7 NFL head coaches who could be fired on Black Monday

One of the biggest dates on the NFL calendar for fans of struggling teams is Black Monday. The first day after the close of the regular season is when teams routinely announce that a head coach has been fired, trying to find a new path forward, hopefully with renewed success.

In 2025 we saw two coaches fired mid-season with the Titans parting ways with Brian Callahan and the Giants firing Brian Daboll. It was an immediate net improvement for Tennessee, while the Giants, well, they were still awful. Here are tk other head coaches who are on the hot seat to the point where it wouldn’t be a surprise to see their names hit the headlines on Black Monday.

Mike McDaniel — Miami Dolphins

Has Mike McDaniel done enough to save his job? Perhaps. For much of the year it seemed like a guarantee that McDaniel would get the ax, but with the Dolphins winning five of their last seven games it’s become more difficult to justify seeing this as a foregone conclusion.

At this point we know the limitations of McDaniel as a head coach. The man is an offensive genius, but he lacks in the leadership department. The decision the Dolphins have to make is whether they think they can wait and hope that trait appears, of if he’ll never be a vocal leader. It’s easy to forget that McDaniel is only 42, and not everyone can step into the job young like Sean McVay and thrive.

If Miami decides to go in a new direction then McDaniel will be the hottest offensive coordinator on the market.

Pete Carroll — Las Vegas Raiders

The Raiders fooled plenty of people entering the 2025 season. Heck, most of us thought that Pete Carroll taking over a 4-13 team that was brimming with talent, adding Geno Smith, and topping it off with Ashton Jeanty could make Vegas a dark horse for a playoff spot.

How wrong we were.

Carroll looked lost in the job this season. For the first time in forever it appeared that the task was just too big for him. There was no appreciable adjustment, very little fight, and a lot of going through the motions while letting loss after loss stack up. The question for the brain trust in Las Vegas is whether or not you want Carroll leading the charge with a Top 5 pick, potentially the No. 1 overall pick — and a new franchise QB at that.

This could very well be a ceremonial “go out with dignity” retirement for Carroll, which would allow the Raiders to find a new coach without embarrassment. Right now it’s difficult to have much hype about a future for this team with Pete at the helm, as much as that sucks to say because of Carroll’s coaching legacy.

Kevin Stefanski — Cleveland Browns

If we read the tea leaves on what’s happening in Cleveland it becomes difficult to envision a scenario where Stefanski remains as head coach. It’s wild to think the perennially disappointing Browns would part ways with a two-time Coach of the Year winner, but when we get down to brass tacks, the team has become stagnant.

The Browns have only had two winning seasons in Stefanski’s six year tenure. He holds a career .440 win percentage as a head coach, after having ample time to put his mark on the team. There are dozens of fair reasons why none of this mess is Stefanski’s fault, ranging from below-average drafting, to mediocre free agency work, and that’s before we get into the Deshaun Watson debacle. No coach could have succeeded in these conditions, but this still feels like a situation where a fresh start is needed both for the Browns and Stefanski.

Zac Taylor — Cincinnati Bengals

It all comes down to one fundamental question: How cheap are the Bengals?

Taylor is without question one of the least talented, least imaginative, poorest coaches in the NFL whose sins have so often been masked by Joe Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase that he’s become teflon. With a contract running through 2027 there’s a significant chance that Cincinnati would sooner waste more of their star players’ primes than be put in a situation where they have to pay two coaches at once.

Holding a win percentage of .457 with the Bengals is laughable considering the offensive talent on this roster. Taylor should be gone, but whether or not he does go will be a product of how willing Mike Brown is to open his checkbook.

Jonathan Gannon — Arizona Cardinals

Things just aren’t clicking in Arizona … again. The big knock against Jonathan Gannon remaining as head coach is the unbelievable lack of improvement on the defensive side of the ball, which should have been the one area he could affect change with the Cardinals. This is a team that’s 29th in points allowed, 24th against the pass, and 25th against the run. Despite this the quarterback position was what got blamed for the woes this year.

It’s been three years of missed playoffs, a lack of improvement, and unclear direction. With a potential new quarterback on the horizon it’s time to make another switch at coach and keep swinging to find the right guy.

John Harbaugh — Baltimore Ravens

There’s no question Harbaugh is a great coach, but his tenure with the Ravens feels like it’s coming to an end. It’s been 13 years since winning a Super Bowl, and while Baltimore has been a staple of the playoffs for much of that time, underachievement has almost been a calling card for much of the Lamar Jackson era.

It’s fair to question whether or not this team needs to modernize its coaching approach by getting in some fresh blood who can take a new look at the roster and team construction, rather than hoping to simply run back the same plan and hope that things will be different.

This .500 season hasn’t been bad, especially with the misfortunes the Ravens have faced with Jackson’s injury, but it’s just feeling like it’s time.

Aaron Glenn — New York Jets

Taking over the Jets is a difficult job at the best of times. Taking it over at a time the team traded away its best two defensive players in Quinnen Williams and Sauce Gardner, without a good answer at QB, and a team in need of a massive culture shift made this impossible.

That said, Glenn hasn’t shown much as a head coach in his only season. The Jets have been one of the worst teams in football this year, and the effort just isn’t there. It’s feeling a little like Jerrod Mayo’s one year tenure with the Patriots, and we’ve seen what happened with that franchise by quickly identifying the path wasn’t working, and changing course.

It wouldn’t be a fair outcome for Glenn, who left one of the best coordinator jobs in football to come to New York, but the status quo just isn’t acceptable.