild-card loss to the Texans preceded a quick Tomlin exit, and the charismatic leader is now at NBC. As Tomlin completed his 19th non-losing season, his team handed Harbaugh what became a tenure-closing defeat. The Ravens moved on from their Super Bowl-winning leader not long after Tyler Loop‘s Week 18 missed field goal.
Harbaugh received interest from just about everywhere on the coaching market, but he only met with the Giants and Falcons. The Giants quickly closed a deal, albeit taking a few days to finalize it, and started this year’s hiring cycle. The Falcons then scooped up Kevin Stefanski, whom the Browns fired after six seasons.
Stefanski is responsible for two of Browns 2.0’s three playoff berths since the franchise’s 1999 rebirth, but he took the fall amid Cleveland’s persistent struggles over the past two seasons. The Browns hired Ravens offensive coordinator Todd Monken — who was not a candidate anywhere else — to replace Stefanski. This is Monken’s first NFL HC opportunity, but he had been the Browns’ OC in 2019. The Ravens hired Jesse Minter, one of Harbaugh’s former assistants.
Having hired defensive-minded 30-somethings to fill each of their previous three HC vacancies, the Steelers went with Pittsburgh native Mike McCarthy. The offense-oriented leader is now a third-chance HC; overall, this is the former Packers and Cowboys head coach’s 19th season in charge of an NFL team. Beyond the Atlanta and New York hires, Tennessee was the only other team to go with a retread option. The Titans, who had been closely connected to ex-Mike Borgonzi Chiefs coworker Matt Nagy, hired Robert Saleh. The two-time 49ers DC is back on the HC tier after just one season away.
Sean McDermott had joined Sean McVay and Kyle Shanahan as a 2017 HC hire, but the Bills canned their longtime leader after an overtime divisional-round loss in Denver. Like Tomlin,...
