Paris, London, Milan, New York, Foxborough. All are places the moneyed class is looking for the latest trends to wrap themselves in. In the NFL, nothing is more en vogue right now than pinning your hopes for a makeover to a new head coach.
The Patriots are trendsetters with the vintage look that first-year coach Mike Vrabel has given the franchise, leading them to a 14-3 record, their first playoff win since the 2018 season, and a spot in the AFC Divisional playoffs. A rags-to-riches story, nouveau New England hosts the Texans on Sunday at Gillette Stadium with a spot in the AFC title game at stake.
All of the nine NFL teams seeking a better fit or a refreshed look on the sidelines after staples grew stale (I’m looking at you, Baltimore and Pittsburgh) want a Vrabel model walking down their coaching catwalk. New coach smell is the scent teams want to douse all over their outfits. Changing coaches is the pro football panacea with the bonus that serial bungling owners in Cleveland, Miami, Arizona, Las Vegas, Miami, Tennessee, and, yes, the mighty Maras with the Giants don’t have to take ownership of their ownership shortcomings.
Thanks to Vrabel, Ben Johnson in Chicago, and Liam Cohen in Jacksonville, the new coach bump is in. Teams believe they’re a coaching change away from the organizational equivalent of a 28-3 comeback. That includes Arthur Blank’s Falcons, the team on the wrong end of that infamous 28-3 rally by the Patriots in Super Bowl LI. The answer to every team’s prayers is to coach ‘em up and shift the culture with a new sideline sultan.
Truly an end of an era with the departures of longtime coaches John Harbaugh and Mike Tomlin
The NFL has always been a copycat league. Now, teams want their version of Vrabel Vibes. Admit it. It’s glorious to see the Patriots as the model franchise again. It’s enjoyable to see other NFL franchises chasing after what they have after Vrabel took a team that had gone 4-13 the prior two seasons under Bill Belichick and then Jerod Mayo and fashioned a winner.
I’ve always believed the play is the thing in the NFL, as in the players. What did Belichick look like without Tom Brady? Vrabel has stressed all season that it’s about the players, and the Patriots did redress their roster. They also watched Drake Maye go from the equivalent of pimple-faced passer to supermodel signal-caller.
But we live in the age of the quick fix and instant transformation. You can’t blame NFL teams for boiling it down to the head coach as haute couture.
There’s evidence that finding the right sideline seigneur is the fastest way to go from ugly duckling to swan. Last season, Chicago was 5-12, and No. 1 pick Caleb Williams looked lost. Jacksonville was 4-13, and Trevor Lawrence went 2-8 during an injury-prone season. We all know what happened here. This year, all those teams won their division and combined to go 38-13.
The small-market Jaguars excelled under Coen, the former UMass quarterback, before losing in the wild-card round to Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bridesmaids, uh, Bills. Coen did such a good job that he got sympathetic support from a Jacksonville reporter.
Like the Patriots, the Bears, riding the offensive genius and shirtless hijinks of Johnson, are a win away from the NFL’s final four. Johnson has turned Williams into the Comeback King and broken the Bears QB curse. The Bears have seven fourth-quarter comebacks, and Williams spearheaded the largest comeback in Bears postseason history (18 points) to down the rival Green Bay Packers last Saturday.
Meanwhile, the level of buy-in fostered by Vrabel in Foxborough borders on biblical. His tenets of team identity could be printed on stone tablets, and his team would follow him anywhere, believing he’s taking them to the pigskin promised land.
“I think for one, he understands what our perspective is as a player, and then he also just holds guys to a really high standard and holds people accountable,” said linebacker Jack Gibbens, who played for Vrabel in Tennessee.
“I think that’s a tough line to balance. You’ve got some coaches who are maybe a little bit lackadaisical, some coaches who are really hard on their players. I think he has a great, unique gift to be able to be hard on the players but also relate to them. I think that’s just a unique trait that he has, and I think that it shows in the success he has had.”
Look across the playoffs, and you’ll see turnaround artists.
Vrabel’s Houston coaching counterpart, DeMeco Ryans, was an inspired hire by Texans GM and former Patriots director of player personnel Nick Caserio. Ryans took over a team that had gone 11-38-1 in the prior three seasons. They’ve won at least 10 games and a playoff contest in each of Ryan’s three seasons. The 2025 Texans enter Gillette Stadium as winners of 10 straight games.
Boston-born Mike Macdonald has the 14-3 Seahawks set up as the No. 1 seed in the NFC in his second season with retread quarterback Sam Darnold. Seattle pushed out Pete Carroll for Macdonald. He’s won 10 or more games in both of his seasons.
Super Bowl-winning coach Sean Payton is in year No. 3 in Denver. He went 8-9 his first season, the most wins by the Broncos since 2016, their first year post-Peyton Manning. Payton then made the playoffs last year with rookie Bo Nix. This year, the road to Super Bowl LX in the AFC goes through the Rockies and the top-seeded Broncos.
You can see the appeal for teams to pull the plug on their headset-wearer-in-chief.
With John Harbaugh, who is expected to resurface with the Giants, ousted in Baltimore after 18 seasons, and Mike Tomlin stepping down as Steelers mainstay after 19, Kansas City’s Andy Reid is now the NFL’s longest-tenured coach at 13 seasons.
No other active coach can claim double-digits, although Sean McVay (Rams), Kyle Shanahan (49ers), and Sean McDermott (Bills) are all in their ninth seasons. They’re also all coaching divisional playoff weekend.
So newer isn’t always better.
Job security is an oxymoron for NFL coaches. Longevity is going to be even harder to come by with owners feeling that the new coach smell is all they need to mask their own leadership stinkers.
As long as teams like the Patriots appear on the cutting edge with coaching changes, coaches will be on the chopping block.
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