NFL head coach hiring season officially closed Monday with the Las Vegas Raiders finally able to publicly announce Seattle Seahawks’ offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak in a move that had been known for at least a week.
Kubiak celebrated winning the Super Bowl with the Seahawks on Sunday night in Santa Clara, California, and by Monday he was in Las Vegas touring the team facility ahead of his formal introduction as head coach Tuesday.
In all, 10 teams hired new head coaches this cycle — nearly a third of the league — tying the record for the most in one offseason.
Of the 10 hires, six are first-time head coaches while two made immediate moves after being fired from their former jobs at the start of this cycle, one got his second chance at a head coaching position after a season back in a coordinator role and another returns after a year away from the game for his third head coaching job.
Now that all the pieces have fallen into place, let’s give out grades and rank the hirings 1-10.
GO TO: No. 1 | No. 2 | No. 3 | No. 4 | No. 5 | No. 6 | No. 7 | No. 8 | No. 9 | No. 10
1. John Harbaugh (New York Giants)
Grade: A+
The most successful coach to hit the market this round was not surprisingly also the most coveted, and in his case he was the one vetting teams more so than the other way around.
Harbaugh reportedly talked with the Atlanta Falcons and was expected to do so with the Tennessee Titans as well, but the Giants were the only team he visited in-person and were able to close the deal soon after that meeting.
It’s a natural fit — one of the most high-profile coaches in the NFL lands one of the most high-profile jobs in the league.
Harbaugh was perhaps the most surprising coach fired this cycle, but there had been mounting buzz that a separation from the Baltimore Ravens was possible after 18 years there. The Ravens’ 2025 season went off the rails with star QB Lamar Jackson’s early hamstring injury and never totally recovered, though they were ultimately a missed 44-yard field goal in Week 18 vs. the Steelers away from making the playoffs.
Instead, Baltimore missed the postseason for just the second time in eight seasons while reports suggested there was a rift in the relationship between Harbaugh and Jackson (which Harbaugh emphatically refuted). Either way, Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti decided it was time for a regime change and reset after 18 seasons with Harbaugh — a stretch that included 180 regular season wins, 12 playoff appearances, 13 postseason wins and the Super Bowl XLVII championship after the 2012 season.
The 8-9 finish in 2025 was only Harbaugh’s third losing season in those 18 years.
So, yeah, it’s hard not to see this as a slum-dunk, home run, (enter any other sports cliche here) hire for the Giants.
Especially when comparing it to their recent failed hires.
The last time the Giants had sustained success was when they hired a proven veteran head coach in Tom Coughlin, who had previously led the expansion Jacksonville Jaguars to two AFC championship games. Coughlin, of course, went on to win two Super Bowls in New York.
Since forcing Coughlin to resign after the 2015 season, the Giants have turnstiled through four hires that were mostly questionable in the moment.
They promoted Ben McAdoo from within after just two seasons as an NFL offensive coordinator to replace Coughlin, and after an 11-5 debut season he started 2-10 in 2017 and got fired.
Next up was Pat Shurmur, who had gone 9-23 in two seasons as the Cleveland Browns’ head coach. The Giants were inspired enough by his subsequent stints as offensive coordinator for the Philadelphia Eagles and Minnesota Vikings to give him a second shot as an NFL head coach … and Shurmur again went an identical 9-23 in two seasons before getting canned in New York.
That cleared the way for the Giants to take an even bolder (we’re being diplomatic) swing and hire Joe Judge, the New England Patriots’ special teams coordinator — back when NFL teams thought hiring anyone from Bill Belichick’s staff was the fast-track to its own Super Bowl success. Naturally.
Judge kept the streak going by lasting just two seasons in the job, posting a 10-23 record.
And then it was Brian Daboll, who was a more justifiable hire at least. He had been an OC for four NFL teams and Alabama, and he got credit for helping develop star QB Josh Allen with the Buffalo Bills.
Daboll even won AP NFL Coach of the Year in his first season in 2022, going 9-7-1 for the Giants’ first winning season and playoff appearance in six years. But diminishing returns of 6-11, 3-14 and a 2-8 start in 2025 led to his ouster.
This time, New York went back to the Coughlin formula and found a proven winner who had done the job before at a high level for a long time.
What Harbaugh Has To Work With In New York
The Giants have an intriguing roster full of young talent if QB Jaxson Dart shows growth in his second season, star WR Malik Nabers returns to form after his torn ACL/meniscus injury, all of the talent across the defensive front continues to develop around second-team All-Pro edge rusher Brian Burns and the team hits on the No. 5 overall pick in the upcoming draft.
It might be a stretch expecting Harbaugh to work magic in Year 1 with such a raw young quarterback with just 12 career starts, but there’s every reason to think Harbaugh is the right coach to build a winning team in the years to come while being motivated to script a successful second and likely final chapter to his career as he’ll turn 64 years old in September.
To lead his staff, Harbaugh hired former Chicago Bears head coach and Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator Matt Nagy as OC and former Titans DC Dennard Wilson to run the defense.
2. Kevin Stefanski (Atlanta Falcons)
Grade: A
The other coach to immediately be coveted for multiple open head coaching jobs after being fired.
One could say Stefanski was mercifully let go by the Cleveland Browns after six seasons.
Before the doomed Deshaun Watson trade — arguably the worst trade in NFL history given not only Watson’s pre-existing legal situation and pending NFL suspension and the draft capital wasted but also the unprecedented fully guaranteed five-year, $230-million contract that followed — Stefanski won two NFL Coach of the Year awards while leading the Browns to their two best seasons since the franchise returned to the NFL in 1999.
Stefanski won 11 games in both 2020 and 2023, leading the Browns to two of their three playoffs appearances since returning as an expansion team. He then was saddled with the worst quarterback situation in the NFL outside of the Jets and went 3-14 and 5-12 the last two seasons.
It was high irony that while Cleveland struggled to find his replacement with multiple targets withdrawing themselves from the search, Stefanski was aggressively pursued, reportedly interviewing with six teams.
Atlanta has its own quarterback quandary to sort out after former first-round pick Michael Penix Jr. was up-and-down (to put it nicely) in parts of two seasons before another major ACL tear ended his 2025 campaign. The Falcons are also reportedly set to release expensive veteran QB Kirk Cousins.
The Outlook for Stefanski In Atlanta
So Stefanski has some work to do, but he also takes over the most talented roster of any team that made a head coaching change this cycle. The Falcons had four players receive first- or second-team All-Pro recognition this season in star RB Bijan Robinson, OG Chris Lindstrom and S Jesse Bates III, along with free agent TE Kyle Pitts. WR Drake London is also a proven standout. It made sense to hire an offensive-minded head coach to better leverage that talent within that unit.
Despite the Browns’ offensive struggles, Stefanski believed enough in his OC Tommy Rees to bring him along to Atlanta. Meanwhile, he was able to retain well-regarded Falcons DC Jeff Ulbrich.
The Falcons underachieved under former coach Raheem Morris, while Stefanski arguably overachieved with the Browns rosters he had at the start of his tenure there.
Whoever is at QB in 2026, this should be an improved Atlanta team after the coaching upgrade.
3. Jesse Minter (Baltimore Ravens)
Grade: B+
Ravens fans are having a hard time coming to grips with the reality that the best young coach in the NFL — newly minted Super Bowl champion Mike Macdonald of the Seahawks — was on their staff two years ago as defensive coordinator.
Macdonald would have been the perfect successor to Harbaugh, but the timing didn’t work out. Now, the Ravens will hope his close friend and another former Ravens assistant can prove to be just as good.
Like Macdonald, Minter worked for both Harbaugh brothers, serving as a defensive assistant with the Ravens from 2017-20 mostly coaching defensive backs before two seasons as defensive coordinator at Michigan with Jim Harbaugh. After winning a national championship together there, Minter followed his boss to the Los Angeles Chargers, further distinguishing himself as a successful DC.
Minter’s Chargers unit led the NFL in scoring defense in 2024 (17.7 points per game) and ranked ninth this season (20.0 PPG), while finishing 11th (324.4 yards per game) and fifth (285.2 YPG) in total defense those two years.
He and Macdonald were on staff together as position coaches with the Ravens developing from the same defensive philosophy, and Baltimore is banking on that proving to be significant.
Minter is also on the younger side for NFL head coaches at 42 years old and should be a seamless fit for the Ravens, having been part of John Harbaugh’s staff there, while also bringing a fresh voice for the reset ownership felt was needed.
The Ravens are built to win immediately, so the pressure will be on Minter right away in 2026.
Minter has already made an impression by luring up-and-coming offensive coordinator Declan Doyle away from the Chicago Bears and bringing former Ravens defensive line coach Anthony Weaver back as DC after he spent the last two years in that role for the Miami Dolphins.
4. Klint Kubiak (Las Vegas Raiders)
Grade: B
While the Raiders were the last NFL team to land a head coach, they ended up in a good spot, waiting out the Seahawks’ Super Bowl run before making it official with Kubiak, who had his second interview with the team on Jan. 31.
There’s plenty of risk here as the 38-year-old Kubiak has had mixed success in a limited sample size as an offensive coordinator in three separate one-year stints with the Minnesota Vikings (2021 — 14th in scoring at 25.0 PPG, 12th in total offense at 362.8 YPG), New Orleans Saints (2024 — 24th in scoring at 19.9 PPG, 21st in total offense at 320.1 YPG) and then this past season with the Seahawks.
But it’s hard to ignore the impact he made in Seattle.
The Seahawks upgrading at QB from Geno Smith to Sam Darnold was significant, but Kubiak had a really smart plan to go with it. Darnold had the second-fewest passing attempts of any QB who started all 17 games this season, while Kubiak took the pressure off him, put it largely on the team’s effective rushing attack and let his big-armed (but also still turnover-prone) quarterback play to his strengths, pick his spots and excel in the play-action/downfield passing game.
Seattle ranked third in scoring (28.4 PPG) and eighth in total offense (351.4 YPG) during the season and was even better in the postseason at 33.7 PPG while Darnold committed no turnovers in the three biggest games of his career.
“Without him, we wouldn’t be here,” Macdonald said of Kubiak after the Super Bowl. “What a phenomenal team player. Just being bought in to what we wanted to create, bringing that to the offense every day, just so steadfast in his approach. He’s team-first. That’s what I appreciate about him. He’s obviously a brilliant mind. He’s a great coach.”
The Raiders Will Be In Position To Draft The Top QB
Kubiak has worked closely with the QBs throughout his coaching career, from his time on his father Gary Kubiak’s staff in Denver, to the Vikings, back to the Broncos, the 49ers and then the Saints and Seahawks.
With the Raiders expected to use the No. 1 overall pick in the upcoming NFL draft on quarterback Fernando Mendoza, the Heisman Trophy winner from Indiana, it made total sense to hire a head coach who could be hands-on in his development.
Also notable, Seattle jumped from 28th in rushing offense (95.7 YPG) in 2024 to 11th this season (123.3) and then rushed for 141 yards in the Super Bowl against a Patriots defense that ranked sixth against the run during the season.
Las Vegas has had the worst rushing offense in the NFL the last two seasons and showed no improvement in 2025 despite drafting running back Ashton Jeanty No. 6 overall last year. Certainly, Kubiak and the Raiders have some paramount issues on the offensive line to address first, but ultimately the team is highly invested in its RB, incoming QB and star tight end Brock Bowers and just hired a coach who should theoretically be able to help maximize all three.
The lineage is also intriguing. It’s no guarantee, but we’ve seen that recently prove to have significance with the Shanahans (Mike a two-time Super Bowl champ in Denver and his son Kyle now of the best in the NFL in San Francisco). Kubiak’s father Gary won a Super Bowl as head coach of the Broncos and just growing around the game in that way is a valuable influence.
Kubiak has not yet formally announced his coordinators.
5. Joe Brady (Buffalo Bills)
Grade: B
Anyone who read our NFL coverage this season knows we fully agreed the Bills needed to move on from longtime coach Sean McDermott, who simply hadn’t been able to get the team over the hump despite having an elite quarterback in Josh Allen.
Fair or not — and many Bills fans actually disagreed with the move to fire McDermott — results are results, and falling short in the playoffs every year during the prime of a generational QB talent is not the result that ensures a coach keep his job in perpetuity.
But the timing of the move — after the Bills’ loss in the AFC divisional round — meant the top coaches on the market had already landed elsewhere. That put Buffalo in a tough spot when it came to hiring McDermott’s replacement.
Brady’s Connection To Allen Should Bring A Smooth Transition
Many saw the ultimate outcome underwhelming as the Bills promoted from within in giving the job to Brady, their OC.
It actually makes plenty of sense, though.
Buffalo didn’t need to strip it down and start over — it just needed a different voice leading the team. To go from the subdued McDermott to the 36-year-old, higher-energy Brady may be enough to change dynamics for a team that came out flat in games or played down to lesser opponents more often than any team with such talent the last several years.
Also, this provides stability for Allen, as Brady has been his QBs coach since 2022 and took over as OC during the 2023 season. Let’s not forget Brady was also the passing-game coordinator and essentially the co-OC of LSU’s 2019 national championship team that is regarded as one of the best offenses in college football history.
This was the right move to for Buffalo to both change things up but not tear down a team — especially an offense — that is good enough to contend for a Super Bowl.
Brady will retain playcalling duties for the Bills but hired OC Pete Carmichael Jr., formerly the Saints OC and most recently a senior offensive assistant for the Broncos the last two years. On defense, he hired former Bills linebacker, Wisconsin DC and most recently Broncos assistant head coach Jim Leonhard to run the unit — a strong addition to bring fresh energy to that side of the ball.
6. Robert Saleh (Tennessee Titans)
Grade: B-
We normally don’t like retread hires of coaches who failed elsewhere — the NFL most certainly does, though — but we’ll make an exception here.
Saleh went 20-36 as head coach of the Jets before getting fired five games into the 2024 season, but there are two important points to note there. One, it’s the Jets. Two, he was saddled with draft bust QB Zach Wilson, whom the team misguidedly took with the No. 2 overall pick in Saleh’s first draft with the organization.
Wilson was so overmatched as an NFL QB that he didn’t even get the graceful and lucrative segue into being a veteran backup like many former struggling starters. He’d go on to be a third-stringer in 2024 for the Broncos and finish as the Dolphins’ third-stringer this past season.
So Saleh had an anchor hung around him from the start in New York and then lost expected star/savior QB Aaron Rodgers to an immediate Achilles injury in the first game of the 2023 season. Saleh nonetheless managed to stay competitive enough to go 7-10 in 2022-23 and start 2-3 in 2024 before getting fired.
It should also be noted the Jets went 3-9 the rest of that season and then 3-14 under new coach Aaron Glenn this year.
Before his doomed Jets tenure, Saleh was regarded as one of the top defensive coordinators in the NFL while with the 49ers from 2017-20, including a run to the Super Bowl in the 2019 season. That year, San Francisco ranked second in total defense (281.8 YPG) and eighth in scoring defense (19.6 PPG) while also ranking among the top teams in sacks and turnovers forced. The Niners finished fifth in total defense the next year in Saleh’s final season.
He returned to San Francisco in 2025, and despite losing star linebacker Fred Warner and star edge rusher Nick Bosa early in the season among other injury setbacks, the 49ers stayed competitive and made it to the divisional round of the playoffs.
Saleh’s New Opportunity In Tennessee
So Saleh gets a second shot as a head coach with a better quarterback situation this time — at least somewhat, as 2025 No. 1 overall pick Cam Ward showed flashes in his rookie season despite playing behind a bad offensive line.
We’re not convinced Saleh will succeed in Tennessee, but it’s a logical enough hire.
He also did well with his coordinator hires, bringing in veteran DC Gus Bradley and Daboll as OC. Bradley, who was actually Saleh’s boss as head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars way back when, has been a DC for the Seahawks, Chargers, Raiders and Colts.
That’s a good amount of head coaching experience (albeit unsuccessful but with lessons learned) on staff.
And Titans fans were just ecstatic and relieved that the team didn’t hire another reported top candidate in Nagy, the failed former Bears coach who continues to get undue credit for two stints serving as Andy Reid’s OC in Kansas City.
7. Mike McCarthy (Pittsburgh Steelers)
Grade: B-
McCarthy is a fine coach. He has a 174-112 career record from his 13 seasons in Green Bay and five in Dallas. He won a Super Bowl with the Packers in 2010, got to three other NFC championship games and had just three losing seasons there.
He also had an all-time great quarterback in Aaron Rodgers and a loaded roster each year, so some critics might say not winning more than one Super Bowl was a disappointment overall.
McCarthy also had three 12-win seasons and two NFC East titles in his five years in Dallas, albeit bookended by losing records and with just one playoff win to show for it all.
Now, after a year off, he gets a third head coaching job at 62 years old and potentially a reunion with his former star QB Rodgers, who is undecided on his future.
Ultimately, our take on McCarthy is that he’s good enough to get his team where it should be (based on its talent) in the regular season more often than not, but that he’s ultimately unlikely to truly elevate a roster or outcoach opponents in the playoffs.
Pittsburgh Native McCarthy Tasked With Returning Steelers To AFC Prominence
The Steelers have been stuck in middling purgatory for years now, good enough to just sneak into the playoffs while being no actual threat to make a postseason run, and it’s hard to see how McCarthy changes that. He made more sense in Dallas when he took over a built-to-win-now Cowboys team.
But maybe we’re selling him short.
We did give extra points for him being a Pittsburgh native.
McCarthy hired Brian Angelichio, most recently the Vikings passing game coordinator, as a first-time OC while McCarthy will be the offensive play-caller, and former Raiders and Dolphins DC Patrick Graham.
8. Mike LaFleur (Arizona Cardinals)
Grade: C
The two most confounding things that NFL teams continue to do in hiring head coaches is either settle for a retread who wasn’t successful elsewhere or give overstated (and often undue) credit to a coordinator who was in an already successful, highly favorable situation.
We call this the Adam Gase Corollary. In both regards!
Gase wasn’t particularly notable in any way until the Broncos landed Hall-of-Fame-bound QB Peyton Manning in 2012. Gase was the team’s incumbent QBs coach and would get elevated to OC for 2013-14.
Now, it’s true that the Broncos had some phenomenal offenses those two years, but do we think that’s because of first-time coordinator Gase or five-time NFL MVP Manning, known as one of the most cerebral QBs of his or any era? Need more time? OK, good.
Gase wasn’t even in Denver for its Super Bowl season with Manning in 2015, having moved on to the Bears for one season as OC there. Those Bears ranked 21st in total offense and 23rd in scoring.
So inspired by that resume, the Dolphins hired Gase as their head coach. What they didn’t take into account was that late-prime Manning wasn’t coming to Miami with Gase, who went 23-25 in three seasons before being fired.
But wait, it gets better. The Jets saw that and thought, “Well, surely it was an organizational failure in Miami! This guy coached Peyton Manning after all!” They hired Gase to be their head coach less than two weeks after the Dolphins fired him and … well, shockingly, it didn’t work out there either. Gase went 9-23 in two seasons in New York and has been out of the league since until latching on this offseason as the Chargers’ new pass-game coordinator.
That was a prolonged digression to get us to a more pertinent point.
Arizona Landed On LaFleur
The Cardinals hired LaFleur as head coach based on his success the last three years as the Rams’ offensive coordinator.
Now, this has actually been a fruitful well to pull from, we have to acknowledge. The previous three Rams OCs under head coach Sean McVay (himself an offensive-minded coach) were Matt LeFleur (older brother to Mike), Kevin O’Connell and Liam Coen, who of course have gone on to become successful head coaches for the Packers, Vikings and Jaguars, respectively.
So if you want to put stock primarily in the McVay offensive coaching tree, perhaps there is some logic there.
But to say that Mike LaFleur, who guided bottom-10 offenses as OC for the Jets in 2021-22, was the reason Matthew Stafford, Puka Nacua, Kyren Williams and Co. (add in Davante Adams this past season) had great offenses in Los Angeles would fall directly under the parameters of the Adam Gase Corollary.
So mark us down as skeptical in this hire — but a guarded skepticism as that McVay coaching tree sure has blossomed.
Adding to the skepticism, though, was LaFleur’s subsequent move to hire OC Nathaniel Hackett.
Hackett was fired midway through the second season of his first OC job in Jacksonville, then parlayed being the Packers’ OC from 2019-21 (including two Rodgers MVP seasons) into the Broncos head coaching job. He lasted less than one season there, going 4-11, and then was a middling OC for the Jets for two years and a defensive analyst back in Green Bay this season.
To recap, his only sustained success as a coordinator or beyond was thanks to a future Hall of Fame QB in his prime on an offense that was good every year.
This is double Adam Gase Corollary for the Cardinals offense!
Arizona has not yet hired a defensive coordinator.
9. Todd Monken (Cleveland Browns)
Grade: C
We don’t necessarily hate the move, but the Browns’ entire offseason deserves a gigantic F.
It was just an all-around bad look that after they fired their most successful head coach of this century, he was immediately coveted by most of the other teams looking for new coaches, while the Browns had one target after another ask to be removed from consideration for their job.
All leading to the hiring of Monken, one of the oldest first-time head coaches in NFL history at 60 years old.
He’s been an NFL OC for the Buccaneers, Browns (2019), Georgia (winning two national championships) and most recently the Ravens, helping produce the league’s top-ranked offense in 2024. So he has credentials.
His lone head coaching experience came at Southern Miss from 2013-15, where he took over a tough situation and improved the team from 1-11 to 3-9 and 9-5 in his time there.
Monken seems like a solid coach, but whether he’s the dynamic leader the Browns need in the middle of a rebuild is questionable.
Also, in choosing Monken over their well-regarded defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz, the Browns lost Schwartz, who didn’t take that decision well and bolted.
Monken is bringing his Ravens run-game coordinator Todd Switzer with him as new OC for Cleveland, while the team hasn’t hired a DC yet.
10. Jeff Hafley (Miami Dolphins)
Grade: C-
We simply aren’t overwhelmed by this hire.
Hafley spent all of two seasons as an NFL defensive coordinator with the Green Bay Packers. Their defense was very good in 2024, ranking sixth in both total defense and scoring. They finished 12th in total defense and 11th in scoring defense this season while tailing off after star defender Micah Parsons’ injury.
So he did solid enough work in that sample size.
Before that, Hafley went 22-26 in four seasons as Boston College’s head coach. His other previous NFL experience is coaching DBs for the Buccaneers, Browns and 49ers.
It just feels a bit rushed to say his time is now as an NFL head coach.
Interestingly, he was hired by new Dolphins general manager Jon-Eric Sullivan, who was the Packers’ vice president of player personnel while Hafley was there.
On one hand, he should know what he’s getting more than could be gleaned in a simple interview or two. On the other, did he really conduct an open-minded search to find the best head coach available, or was he predisposed to bringing in his guy? That is mildly worrisome if it’s the latter.
Anyways, maybe it works out. We’re not saying it won’t — just that it’s the least inspiring of all the hires made this cycle.
Hafley hired former Texans OC Bobby Slowik for that role and brought with him his former Packers LBs coach Sean Duggan, with just two years of NFL experience, to be his DC.
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