Despite Growing Impatience For NFL Head Coaches, They Keep Getting Younger and the Checks Bigger
When the Tennessee Titans hired former Bengals offensive coordinator Brian Callahan to their head coaching vacancy early Tuesday, January 23rd, 2024, it was apparent that the NFL had changed. Long gone are the days of tenured staff members, opting instead for fresh faces every couple of years when things go awry. Mike Vrabel, 48, was out. Callahan, 39, was in.
The notion of building a younger coaching staff is nothing new in today’s league. Rewind to 2017 when the Los Angeles Rams infamously fired incumbent then-58 year-old head coach Jeff Fisher, the organization took the world by storm by hiring the youngest head coach in NFL history. Newly-signed head coach Sean McVay was only 30 when he stepped foot in Inglewood for training camp, yet succeeded in doing what Fisher could never do– win a Super Bowl.
The rise of the young, offensive minded coach has uprooted the long-standing tradition of head coaches being bona fide sages of the game on their respective teams. Gone are the days of Bill Belichick and Pete Carroll, nowadays it’s the Matt LaFleurs and the Zac Taylors that run the game. Sometime in the past, upper brass around the NFL began to embrace a paradigm shift that held the belief that as the game changes, the demographics of the coaching carousel might have to too. Football now has evolved into much more than a ground and pound scheme like of the 80’s and 90’s. Teams are even moving away from the west coast offense, that revolutionized offensive football and shoved the running game into relative obscurity.
Rising into the top ranks now are head coaches younger than the age of 45. Out of 32 teams in the NFL, the “younger-generation” make up just under half barring head coaching vacancies. The seismic shift in tangible head coaching qualities is a stark difference from before 2017, where the four youngest head coaching hires had a combined win/loss record of 52-112. McVay himself has had prolonged success in the league with a 70-45 resume, leading to his hiring and the ensuing aftermath in the NFL coaching world being called the “McVay Effect”.
It’s no secret that the NFL is a copycat league. What works will usually try to be emulated by different teams. From the adoption of the forward pass and more recently in the spread RPO offensive scheme, the league seldom sees innovative ideas stay copyrighted underneath a head coach for long. The same idea extends to the play callers themselves. Each generation has their own idea on how a team should be run, but more tried and true head coaches have had their colors shown already. They’ve become predictable, and for a team looking for a fresh start– it’s imperative their head coach’s philosophy reflects that.
“You read about some of the titans of our planet,” Rams’ general manager Les Snead said in 2018. “Maybe it’s no longer the Lee Iacoccas, but it’s . . . some of those guys who are in their 30s or late 20s. They’re just good at what they do.”
Teams have seen the success in the younger coaches and have been biting at the heel in order to try to emulate the results themselves. The new philosophy has led to a shorter leash on tenured coaches all while rewarding younger, first-time head coaches with massive contracts.
One of the more peculiar moves in recent memory that truly solidified the move towards the common norm these days was the firing of longtime Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis for 35-year old Zac Taylor. Despite Lewis’ 16-year tenure as the Bengals’ head coach, Duke Tobin, the Bengals’ director of player personnel decided it was time for a change. Throughout a decade and a half in Cincinnati, Lewis never managed to win a playoff game. Taylor, even with a worse winning percentage than Lewis, has won five, which is justification enough to retain him.
Coaching salaries have steady been on the rise for over two decades now as coaches have to contend with the allure of college coaching salaries. NCAA coaching opportunities have gotten more and more lucrative as the sport continues to grow and are backed by massive boosters and universities. The highest paid NCAA coach was Nick Saban prior to his retirement, making around $11.4 million a year. As of 2023, 24 NFL coaches made less than that, with the bell cow Bill Belichick parting ways with a $20 million salary in a move that only proves how cut-throat the NFL is.
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Belichick was the second oldest coach remaining in 2023 at 71. He was sacked by Robert Kraft after leading to one of the worst Patriots seasons in recent memory. His successor? Jerod Mayo, the youngest coach currently in the NFL. Quite the point prover. As NFL teams continue to prioritize offensive schemes and rules tend to favor one side of the ball, it’s no surprise that teams want coaches that bring a fresh set of eyes to an age-old problem.
These younger coaches are seen as a viable option to revive teams from a moribund position, infusing fresh ideas offensively that can be seen throughout the league. A lot of them simply stem from one coaching tree: The Shanahan Tree.
Long heralded as one of the modern day NFL’s greatest coaching lineage, the Shanahan Tree comes down to long-time NFL coach Mike Shanahan and his coaching staff, we can point to the 2013 Washington Redskins staff as the headline example. The staff consisted of Mike’s son Kyle, Packers’ head coach Matt LaFleur, Sean McVay, and Dolphins’ head coach Mike McDaniel. The tree also includes plenty of other great offensive minds such as Texans’ offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik and Matt LaFleur’s brother Mike.
The tree serves as the basis for modern day offensive philosophy in the NFL and has become a badge of honor for coaches entering their ranks in their prime. It’s become a selling point for coaches who want their offensive philosophy to start permeating into the league.
“You always take pride in your assistants that have success, so I feel like a proud father not only with Kyle, but with Matt and Sean, as well,” Mike Shanahan said by telephone to The Boston Globe. “But I can’t say it surprises me, because you could see how good and detail-oriented they were when they were assistants.”
As college deals and the NIL world has begun to hit full speed, teams are now not just entering a bidding war with the other 31 organizations in the league. Instead, they are now contending with large scale college programs such as the University of Alabama and the University of Michigan. Such was the case when Saban decided to leave Miami back to the college ranks, ultimately ending up as one of the greatest college football head coaches of all time.
College contracts have begun becoming more enticing, especially as that world sees an offensive renaissance to a much greater amplitude than the NFL. Even when now-Alabama head coach Kalen DeBoer departed for Tuscaloosa, the University of Washington offered him a significantly larger contract than most NFL teams offer their coaches, $9 million to start and a $100,000 pay raise every year until 2030.
This means NFL teams must boost their offers or risk their talent pool be poached by their NCAA counterparts. As college teams also take advantage of NIL boosters and media deals, those teams are able to offer much more glamorous bonuses. The intersection of the two leads to younger coaches in the NFL getting paid big money despite a lack of head coaching experience.
If there’s anything to learn from this it’s that, experience itself isn’t so much valued anymore in the NFL. It’s the ideas you present yourself with and the education you’ve retained. You’ve never had to call plays before and teams will still hire you. It’s simply the modern day NFL.
