The Monday after the final game of the regular season — better known as Black Monday — commences the season of NFL head coach firings.
And there was little time wasted in 2022.
The Minnesota Vikings fired head coach Mike Zimmer after eight seasons at the helm and a woefully mediocre past two years.
Following a 7-9 record in 2020 and 8-9 this season, Zimmer was shown the door — unable to take advantage of an offense that has some of the league’s top offensive weapons in running back Dalvin Cook and wide receivers Adam Theilen and Justin Jefferson.
A fellow NFC North head coach, Matt Nagy, was also (and predictably) shown the door by the Chicago Bears following four seasons that progressively got worse and worse. The Bears won 12 games in Nagy’s debut season in 2018 but have followed it up with two straight 8-8 campaigns followed by a 6-11 2021.
An inability to develop young quarterbacks such as Mitch Trubisky and Justin Fields didn’t help Nagy’s case as rumblings about his job security were in full force the past six weeks.
Over in the AFC, one of the more shocking chops came down on Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores, who took a team that went 5-11 in 2018 and put together two straight winning seasons for a combined record of 19-14. He was even in the running for NFL Coach of the Year last season after the Dolphins went 10-6.
Initial speculation indicated that the Dolphins made the move to potentially lure former San Francisco 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh away from the University of Michigan. However, ESPN’s Jeff Darlington reported on Monday that Harbaugh is not in Miami’s plans.
Those three coaches joined Vic Fangio, who was the first NFL head coach to get fired shortly after his Denver Broncos lost to the Kansas City Chiefs on Saturday night to finish 7-10 in 2021.
