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Inside Football: Why firing second-year coaches is the NFL's new normal

November 8, 2015 9:47 pm ET

Two is the new three.

In the NFL, sadly, less is more. At least when it comes to how long many coaches have to establish themselves with new teams.

Maybe it's a function of the excesses of the league. Owners are wealthier than ever, raking in mind-boggling broadcast deals and crushing the players (especially entry-level draft picks) in terms of spending in the new collective bargaining agreement. Maybe that partly explains why patience is dwindling, expectations are askew and coaches are not even getting until Thanksgiving of their second full season to be shown the door.

It used to be a coach started to come under fire perhaps midway through the third year. Now, a coach might already be a year into the next job by then.

In a win-now environment, at a time when many ownership groups have seen the old guard give way to novice owners due to deaths or inner-family power struggles, it's no wonder why so many coaches -- and execs -- spend so much time looking over their shoulders. All know they are hired to be fired, but the pace at which it's happening these days is staggering.

Seems like it's not a big deal -- what with business booming all over -- to eat $10 million or more in coaching salaries and just start over with someone new. It's far easier to fire the guy you don't like than it is to actually find the right guy at the right time.

Think about it -- roughly 20 months ago the Lions and the Titans, teams notorious for not spending on coaching, were in an all-out bidding war for Ken Whisenhunt. Now he has already been fired in Tennessee while Jim Caldwell, the Lions' hire after the Titans threw more money than them at Whisenhunt, is essentially a dead man walking. Much of Caldwell's offensive staff has been fired and it's far from certain he survives the rest of this month.

A week after ownership sent down word of the need to shake up the coaching staff in Detroit, longtime president Ton Lewand and GM Martin Mayhew were let go in-season. We've had coordinators fired in two other places as well, with it all starting just a month into the season with the Dolphins whacking Joe Philbin and much of his staff.

It's unsightly and it's not the way things used to be done and it's not a good look. If ownership and management can't use a six-month offseason to make these decisions, then that's a failure on them as much as the coaches.

Philbin was fired by an absentee owner (Stephen Ross resides primarily in New York). Whisenhunt met the same fate from his owner, Amy Adams Strunk, who only recently became the controlling partner. The Lions' overhaul was led by a new faction of ownership that had remained largely silent for like five decades.

All of these organizations have been plagued by toxicity in their facilities and by leadership voids and infighting. And, in every case mentioned but Miami, by the uncertainty of how they will operate long-term and who the owner will be. That seeps into all corridors, even the locker room, and if you want to evaluate why so many teams win all the time and so many others seem to generally be at the bottom of the standings, well, start at the very top.

After watching another week of football that featured no shortage of bad teams, you best believe that there will be more carnage before we reach the holidays. It's become almost too easy now.

With the divide between the haves and the have-nots seemingly greater than ever, it's hard to know where to start. The Browns, Lions, Colts, Texans, 49ers, Redskins, Dolphins (interim coach Dan Campbell isn't the answer, folks) and Titans all could be looking for new head coaches. Others will be hiring new general managers or both and, from what I've been gathering from the early returns among some coaches in their first year with their new teams, by this time next year guys like Rex Ryan could be right back on the front burner should their teams not make significant strides.

That's how it is out there on these coaching streets. The tenor has changed and I'm not sure it's going back any time soon, especially with so many people signing the paychecks who haven't been in this position before and are maybe only there because circumstances forced them to be. It takes some degree of time to cultivate an organization and for many men around the league, the clock ticks louder and faster than ever before. Three years may start looking more like a dream than a baseline.