Stockton- With the end of the regular season of the NFL and the beginning of the playoffs now underway, a total of 6 head coaches have been fired and laid off. Regardless of the reason being poor performance or just a simple losing streak, all six of these coaches will be addressed as to why they had been laid off along with the opportunity for others to take their position.
To begin, the Las Vegas Raiders organization fired their coach Antonio Pierce who had been with the team for a single season. He led the Raiders to a 4-13 record which grants them the 6th pick in the 2025 draft. Pierce was fired due to the overall stigma of the season being negative and the Raiders hoping to find a coach that can guide the way to a playoff appearance. The Raiders now take the lead for the team with the most head coach substitutions since 2000, coming in at 13.
A Lincoln High School student named Rylan Tuuaga, who is a die hard Raiders fan, views this firing as a negative decision and describes how it could hurt the Raiders in the long run. “ I don’t think this is going to help the Raiders at all. Although we were super negative throughout the year, we have a lot of potential walking into next year with all our players and the fact that our coach got laid off won’t help us.”
Shortly before Antonio Pierce lost his job, former coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars, Doug Pederson, and former coach of the New England Patriots, Jerod Mayo, had both been laid off directly following the end of the regular season.
Pederson had been fired immediately after the NFL regular season ended due to the negative performance of the team finishing at 4-13. While many players such as Trevor Lawrence have spoken out, saying he was not the only problem on the team, it goes to show how rapid it is for whole organizations to pin the blame on head coaches.
Similar can be said about Mayo; although he only coached one season while Pederson coached three, Mayo was walking into the remains of one of the greatest coaches of all time, Bill Belichick. A lot was unexpected of him with the lack of team he had behind him, which resulted in the team finishing 4-13 as well. An additional key to the drive of his release is due to the Patriots securing the first round pick as long as they lost the rest of the season’s games. However, Jerod Mayo had a different plan and won the last game of the season against the Bills, which resulted in them losing their first pick and falling to fourth.
Regardless of the reason or intent of the firing of these coaches, along with 3 others earlier throughout the season, tension is high regarding teams with negative records, and teams going into the future need to tighten their mindset and play style in order to stay as a part of the NFL and their respective teams.
