Lord, what can the harvest hope for, if not for the care of the reaper man?

-Death, Reaper Man by Sir Terry Pratchett

As Scotchy noted yesterday, six empty chairs today at the NFL Head Coaches Table. Two were shitcanned midseason, one about ten minutes after the final whistle, and three on the traditional Black Monday.

LATE EDIT: I don’t know why I fucking bother writing these ahead of time. EVERY. FUCKING YEAR. some owner emerges from his hedge-fund-powered Life Cocoon on Tuesday afternoon and points The Finger of Death at a coach.

A brief post-mortem for each:

BRIAN CALLAHAN Tennessee (fired October 10)

Why was he fired: Difficult to say. The Tits were bad last year, and there were rumblings that Callahan barely survived the end of his first year as being out of his depth. GM Ran Carthon paid for letting Derrick Henry go and sticking with Will Levis at QB in 2024, so the idea (seemingly) was to give Callahan the top quarterback this year, a new GM and see how he flew.

Dumb, but not indefensible- there’s a logic there.

Cam Ward struggled in four of the team’s five losses, at which point Callahan got the sack very early. In retrospect, that may not have been a representative sample: those four bad games were against opponents that (in hindsight) were against three top-10 defenses and an Indianapolis unit that was playing way above its level during the first half of the season. And if he was on that short of a leash, why replace him with Mike McCoy?

In the end, I’m going with the same reason Carthon got the axe: frustration with What Might Have Been. Mike Vrabel was cast off and started Rescuing The Patriots. Bo Nix and Michael Penix both looked like better options than Cam Ward at that point in the season. A certain kind of boss will let imagined counterfactuals drive them to frustration.

Callahan looked out of his depth from Day 1, probably should never have been hired, and almost certainly should have been dumped at the end of last season. That said, from the outside this looks like the worst of both worlds- lack of consistency without meaningful change. Woe unto the next mediocre white guy they hire.

BRIAN DABOLL New York Giants (fired November 10).

He was fired because the Maras’ Stately Old Family of the NFL approach apparently extends to being fashionably late in making basic personnel decisions.

The Giants are still chasing the next Bill Parcells, who was young, charismatic and strategically savvy when they hired him. John Mara and Steve Tisch’s hires (they inherited Tom Coughlin when they took the reins of the Giants in 2005) trend in that direction- Ben McAdoo, Joe Judge, Daboll. Pat Shurmer was a lightly-used retread and a quarterback whisperer.

Problem is that Daboll, Judge and McAdoo were only relatively young and relatively charismatic.

Without the savvy, what passed for charisma becomes petty aggression and desperation fairly quickly. Ironically, by clinging onto Blue Tent Daboll a year (or more) too long, the Giants may have missed out on the lastest potential Parcells in Ben Johnson. Womp-womp!

RAHEEM MORRIS Atlanta

So GM Terry Fontenot and Chief Meddler Rich McKay both needed to go. The Falcons’ personnel situation was fucked since they extended Matt Ryan for 5 years in 2018 in an attempt to ride out his career twilight, and whatever fight over the franchise steering wheel resulted in the Mariota/Taylor Heinicke/Desmond Ridder/Cousins/Penix era at quarterback has set the franchise back ten years.

None of this is Morris’s fault, as far as we can tell. Yes, the Falcons were so erratic that Rashee Rice thought they should slow down and pick a lane. But they rose to the occassion against the best teams, and they demonstrated a willingness to play beyond their talent level for Morris- more than most coaches seem to get from their guys. And 8-9 from a team that came into the season in utter chaos struck me as impressive.

I assume Arthur Blank wanted to give his new GM and CEO the freedom to choose their own guy. Probably rehire Arthur Smith.

JONATHAN GANNON Arizona

To be frank, I forgot that he was still coaching the Cardinals. He was over-hired to begin with, chose his assistants poorly, and could not get through to Kyler Murray. Perfect Cardinals coach. At least Kliff Kingsbury is available again!

PETE CARROLL Las Vegas

Man, Pete. Pete, Pete, Pete. Whoever you owe money to from the old USC days, just let them break your legs. That HAS to be less painful than what you just went through this season.

Or maybe you needed to show the Seahawks that they were wrong to shove him out the door. I suppose Tom Brady and Las Vegas are each synonymous with Big Divorced Guy Energy.

KEVIN STEFANSKI Cleveland

Stefanski was not the problem in Cleveland. Nor was he the solution. His people are now leaking that he was Against The Deshaun Watson Trade The Whole Time. Which, depending on whether you believe it, either shows

1. He’s a two-faced careerist piece of shit who can’t accept responsibility, or
2. He has a functioning brainstem

He earned Coach of the Year twice. Then again, Daboll earned it once, which shows how pointless an award it is. Coach of the Year is not about winning per se, but about beating expectations. If Stefanski worked for a functional franchise, he never would have won those awards.

But as they say: you lie down with dogs, you get up covered in slobber, urine and feces. You sign up with the Cleveland Browns, you’re gonna get Haslam’d. Someone had to take the blame for this Era of Incompetence, and since this is America, it sure as fuck wasn’t going to be the billionaire.

If Arthur Smith falls through, I anticipate Stefanski will be first interview for the Falcons.

JOHN FUCKING HARBAUGH Baltimore.

Well, there’s that. 18 seasons. Super Bowl. Perennial playoff team.

Maybe the rumors of friction with Lamar were true. Maybe after outlasting four and a half presidential terms, Harbs had lost the locker room. Maybe he called Steve Bisciotti a Keebler Elf in a moment of frustration. I dunno.

Sometimes change is needed. But only if you have someone lined up who is a clear equivalent or upgrade. Who the hell do you have in mind- current OC Todd Monken? The guy more directly responsible for this year’s fuckups that got Harbs canned? Kliff Kingsbury? The guy who is currently getting paid by two different teams NOT to coach for them? Robert Saleh???

Ok, Saleh might not be bad.