It was a bad week to be an embattled NFL coach. Week 13 started with Matt Eberflus' final stand, as the Bears coach seemed to lose track of time and mismanaged another late-game situation in a 23-20 loss to the Lions. Chicago's sixth straight defeat marked the end of his time in charge of the Bears, as he was fired by the organization Friday.
By Sunday evening, just about every other coach sitting on a hot seat had followed with a loss of their own. In addition to Monday night's Broncos-Browns games, nine other games featured matchups between teams with winning records and teams with losing records. In all nine, the team that entered the game with the winning record took the W.
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Not all of those losing teams have coaches with fears for their job security, but many are facing some semblance of an uncertain future. There are still five weeks of football left, and what happens over that span might determine what happens. The Bears, for example, saved Eberflus' job for a season in 2023 by going 4-2 down the stretch after a 3-8 start.
Let's evaluate some of the league's struggling teams, what's going wrong, how that impacted them in Week 13 and what they have to do from here on out to ensure their coach's return in 2025. I'll start with one of the matchups from Thanksgiving, when the Giants helped produce a happy holiday for the one embattled coach who actually won in Week 13, Dallas' Mike McCarthy. Are we about to see the latest example of the Coach of the Year curse?
Jump to a coach on the hot seat:
Brian Callahan | Brian Daboll
Jerod Mayo | Doug Pederson
Antonio Pierce | Zach Taylor | Jeff Ulbrich
Brian Daboll, New York Giants (2-10)
Week 13 result: Lost 27-20 to the Cowboys
It's actually remarkable just how much has changed in about two years for Daboll in New York. The 2022 Giants started 7-2, and while they were mostly average down the stretch, Daniel Jones led the NFL in Total QBR over the final month of the season. The offense scored 38 points in a rout of a hapless Colts team to clinch a playoff spot in late December. Having coaxed resurgent years out of Jones and running back Saquon Barkley with replacement-level receivers, the combination of Daboll and general manager Joe Schoen was understandably being portrayed as the duo that brought the Giants back to relevance.