The NFL coaching cycle is now in full swing. There was an expectation that we might need to wait a lot longer for a lot of the positions to iron themselves out, but the timeline was expedited with the Lions’ stunning loss to the Commanders in the NFC Divisional Playoffs. With two of the hottest coaching commodities on that Detroit team now free to interview and be hired, teams without a coach better have a plan lined up quickly, lest they find themselves on the outside looking in.
Grading coaches can be a tricky pursuit. Oftentimes times the head coaching position is about executing on a vision holistically rather than being a monolith at the top. Dan Quinn was hardly the most exciting hire of the 2024 cycle, but suddenly, he became the best coaching hire in the NFL when you look at the offensive turnaround under Kliff Kingsbury and Jayden Daniels.
Nevertheless, there are ways of reading tea leaves when coaches get hired — and we’re grading every new coach in the NFL.
Chicago Bears: Ben Johnson
It’s been a long, long time since the Bears hired someone who was actually coveted for NFL jobs and not just hired because someone needed to fill the role. Known for splashy moves in recent years, Chicago pulled off its biggest coup by hiring Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson to stay in the NFC North and compete against his prior team.
There’s no doubt Johnson is a home-run hire. His scheming ability and creative offensive game planning took the Lions to new heights and transformed Jared Goff into one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL. Johnson simultaneously showed ridiculous talent in devising a run game, typified by the one-two punch of Jahmyr Gibbs and David Montgomery this season.
With that heaping help of praise, it’s also worth wondering if this is a great fit. Johnson is supremely creative, but the majority of his work happens pre-snap. He’s not someone who thrives when his players go off script or start creating for themselves. That makes this fit with Caleb Williams and DJ Moore a little awkward, both of whom are less robotic and more inventors — with Williams’ penchant for improvising after the snap, while Moore has never been a route technician, instead finding ways to get open at the top of his route.
Don’t get it twisted: This is still a very good hire, and Johnson wouldn’t take the job without confidence he can make all this work. It’s just worth pausing for a beat to think about how this all fits together.
Grade: B+
New England Patriots: Mike Vrabel
The Patriots were the kings of choosing the obvious this year. In fact, the rapidity in which they moved on from Jerod Mayo, quickly knocked out their Rooney Rule interviews, and immediately hired Vrabel seems to indicate this was the plan all along.
Trading one ex-player for another, it’s clear New England has a type. There are a lot of different ways to look at Vrabel leading the Pats, but the prevailing feeling is that this is both solid and unremarkable.
Vrabel is an old-school football guy with old-school tendencies. He’s going to want to run the ball and beat teams with defense. There won’t be any tricks, it’ll rarely be pretty, and it’ll probably work — to a degree. At the very least New England will see more wins, purely because this team was already on the upswing under Mayo, and Vrabel should be able to put together a solid staff.
Who this might not be good for is Drake Maye. Giving a rookie QB two coaches in two years is never great, but Vrabel will naturally deemphasize any focus there was on the passing game and focus on the run. If that results in a wholesale overhaul to the offensive line it’s a good thing, but with Maye’s growth over his rookie season it also feels a little like buying a sports car and refusing to shift it out of third.
Ultimately Vrabel is a good hire with a ceiling. He will win football games. He might even get the Pats back to the playoffs. He isn’t a coach who can lead a team to a Super Bowl. We just haven’t seen the creativity or scheming required to win a chess game against the other top minds in the NFL.
Grade: C+
We’ll update this story as more teams hire coaches.
