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 Eberflus’ 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 influence decisions. 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.

You know what has happened since. Jones struggled in 2023 before getting injured, didn’t look much better after his return in 2024 and was unsurprisingly benched to avoid his $23 million injury guarantee triggering for 2025 before being released. As documented on “Hard Knocks,” the Giants declined to offer Barkley a significant long-term deal in either the 2023 or 2024 offseasons, allowing him to leave for the Eagles in free agency, where he’s in the thick of the MVP race. That has overshadowed the impact of losing safety Xavier McKinney, who was also allowed to leave in free agency without a franchise tag and join the Packers, where he’s tied for the league lead with seven interceptions. The Giants might end up having lost the Offensive and Defensive Players of the Year in the NFL in free agency this offseason.

At this point, none of that matters. Firing Daboll and Schoen as a punitive measure for the mistakes made in 2023 and 2024 doesn’t really do New York any favors, especially given that this ownership group’s previous hires at head coach consisted of Ben McAdoo, Pat Shurmur and Joe Judge. The personnel decisions would seemingly fall more on the general manager than the coach, anyway. With a blank slate at quarterback after the season, the Giants have to ask themselves whether Daboll is the best pick to help coach up that quarterback in 2025 and beyond.

Is he? I’d argue that the Daboll who was being fawned over as a head-coaching candidate in 2020 and 2021 and for his work with Jones in 2022 — when he won NFL Coach of the Year — shouldn’t be much different as a playcaller or offensive architect than he is now. Those offenses played into Jones’ (and Josh Allen‘s) abilities as a runner and scrambler. Those concepts aren’t outdated and are still in the playbook this season. Jones struggled when he held onto the football, taking too many sacks and fumbling too often, and Daboll’s offense was designed to get the ball out of his hands quickly with RPOs and quick game. That all made and makes sense.

Behind an inconsistent offensive line, Barkley needed the threat of Jones as a runner and to make magic happen himself to succeed. The one positive for the Giants on offense this season might actually be at running back, where Tyrone Tracy has quietly thrived in Barkley’s absence. While he’s not putting up MVP-caliber numbers, the rookie fifth-round pick has averaged an even 5.0 yards per carry and posted a 48.8% success rate on the ground, all while making a fraction of Barkley’s salary. Giants fans would understandably prefer to have Barkley around — and Tracy has given away some of that impact by fumbling four times — but the offense has still been able to piece together a pretty reasonable ground game.

I’d argue the playcalling and scheme hasn’t always been a disaster, even if there obviously hasn’t been much production. In Jones’ last start, the loss in Germany against the Panthers, there were plays to be made. Jones just didn’t make them. Take the third-and-1 flea-flicker, where he took a sack in the scenario where that was the one thing he couldn’t do. This should be a big play; instead, with two receivers open for chunk plays, it turns into a drive-ending fiasco:

Here's the Giants flea-flicker from yesterday. Sure looks like Jones is looking at Nabers as opposed to Robinson. Nabers isn't *as* open, but there's still a huge window to hit here. Not surprised Daboll was furious on the sideline after this snap. pic.twitter.com/Ptpjt13LgU

— Bill Barnwell (@billbarnwell) November 11, 2024

Rookie wideout Malik Nabers was frustrated when he went the entire first half without getting a target in the 30-7 loss to the Buccaneers in Week 12, so it was no surprise that quarterback Drew Lock went to Nabers early and often during Thursday’s loss to the Cowboys. Rewatching those plays, it’s clear to see an offense that uses alignments, motions and stacks to create space and opportunities for Nabers, applying many of the same ideas Minnesota’s Kevin O’Connell uses to do the same for Justin Jefferson, which stands out as the gold standard for a coach getting the most out of his star wide receiver.

The problem is the Giants don’t get as much of those targets as the Vikings, owing to some combination of subpar quarterback play, inconsistent timing and the occasional drop from Nabers. The offense hasn’t been good enough around Nabers, but again, I’m not sure Daboll has gone from understanding how to get the most out of Stefon Diggs in Buffalo to struggling with doing the same for Nabers, at least in terms of the scheme.

On the other hand, it’s also fair to make a case that the offense was probably a little lucky to be as successful as it was in Years 1 and 2 of the Daboll era. The Giants turned the ball over on just 7.9% of their drives over that stretch, the lowest rate for any team. Some of that was a product of the offense being relatively unambitious with Jones at the helm and relying on hitting single after single, but it was also what kept the offense afloat. Strip out the drives that ended in turnovers for every team between 2022 and 2023 and New York ranked 29th in points per possession (1.70), ahead of only the Panthers, Patriots and Jets.

This season, the Giants have turned the ball over on more than 12% of their drives, the ninth-worst rate in the league. They’ve yet to win the turnover battle in a single game, which has been a disaster for a team that survived by forcing a league-high 31 takeaways a year ago. Turnover rates are noisier from year-to-year on offense than most people believe, so if Daboll’s biggest contribution was temporarily protecting the football, I’m not sure that’s sustainable or justifies keeping him around.

The other big question revolves around Daboll’s strongest argument to get another year: He has never gotten to pick his guy. Daboll and Schoen inherited Jones from the Dave Gettleman regime. They declined Jones’ fifth-year option, which seemed to point toward picking a new quarterback in 2023, but after he produced a career season, they signed him to a four-year, $160 million extension. There might not have been a way to avoid that after Jones led the Giants to their first playoff win since the Eli Manning era, and with decisions like that one, there’s the distinct possibility the ownership might have been strongly involved in deciding it wanted to pay the quarterback it had been faithfully waiting to see break out for years. Most offensive-minded head coaches get at least one chance to pick a quarterback they believe in, either through the draft or by adding a veteran with a meaningful pedigree.

And yet, at the same time, it seems impossible to not assign Daboll and Schoen some of the blame for deciding to build around Jones. When the Giants wanted to bring in competition for Jones this offseason, they signed Lock to a one-year, $5 million deal. After Lock struggled badly in the preseason, though, Daboll chose to bypass him and head straight to third-stringer Tommy DeVito, only inserting him after DeVito got injured during his start against the Bucs. If this leadership group couldn’t sign a backup quarterback it actually wanted to play, should it really be trusted to pick the guy to build around in 2025 and beyond?

What needs to happen next: The Giants must show some sort of pulse down the stretch, something that will be harder after losing superstar defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence indefinitely after the All-Pro candidate suffered an elbow injury in the Cowboys loss. Ownership has proved to be sensitive to fan criticism in the past, with the botched benching of Manning for Geno Smith in 2017 leading to the firing of McAdoo and GM Jerry Reese. With home games against the Saints and Colts to come, Daboll will need to give the Giants a reason to believe they can turn things around if he wants to be involved in picking the next quarterback in 2025.

Antonio Pierce, Las Vegas Raiders (2-10)

Week 13 result: Lost 19-17 to the Chiefs

One of the NFL’s other two-win teams came much closer to getting a critical victory this week, as the Raiders nearly repeated their feat of beating the Chiefs in Kansas City. That win in 2023, coupled with a 63-21 shellacking of the Chargers the prior week, was enough to land Pierce the full-time job in Las Vegas. As a former player whose head-coaching experience before this consisted of four years at the high school level, there weren’t many doubts about his ability to connect to players. His ability to manage games and make critical decisions was going to be questioned, however.

Those concerns have been warranted, although not in the situation in which Pierce has taken some criticism after Friday’s loss. The Raiders were right to avoid repeating one of Eberflus’ mistakes and try to advance the ball forward with 15 seconds to go on third-and-3, given that they were still only in position to attempt a 50-yard field goal with Daniel Carlson. While that’s technically in his range, they had time to pick up a few yards and spike the football, yards that could have been valuable. Carlson had also missed three 55-plus yard field goals earlier in the game. What happened with quarterback Aidan O’Connell losing a fumble on a snap was a disaster, but I support Pierce & Co. trying to create an easier field goal in that situation.

Then, after the game, I read that Pierce merely wanted to throw the ball out of bounds to burn time off the clock before attempting the field goal. While understanding that the Chiefs have made magical things happen in late-game scenarios in the past, the Raiders did need to chase a few more yards and trust that they could spike the ball after getting a first down.

He also made a bigger mistake on the prior drive, one which impacted the end-of-game scenario for the Raiders. Trailing by two points with 2:24 to go, Pierce didn’t seem to have a strong handle on what to do. After two incompletions produced a fourth-and-11 for Las Vegas on Kansas City’s 40-yard line, he initially sent out the punting unit with a two-point deficit, then called a timeout with a stopped clock to send Carlson and the field goal unit out instead. That turned out to be a critical timeout, as it forced the Raiders to attempt their two-minute drill without any ability to stop the clock. Heading into third down with a pass play called, Pierce needs to know his team is going to do if it fails to pick up any yardage. Whether that’s just knowing from experience or trusting someone on staff to make the call is the head coach’s choice, but he can’t burn a timeout because of indecisiveness late in a close game.

This wasn’t the first time in 2024 that Pierce has seemed overmatched. After Week 1, I wrote about Pierce costing his team somewhere between six and nine percentage points of win expectancy by punting on a fourth-and-1 trailing by six points with 7:43 to go, a decision in which virtually every other team has learned to go for a conversion over the past five years. All coaches are going to make decisions that disagree with win probability models at one point or another, but these are huge unforced errors the Raiders simply aren’t good enough to overcome.

We have to be realistic and sympathetic toward the situation in Las Vegas. I’ve repeatedly underlined the disastrous state of this roster after years of poor draft picks and foolish decisions by former coaches Jon Gruden and Josh McDaniels. The Raiders (understandably) traded away wideout Davante Adams for a Day 2 pick and have been without defensive tackle Christian Wilkins, their top free agent addition, for most of the season after he fractured his foot in early October. They entered the season with a quarterback competition between O’Connell and Gardner Minshew that didn’t look good on paper and hasn’t played out well in reality. This team wasn’t going to be good in 2024, with or without Pierce.

At the same time, though, what’s the best case Pierce can make for justifying his status moving forward? While the Raiders did upset the Ravens, their other win came against the Browns and Deshaun Watson. Pierce was understandably given some credit for a defense that played well after McDaniels’ firing last year, but the Raiders rank 27th in points allowed per possession and 22nd in expected points added (EPA) per play this season. Pierce’s big hire this offseason, offensive coordinator Luke Getsy, was fired last month. The defensive playcaller is Patrick Graham. If Pierce is a CEO coach who doesn’t call plays and can’t handle fourth-quarter decision-making, what is he bringing to the table?

What needs to happen next: Pierce has to prove he is up to the task of managing and winning close games. With games against the Falcons, Jaguars and Saints in December, the Raiders should be able to keep things close and make those matchups competitive. Pierce can’t be a liability in those moments.

Doug Pederson, Jacksonville Jaguars (2-10)

Week 13 result: Lost 23-20 to the Texans

The league’s other two-win team seems more resigned to its fate than angry about what has happened. Amid chatter about his future in league circles, Pederson’s Jaguars laid an egg in Week 11, losing 52-6 to the Lions. With the bye week to come, it almost seemed inevitable that fans would wake up Monday morning to stories that the Jags had fired their coach in advance of yet another transition in 2025.

Instead, Pederson kept his job. The Jaguars returned from their bye with Trevor Lawrence back under center, only for the franchise quarterback to be forced from the game after a brutal, dirty hit by Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair. Mac Jones led a pair of late touchdown drives to make the game look closer, but even against a Houston team that has failed to impress for most of the season, Jacksonville wasn’t able to get a stop when it needed one.

At 2-10, the Jaguars are one loss away from matching the record they had in 2021 under the disastrous reign of Urban Meyer. After going 17-6 in their first season and a half under Pederson, they’ve gone 3-15 since, the worst mark of any team. The Panthers are the only team with a worse point differential over that span. There’s an argument to be made that the Jaguars have been unlucky, given that Sunday’s loss left them with a 1-9 record in one-score games over that 18-game span, but this team has repeatedly contorted itself into finding ways to underperform or lose late in games.

Pederson has blamed his players for some of the mistakes the team has made, and while that’s not going to win him any fans in the locker room, he isn’t wrong. Both Jacksonville quarterbacks missed would-be long touchdown passes to Brian Thomas on deep posts on Sunday. The first was underthrown by Lawrence and produced a pick from Texans corner Derek Stingley. The second was overthrown by Jones. Thomas picked up 56 yards as the crosser on a Mesh concept two plays later, but even the good comes with the bad, as the Jags followed that with a delay of game penalty and eventually settled for a field goal.

This offense has looked disjointed and out of sync all season. Without a consistent running game, the Jags have seemingly had little faith in their play-action attack, even though their passer rating is more than 21 points better using play-fakes this season. On Sunday, to be fair, the play-action game was hopeless, as Lawrence and Jones went a combined 2-of-8 for 16 yards, albeit with two of those misses coming on the long incompletions to Thomas. Injuries haven’t helped at receiver, but the offense was wildly inconsistent even before Christian Kirk and Gabe Davis went down.

The defense, meanwhile, is impulsive and sloppy. The Jags are weak up the middle, where their linebackers and safeties are too easily pulled out of position. They seem to be more concerned with making big and/or dirty hits than sound tackling. They rank last in the league in QBR allowed against play-action and 26th in QBR on throws between the numbers. They rank last in QBR allowed on throws to tight ends with a whopping 97.2 mark, a brutal figure for a team that has invested both a big-money free agent deal (Foyesade Oluokun) and a first-round pick (Devin Lloyd) at linebacker.

They gave up a 30-yard run to Joe Mixon on Sunday where no defender was able to contain him from cutting back to the opposite sideline. Dalton Schultz‘s 22-yard touchdown came on a play when no defender ran with the opposing tight end, leaving him wide open for an easy score. The Texans are sloppy and frustrating, but they have stars who can overcome the rest of the team’s mistakes. The Jags don’t have that star power and suffer as a result.

What’s most distressing, perhaps, is just how uninterested and unchanging things seem to be in Jacksonville. The big news before the game was that the Jaguars had signed left tackle Walker Little to a three-year, $45 million extension, a sudden move for a player who ascended into a permanent starting role several weeks ago, his fourth year at the helm. That seems to suggest the organization is at least comfortable with the idea of empowering general manager Trent Baalke, another candidate to be fired, to make long-term deals. Pederson’s team was embarrassed against the Lions and came back without major changes (minus Lawrence’s return from injury) Sunday. The only person who appears to be preparing for a new home in 2025 is running backs coach Jerry Mack, who agreed to become Kennesaw State’s new coach this weekend.

What needs to happen next: I would say the Jags need to show they want to save Pederson’s job, but they’ve shown precious little fire for most of this season without any impact to Pederson or offensive coordinator Press Taylor. They have one of the league’s easiest schedules over the final five weeks, but they’re also the weakest team on their opponents’ schedules.

Jerod Mayo, New England Patriots (3-10)

Week 13 result: Lost 25-24 to the Colts

The Patriots have shown signs of life this season and still managed to disappoint their fans. For the second time in five games, they lost a contest that came down to a two-point decision. In Week 9 against the Titans, they tied the game with a dramatic scramble and completion by Drake Maye with no time remaining, only to kick the extra point and lose in overtime. As an underdog on the road with a mobile quarterback, the logical move seemed to be going for two to try to win, but Mayo chose to extend the contest into OT.

On Sunday, with the roles flipped, the Patriots came out with the same result. After allowing the Colts to convert two third downs and three fourth downs on a 19-play, 80-yard drive that ended in a Anthony Richardson touchdown pass, they were forced to defend for their lives. The Colts lined up to go for two, and while everyone in the stadium seemed to know what was coming, the Pats couldn’t stop it. An Richardson power-read concept produced the two-pointer that gave the Colts a 25-24 lead.

It felt like that should have ended the game, but there was still a brief glimmer of hope for the Pats. Maye hit two quick completions to advance the ball to midfield with one second left, getting the ball in position for what was likely to be a Hail Mary. Instead, Mayo sent his field goal unit onto the field, with Joey Slye attempting what would have been an NFL-record 68-yarder. Slye delivered the kick of his life, but it came up a couple of yards short, ending the game in agonizing fashion for New England. Mayo’s comment after the game surprised me:

Patriots HC Jerod Mayo says the decision to kick the field goal over going for a hail mary was all on him. Says Joey Slye was hitting the ball well, unsure on the percentages between a hail mary and field goal in that situation.

— Doug Kyed (@DougKyed) December 1, 2024

There’s no great call when a team needs to score from the 50-yard line with one second left, and Slye actually came close to making Mayo look like a genius, but this should have been a clear decision. We’ve seen multiple Hail Mary passes completed in this range in 2024, let alone in years past. No kicker has ever hit a 68-yard field goal; the only other attempt I can find from 68 came from Blair Walsh in 2015, which means nobody thinks their kicker can hit from that distance. Slye hit a 63-yarder earlier this season, but the 66-yarder Justin Tucker hit to beat the Lions in 2021 that set the league record came in perfect conditions, not outdoors in cold weather. Even if Slye might be able to hit from that range in warmups, kickers invariably have shorter ranges when they’re facing rushers and live defenses.

Leaving the endgame scenario aside, Mayo’s defense has unquestionably been disappointing. The Pats had the league’s best defense during the second half of the 2023 season by points allowed per drive and EPA per play, and that was with the worst average starting field position of any team and without stars Matthew Judon and Christian Gonzalez. Nobody expected them to be good on offense this season, but even with Bill Belichick leaving, the hope had to be that they could keep themselves in games by thriving on defense.

Instead, the Pats rank 19th in points allowed per drive and 29th in EPA per play. Gonzalez has excelled, but Mayo’s defense hasn’t found a formula that works. With Judon in Atlanta and no recognized star edge rusher on the roster, they are blitzing at one of the highest rates in football. After blitzing 32.3% of the time last season, they are back at that mark again, with their 32.4% blitz rate ranking sixth.

The problem is that the corners and safeties who aren’t Gonzalez haven’t been able to hold up in coverage behind those pressures. The Pats are allowing opposing offenses to pick up first downs on 46.5% of their blitzes, the second-worst rate for any defense. Opposing quarterbacks are completing 67.7% of their passes, averaging 8.2 yards per attempt and have thrown 12 touchdowns against two picks when they have blitzed.

Defenses can’t afford to make mistakes or slow down when their sending the house, and the Patriots have done both on long touchdowns by DK Metcalf and Cooper Kupp earlier this season. They also need to know when to back off. On Sunday, Richardson was bottled up by four-man rushes, going 5-of-14 for 50 yards with a touchdown and two picks when New England didn’t blitz. He was 7-of-10 for 59 yards and a touchdown against the blitz, producing a passer rating more than 87 points higher than his mark against coverage. The Pats also created higher pressure rates without blitzing (40%) than they did by sending extra men (18.2%).

Even with the defensive struggles, the Patriots were dominant enough on offense to win this game with a slightly cleaner performance. They racked up 422 yards of offense and ran for an even 200 yards, both the second most they have recorded in a single game since the start of 2022. Six of their eight drives before the desperate final surge racked up at least 50 net yards and made it into the red zone. Only four other teams have produced a game like that in 2024.

The Patriots managed to score only 24 points, though, because of a problem that has plagued them all season: red zone production. They rank 30th in red zone conversion rate, and they went 2-for-6 in the red zone and 0-for-2 in goal-to-go situations Sunday. Slye missed a 25-yard field goal attempt at the end of the first half, and Maye threw an interception on a pass that hit Hunter Henry and bounced off the tight end and into Julian Blackmon‘s hands.

The interception was bad luck, but infuriating play up front is a weekly conundrum for Mayo’s offense. On Sunday, the Pats had a Rhamondre Stevenson touchdown wiped off when the back cut outside and led Mike Onwenu to hold. Layden Robinson, back in the lineup after being benched for the last month, added a holding penalty on the next play. Maye’s team had to overcome three holding penalties on the drive that ended with the Slye miss to close out the first half, while an illegal shift wiped off a Kendrick Bourne touchdown, only for Antonio Gibson to score on the next play.

Maye is exciting, but the line problems the Patriots feared before the season have been even worse in reality. They were unlucky to lose stalwart center David Andrews to a season-ending injury, haven’t seen anything out of 2022 first-round pick Cole Strange and had Chuks Okorafor retire after being benched in the opener, but they have repeatedly cycled through permutations via benchings, injuries and endless tinkering. Onwenu, whose best seasons have come when he’s been left in one spot and allowed to thrive, has been moved around the line. Nine different linemen have already played at least 100 offensive snaps this season. Frankly, most of those linemen are replacement-level players, so they might be better off lining up five guys in the same spot and trying to find some semblance of continuity between now and the end of the year.

What needs to happen next: Patriots fans have gotten on Mayo for some late-game decisions and the frustrating play of the offense. I’d be surprised if New England made a change just one year after letting Belichick go, but with four games against teams that are .500 or better after the bye, the Pats just lost their best chance at a victory in December. Can they improve in the red zone? That would be a positive step heading into 2025.

Jeff Ulbrich, New York Jets (3-9)

Week 13 result: Lost 26-21 to the Seahawks

What made no sense at the time continues to make no sense in reality. While the Jets could have jettisoned Robert Saleh after the 2023 season and made a significant hire, ownership chose to bring him back, only to fire him after a 2-3 start. General manager Joe Douglas followed Saleh out the door in November. They promoted Ulbrich from defensive coordinator to the interim coach role, hoping Saleh’s former assistant could win over the locker room and produce sharper football.

Instead, they’ve gone 1-6 since, even while swapping offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett for Todd Downing and acquiring Davante Adams via trade. The defense has collapsed, ranking 31st in points allowed per possession and last in EPA per play since Week 6. Sunday was actually one of their better performances, as they held the Seattle offense to 13 points for most of the day, but the biggest drive of the game was the quintessential example of what is broken.

With Seahawks punter Michael Dickson limited by a back injury, the Jets were in a favorable position. Up by two points in the fourth quarter, a sack by Will McDonald forced the Seahawks into a third-and-15. After a 9-yard completion, it became clear Dickson was unable to punt, forcing the Seahawks to line up to go for it on a fourth-and-6 in their own territory. A stop with 9:34 to go would have handed New York a short field and a chance to set up a two-score lead.

Instead, the Jets were surprised by the decision to go for it. Instead of calling a timeout, they were flagged for having 12 men on the field, handing the Seahawks a fourth-and-1. On the ensuing play, the Seahawks rolled out Geno Smith and had him throw to DK Metcalf, who was matched up against backup Jets cornerback Qwan’tez Stiggers. Stiggers, who had played one defensive snap all season before Sunday, was flagged for a 20-yard pass interference penalty, extending the drive.

It kept going. The Jets stuffed Zach Charbonnet on a fourth-and-1, only for Solomon Thomas to be flagged for a horse-collar penalty, both saving the drive and tacking on 15 yards. Three plays later, the Seahawks appeared to be stopped on third-and-6, only for McDonald to wipe away an incompletion with an offsides call. Charbonnet then converted the ensuing third-and-1 for an eight-yard score.

One of the arguments made by fans after the firing of Saleh was that the Jets were prone to committing too many penalties. Since Saleh’s departure, though, they’ve committed an average of 8.6 penalties for 60 yards, both of which rank among the bottom-six in the league on a per-game basis. They committed 12 penalties for 83 yards, including an offensive pass interference call on Adams that wiped out a 42-yard completion.

The other consistent complaint was that the Jets were falling behind too early in games. While they proceeded to allow the opening score in five of Ulbrich’s first six contests as coach and went down by multiple scores in the first half of several games, Sunday was a rare case of getting out to a hot start. They produced back-to-back scoring drives in the first quarter to go up 14-0, and after a Seahawks drive got them back in the game, Kene Nwangwu‘s 99-yard kickoff return for a touchdown restored a two-score lead. When the Seahawks fumbled the ensuing kickoff for their second turnover on a return of the day, New York appeared set to take over the game.

Instead, Aaron Rodgers somehow missed defensive tackle Leonard Williams as he dropped into coverage, and with the legendary quarterback locked onto his read against a three-man rush, Williams picked off Rodgers’ slant and returned it to the house for what might be the longest interception by a defensive tackle weighing 300-plus pounds in NFL history. What was about to be a 28-7 game instead became a one-score contest, and the Jets didn’t score again the rest of the way.

The most optimistic or obstinate of Jets fans will argue they’ve been unlucky, given that they are 1-6 in one-score games. Maybe they are, and this should really be something more like a 5-7 or even a 6-6 team. Given how insistent the people inside and outside this organization were that they were one Aaron Rodgers away from competing for a Super Bowl, though, this has been nothing short of an embarrassing season.

What needs to happen next: Someone invents a real-life button that allows the Jets to simulate to the start of the 2025 offseason. They’ve now been assured of their ninth consecutive losing season. Ulbrich won’t be back as coach in 2025.

Brian Callahan, Tennessee Titans (3-9)

Week 13 result: Lost 42-19 to the Commanders

Kliff Kingsbury might owe Callahan and the Titans a drink or two. One week after most of the football universe seemed to decide that the “Kliff Cliff” was a thing and that Kingsbury’s offenses were easy to figure out in the second halves of seasons, Jayden Daniels & Co. scored touchdowns on their first four drives and eventually racked up six conversions in a 42-19 victory. Daniels completed more than 83% of his passes and was responsible for four scores, while the Commanders ran the ball 45 times for 267 yards and 13 first downs.

It’s easier to score when the other team helps, and the Titans have a gift that they thoughtfully provide to their opponents each and every week: the worst special teams unit in the league. They weren’t the worst unit Sunday — the Seahawks fumbled away two kickoffs and allowed a kickoff return for a score — but they certainly contributed.

Sunday’s theme was kickoff fiascoes. At the end of the first quarter, Tennessee committed an illegal block on its third kickoff return of the game, forcing it to start on its own 15-yard line. A Tony Pollard fumble then handed the Commanders a short field for a score. Jha’Quan Jackson then fumbled away the ensuing kickoff, giving the Commanders another short field that they eventually converted into a touchdown. Otis Reese was then flagged for holding on the ensuing kickoff, starting the Titans off again on their own 15-yard line.

This is nothing new for Callahan’s team, which has endured a series of special teams disasters all season. Among the highlights:

• In Week 1, the Titans had a punt blocked for a touchdown and allowed a 67-yard kickoff return in a 24-17 loss to the Bears.

• The following week, the Jets managed to block a punt with four rushers against seven blockers, setting up a short field and a field goal for the Jets in another 24-17 defeat.

• In Week 3, Jeffery Simmons was flagged for holding on a fourth-and-4 field goal attempt that went wide right, handing the Packers a first down. Green Bay scored a touchdown two plays later, and Tennessee lost 30-14.

• Playing the Lions in Week 8, they allowed a 72-yard kickoff return, a 64-yard punt return and a 90-yard punt return for a touchdown. They also fumbled on a return. This graded out as the second-worst performance by any special teams unit in a single game since 1979.

• In last week’s dramatic 32-27 win over the Texans, the Titans allowed an 80-yard kickoff return on the opening play of the game, committed an illegal blindside block on a punt return, and muffed a fourth-quarter punt from Tommy Townsend to give the ball back to Houston.

In a year in which kicker Nick Folk has been great on scoring plays for the Titans, they’re fielding some of the worst special teams we’ve ever seen by failing miserably with blocking and returning. That has to fall on first-time special teams coach Colt Anderson, and it’s a small miracle that he remains in his job as we sit here in December. It’s no fun to see coaches fired, but it’s hard for a team to be as bad on special teams as this one this season. Bringing Anderson back in 2025 would be a credibility-killing move for Callahan.

There are better times ahead for the Titans, who are fielding one of the league’s youngest teams. Their minus-13 turnover margin should improve next season. They’ll have a better solution at quarterback, where Will Levis has been more entertaining than effective. The offensive line has been disappointing given the standard of coaching from Bill Callahan, but it should be better in Year 2 under the legendary assistant. The secondary has sorely missed cornerback L’Jarius Sneed, who managed only five games before going down with what might become a season-ending quad injury.

The lowest-hanging fruit for any team this offseason, though, is the Titans fixing their special teams. That’s going to require investment in the bottom quarter of the roster and a change at coordinator.

What needs to happen next: Leaving the special teams aside, better pass protection for Levis over the final month of the season would go a long way in creating some optimism for Callahan and the offense in 2025, even if Levis isn’t the guy likely to be benefiting from it next season.

Zac Taylor, Cincinnati Bengals (4-8)

Week 13 result: Lost 44-38 to the Steelers

Let’s finish with a team that continues to make the extraordinary seem all too common in the wrong ways. For the third time this season, the Bengals scored 35 points. The rest of the league is 35-0 when they make it to 35 points. Cincinnati is 1-2.

Even that might undersell how frustrating the Bengals have been. Change the arbitrary cutoff to 33 points and they have gotten there six times, more often than any other team. The rest of the league is 52-1 when they score 33 points. The Bengals are 2-4. No team has ever had four losses with 33-plus points in a single season. Taylor’s has done that with five games to go.

The defense has been an incredible disappointment. It showed some semblance of a fight early Sunday, when Cam Taylor-Britt picked off a slant and took it back for a 51-yard touchdown to give the Bengals a 7-0 lead. For just a moment, with the Steelers coming off a loss and the Bengals having that vaunted track record as second-half heroes, Cincinnati fans must have allowed themselves a moment to believe they were about to spring a stunning turnaround on their division rivals and the NFL.

It lasted for about four minutes. The Steelers scored touchdowns on each of their next three drives and eventually finished with 28 first downs, the most they’ve had in a regular-season game since Week 2 of the 2018 season, which was Patrick Mahomes‘ third career start. Russell Wilson followed up the pick by going 29-of-38 for 414 yards and three touchdowns, the second-most passing yards he has ever posted in a game. Facing a quarterback who has run a sack rate close to 10% each of the past three years, the Bengals sacked Wilson twice for four yards on 42 dropbacks.

The play that will stick with the Bengals into the offseason, though, will be the final one. Defending desperately to try to get the ball back with no timeouts, they were handed a lifeline by the Steelers when tight end MyCole Pruitt was flagged for holding with 1:54 to go. While Cincinnati had to decline the penalty, the whistle stopped the clock, meaning it could get the ball back with about 1:10 to go if it could come up with a stuff on third-and-4 from its own 40-yard line.

The Steelers brought Justin Fields on for the ensuing play, which had to trigger the Bengals to be looking for one of a few things. He has thrown a couple of passes since being put into the part-time role, but this was an obvious run call. The Steelers had run split-flow inside zone with Fields earlier in the game and a couple of other times as part of his packages, so that was an option. They had run Fields on QB Power out of otherwise-empty backfields like the Saints do with Taysom Hill, but the concept the Bengals had to be expecting was some sort of zone-read or power-read look. They got the former.

What happened next simply wasn’t good football. Germaine Pratt ran onto the line of scrimmage as the end man and shot inside to try to take away the interior run. He ended up getting blocked 6 yards downfield by Pruitt. Nobody scrape-exchanged with Pratt and took his gap, meaning there was absolutely nobody to threaten Fields on the edge, where his zone-read was likely to take him. Furthermore, cornerback Josh Newton also shot inside, meaning there was no defender in the alley capable of forcing Fields back to help. The quarterback had little trouble bouncing outside for a 7-yard run to seal Pittsburgh’s victory.

Some of this is simply subpar personnel. The three guys staring at Fields as he ran by them to end Cincinnati’s season were Newton, Jordan Battle and Akeem Davis-Gaither, none of whom were playing significant defensive snaps most of this season. Battle and Davis-Gaither were close to every-down players for the first time all season on Sunday, while Newton went into the lineup in the Week 11 game against the Chargers when Taylor-Britt was benched for the second time this season. Injuries and inconsistent play have plagued the Bengals on defense all year.

There’s just not enough of a pass rush beyond Trey Hendrickson, who still has more sacks (11.5) than the rest of his team combined (10). The Bengals have the second-lowest sack rate of any team, and when they don’t get pressure on the opposing quarterback, the 72.8 QBR the Bengals allow ranks 25th in the league.

While there’s certainly grumbling about Taylor, who has followed trips to the Super Bowl and AFC Championship Game by going 13-16 over the past two seasons, it’s more likely the struggles will fall on defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo, who was widely praised for his game plans and adjustments when they slowed down Mahomes and Matthew Stafford during that improbable run to the championship game.

This defense has been compromised since Jessie Bates left for Atlanta in free agency after the 2022 season, and the pieces the organization drafted to theoretically replace its veterans on the defensive side of the ball haven’t worked out. The Bengals used their top three picks in 2022 and 2023 on defensive players, but Taylor-Britt, Battle, Dax Hill, Zach Carter, Myles Murphy and DJ Turner are all either struggling, injured or gone from the organization. Anarumo needed to develop those guys into regular contributors. Some are only playing out of sheer desperation, which is telling.

The Bengals have been unlucky. They’re now 1-7 in games decided by seven points or fewer, making them a lock to appear in the list of teams likely to improve next season. (I’m going to spare myself the indignity of being wrong about the Steelers again in 2025, thankfully, because their underlying level of play has improved dramatically.) They lost all three fumbles Sunday. This should probably be something closer to a 6-6 team, in which case they would still be comfortably in the wild-card picture, especially with the Cowboys, Titans and Browns still to come on their schedule.

That’s great for people like me, but it’s not great for the actual Bengals as they try to win during quarterback Joe Burrow‘s peak. Next year’s team will likely be worse than this year’s, as wideout Tee Higgins could leave in free agency and receiver Ja’Marr Chase will be due a massive contract in the final year of his deal. Burrow has been phenomenal and would be in the MVP conversation with better defensive play. Barring a truly incredible run to finish the season, though, Cincinnati appears to be done in 2024.

What needs to happen next: Taylor is probably safe, but the defense has to improve if it wants to ensure Anarumo returns in 2025. Players at all three levels are likely playing for their starting jobs in 2025 over the final month of the season.