Ben Deihl | sports editor

The NFL hasn’t seen this much coaching turnover since the 2021 season, with 10 teams choosing to move on from their head coach. While positions continue to be filled and assistant coaches continue to shuffle teams, the NFL has turned into the wild west of coaching.

Eight teams have already solidified their choice at head coach, with the Cleveland Browns most recently hiring Baltimore Ravens offensive coordinator Todd Monken as their new leader. The hiring follows a similar trend around the league, finding talented coordinators to take over the head position.

Ben Johnson revolutionized the coordinator-to-head coach pipeline last year, leading a struggling Chicago Bears team to their first playoff appearance in seven years and elevating a stagnant offense.

Young, offensive minds have become the dominant force in the NFL in recent years, with Johnson being the most recent case. While he got fired and is now the Los Angeles Chargers’ offensive coordinator, Mike McDaniel helped turn around a sinking Miami Dolphins franchise, although the Tua Tagovailoa experiment seemed to have failed under his tenure.

Hiring coordinators comes with a risk, though, as they have no experience of leading a whole team. Johnson’s position has come under fire lately as many question his ability to stabilize an entire team with his aggressive, go-for-it mentality, although he did get the Bears a kick away from the NFC title game.

“The bar has been set higher than it’s ever been before,” Johnson said in his introductory news conference. “The only way for this team to reach [its] potential is to be pushed and to be challenged.”

Of course, we can’t talk about head coaching changes without discussing the Pittsburgh Steelers and the AFC North. The two longest-tenured head coaches in the league, who both resided in the AFC North, left after this year. Mike Tomlin departed from the Steelers after 19 seasons, and John Harbaugh was cut from the Baltimore Ravens after 18.

Tomlin’s downfall came after years of mediocrity, as his Steelers hadn’t won a playoff game since 2017. The final nail in the coffin was a 30-6 wild card loss to the Houston Texans, the worst home playoff loss in Pittsburgh Steelers franchise history.

It was a exit many saw coming years ago, as the 2023 Steelers had a historically bad offense with quarterback Kenny Pickett and coordinator Matt Canada. Canada was fired midway through the season, but it now seems like Tomlin may have had more of a role in his team’s sputtering than previously thought.

Steelers fan Zach Hartman echoed the senitment, saying Tomlin’s departure was long overdue.

“It made a lot of sense for the team to move on when they did,” Hartman said. “I like that they went with somebody established, somebody with a proven record of success.”

Pittsburgh chose to hire home-grown talent in Mike McCarthy to be the team’s next head coach, although the choice didn’t come without scrutiny. Fans were quick to point out McCarthy’s lack of postseason success, much like Tomlin’s, but the decision made sense for both the franchise and McCarthy.

“Oftentimes coaches and players put on new team colors, and it takes a minute to feel comfortable,” McCarthy said through tears. “But, if you are blessed beyond measure, one day you put on the colors you’ve worn since you were brought home from Mercy Hospital. This city, this franchise and this fan base mean the world to me.”

Harbaugh suffered a similar fate to Tomlin, unable to produce in the playoffs despite superstar pieces like Lamar Jackson, Derrick Henry and Kyle Hamilton on a stacked Ravens roster. Baltimore simply wasn’t moving the needle, and the team needed a change.

Now in charge of the New York Giants, Harbaugh has a bonafide recipe for success. He has young, blossoming offensive talent with Jaxon Dart, Cam Skattebo and Malik Nabers, a stout defense, and an overall young, impressionable team that would do well with veteran leadership.

In a league that is obsessed with modernizing, it’s becoming more and more common for the older, more experienced head coaches to be given the boot. In the past three years, we’ve seen coaching legends like Harbaugh, Bill Belichick and Pete Carroll were all relieved of their duties, signaling the true end of an era in NFL coaching.

The league is constantly changing, and 2025 has been the truest testament to that. Coordinators and head coaches continue to rotate, and the Las Vegas Raiders and Arizona Cardinals are still in search of their lead man. With so many changes ahead of 2026 and the draft still to come, fans will be watching an entirely new league come September.

Ben Deihl can be reached at deihlb1@duq.edu