The Terrifying Process of Hiring a New Head Coach in the NFL

So you’re an NFL general manager and your 2016 season sucked. 

Insert whatever softer or harsher description you’d like, but the ending doesn’t change. You’ll be watching the playoffs instead of participating in them, and it’s become clear a fresh direction is needed. Even if, like the happier times for the San Francisco 49ers pictured above, the expiration date for the current direction came far too fast.

A new direction means a new face to lead that redirect, and a new head coach. There’s some darkness involved in reaching that point, as Black Monday is more than just a name capable of spawning a thousand splashy headlines.

Coaches lose their jobs and the annual warp-speed spinning of the carousel begins. On a basic human level, the thought of finding new employment while potentially jetting across the country can be scary. But those feelings pale in comparison to what’s happening on the other side of the table as the next generation of potential head coaches is evaluated.

The team executive filling a head coaching vacancy after Black Monday faces the daunting challenge of finding the next great football mind. More than just the success of the franchise is at stake. There’s a delicate house of cards covering many areas, both personally and professionally. It can topple if the new coach is the wrong one.

“Your job is on the line too, along with your happiness,” former Philadelphia Eagles president Joe Banner said during a conversation with Bleacher Report. “The financial success of the franchise may be on the line as well. Almost anything that gives you satisfaction in that job, starting with just having it, is on the line when you get this decision either right or wrong.”

Are you terrified yet?

Banner was the Eagles’ president from 1995 to 2012, a long tenure for any executive. It was a comfortable period with six division titles, five conference championship game appearances and one trip to the Super Bowl. And most importantly, one head coach presided over nearly all of that period: Andy Reid.

Reid is an example of a hiring home run, the rarest kind. Said coaches don’t send team executives reaching for the reset button every few years. Or worse, finding a new job themselves.

There are only four head coaches who have been with their current NFL teams for more than a decade, a list that could get shorter if the New Orleans Saints move on from Sean Payton.

Tenure is the ultimate sign of success. Winning leads to deep playoff runs, job security and a strong safety net after a poor season. Most of all, winning because the right head coach was plugged in at the right time rebuilds a franchise’s foundation.

Black Monday is just the beginning, and sometimes the easiest part if a team was truly struggling. What happens in the days and weeks that follow either sets success and even a championship path in motion, or maintains the current cycle of hirings, firings and semi-annual Black Monday darkness.

How do you avoid the latter scenario? And how does a home run hiring process begin? In some cases, it never really ends.

An ongoing list

The important work is what happens long before Black Monday. The interviews that take place during the hiring process are critical, but they’re the culmination of intense research a team does weeks or months in advance.

The wheels often start rolling with about one month left in the season, when a team determines a coaching change is a possibility. For others like Banner, those wheels are constantly in motion.

“I was always keeping a list,” Banner said. “Every time I went to the Senior Bowl, I would ask people, ‘Hey, who in your building is really good? Who do you think is a good leader?’ Sometimes I would even ask directly about some young coach, gauging if he’s head coach material one day, or just a good position coach or coordinator.”

“If I ever got to the point—which I only did at the very end of Andy’s tenure—when a change was even a consideration, I then had accumulated a book that had all kinds of names and notes with who I spoke to and what they said, all in the effort to fit what we were looking for.”

Even teams that ultimately don’t make a coaching change often go through the process of laying the initial groundwork with basic but critical …

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