While every NFL team that hires a new head coach hopes they’ve selected the next Vince Lombardi or Bill Belichick, some head coaching tenures inevitably turn into disasters.
Who are the worst NFL head coaching hires of all time? Pro Football Sports Network is counting down the top 10 in league history.
A Look at Brian Callahan’s Failed Tenure With the Titans
The first coaching change of the 2025 NFL season came with the dismissal of Brian Callahan, who was fired just 23 games into his stint with the Tennessee Titans. The decision was widely anticipated, as Tennessee’s offense deteriorated sharply throughout Callahan’s tenure.
After finishing 28th in PFSN’s Offensive Impact Metric with an impact score of 66.8 in 2024, the Titans fell even further in 2025, posting a 53.2 mark. That decline put them on track to surpass the 2023 New York Jets as the worst offense of the century by that metric.
Quarterback play never stabilized under Callahan. Three qualifying seasons all ranked near the bottom of the league, with Mason Rudolph recording a 72.0 PFSN QB Impact Score in 2024, good for a C-minus and 28th overall. Will Levis and rookie Cam Ward performed even worse, each ranking 37th in their respective seasons with failing grades of 52.9 and 63.2 at the time of Callahan’s firing.
The broader offensive metrics were equally bleak. Tennessee ranked last in yards per play at 3.9 and sat near the bottom of the league on third downs at 28%. The unit also ranked 31st in points per game, at 13.8, and EPA per dropback, at -0.22.
Ongoing issues in protection and efficiency also surfaced, with the Titans ranking 30th in sack rate at 11%, 29th in EPA per rush at -0.17, and 29th in explosive play rate at 8.2%. Turnovers only exacerbated the problem, as a 14.9% turnover rate ranked 28th in the league.
Top 10 Worst NFL Head Coaching Hires
Honorable mention: Jeff Saturday, Indianapolis Colts (2022, interim); Greg Schiano, Tampa Bay Buccaneers (2012); Jim Zorn, Washington (2008); Lane Kiffin, Oakland Raiders (2007); Rod Marinelli, Detroit Lions (2006); Dave Campo, Dallas Cowboys (2000); Lou Holtz, New York Jets (1976)
10) Freddie Kitchens, Cleveland Browns (2019)
Freddie Kitchens probably shouldn’t have been an NFL head coach. Being promoted from Cleveland Browns RB coach to interim head coach to full-time head coach in three months must have been a whirlwind, and the results during the 2019 campaign were about what you might have expected.
Cleveland lost by 30 points to the Tennessee Titans in Week 1, perhaps a sign of things to come. Kitchens consistently appeared overwhelmed. In Week 3, he called a draw run play on 4th-and-9, the first such call at that down and distance since 2006. Browns players complained that the team’s medical staff didn’t properly treat their injuries.
Fired after one 6-10 season at the helm, Kitchens worked for the New York Giants and the South Carolina Gamecocks before joining the North Carolina Tar Heels in 2023.
9) Rich Kotite, New York Jets (1995)
Rich Kotite entered the 1995 season with credibility after posting a 36-28 record across four years as head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, giving the New York Jets reason to believe the New York native could spark a turnaround.
The Jets also handed Kotite full control over personnel decisions, a move that quickly backfired. In the 1995 draft, he selected tight end Kyle Brady ahead of future Hall of Fame pass rusher Warren Sapp. One year later, he compounded the issue by signing free agent quarterback Neil O’Donnell to a five-year, $25 million contract that proved disastrous.
Both sides of the ball struggled throughout Kotite’s tenure, with the Jets ranking in the bottom seven in scoring on offense and defense in each of his two seasons. New York finished 4-28 under Kotite, who was dismissed after the 1996 season and never coached in the NFL again.
8) Matt Patricia, Detroit Lions (2018)
Many of Bill Belichick’s former underlings have attempted to instill the New England Patriots’ way of doing things with other organizations, and it typically hasn’t gone well.
Matt Patricia was no exception. The ex-Patriots DC’s reign as the Lions’ head coach featured one disaster after another. Patricia’s domineering approach backfired, resulting in a toxic relationship within the Lions’ locker room.
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Detroit had gone 9-7 under former head coach Jim Caldwell in 2017. The club regressed to 6-10 under Patricia in 2018, then won just eight games over the next two seasons before he and general manager Bob Quinn were fired.
Patricia’s Lions lost 15 games by double digits and dropped nine contests in which they held leads of 10 points or more.
7) Joe Judge, New York Giants (2020)
It’s a similar story for Joe Judge, another former Patriots assistant who unraveled after leaving Belichick’s side. A 10-23 overall record tells the story of Judge’s tenure with the Giants, but so does one specific play from the end of his stint with Big Blue.
In what ended up being Judge’s final game as New York’s head coach (the 2021 regular-season finale), Judge called for consecutive quarterback sneaks on 2nd-and-11 and 3rd-and-9 while the Giants were backed up against their own goal line. New York had no faith it could execute even a basic offensive play, a terrible reflection on its head coach.
Although every pre-Week 17 report had suggested Judge’s job was safe, the Giants fired him after that cowardly display. Belichick then shockingly tasked Judge and Patricia with overhauling the Patriots’ 2022 offense, and we know how that went.
6) David Shula, Cincinnati Bengals (1992)
In 1992, the Cincinnati Bengals could have hired eventual Hall of Famer Bill Cowher as their head coach. Instead, they went with an internal promotion, tapping wide receivers coach David Shula — the son of legendary Dolphins HC Don Shula — as their head coach.
Shula struggled as the Dallas Cowboys’ offensive coordinator in 1990 and was demoted before the end of the season. Nothing improved after he made the instant leap up the Bengals’ organizational hierarchy.
Shula went just 19-52 as Cincinnati’s head coach, failing to post a winning record in any of his four-plus seasons. His .268 winning percentage is the fifth-worst in league history; Shula is the only NFL coach with a sub-30% win rate who has been allowed to coach more than 70 games.
5) Hue Jackson, Cleveland Browns (2016)
The Cleveland Browns’ decision to hire Hue Jackson as their head coach in 2016 didn’t come out of left field. His 2015 Bengals offense finished second in scoring, while Jackson offered previous HC experience after going 8-8 with the 2011 Oakland Raiders. He was a coveted candidate who planned to interview for several other top jobs that offseason.
Jackson didn’t have much talent with the tanking Browns, but his results were among the poorest of any head coach in NFL history. Jackson went 1-31 over his first two seasons in Cleveland, and his one victory came by just three points. Somehow, Jackson was allowed to keep his job; he began the 2018 campaign 2-5-1 before being fired.
Jackson’s .205 winning percentage is the NFL’s second-worst all-time, trailing only Bert Bell, who coached the Eagles in the 1930s.
4) Brian Callahan, Tennessee Titans, (2024)
As described earlier in the article, Callahan was simply a colossal failure for the Titans. Historically, the results offered little relief as Tennessee went 4-19 under Callahan, producing a .174 winning percentage that stands as the fourth-worst by any head coach to oversee at least 20 games over the past 40 years.
Only Marty Mornhinweg, Chris Palmer, and Rod Dowhower finished with worse marks during that span. Ultimately, the combination of offensive stagnation, inefficiency, and historically poor results left the Titans with little choice but to move on.
3) Bobby Petrino, Atlanta Falcons (2007)
Thirteen games. That’s how long Bobby Petrino lasted in the NFL before returning to the college ranks in 2007.
Hired as the Atlanta Falcons’ head coach after a four-year run at Louisville, Petrino had to navigate Michael Vick’s suspension for running a dogfighting operation almost immediately after taking over. He drew ire from Falcons’ veterans for his management style, but no one could have expected Petrino’s shocking resignation in December of 2007.
Some reports indicated Petrino called a “10-second” meeting to inform Atlanta’s players he was heading to the University of Arkansas. Others suggested he’d left a one-paragraph, four-sentence letter for the club’s players to find.
Either way, it was a disastrous end to Petrino’s 3-10 season as the Falcons’ head coach.
2) Nathaniel Hackett, Denver Broncos (2022)
Nathaniel Hackett’s errors with the Denver Broncos began in Week 1 and didn’t end until he was fired in December after posting a 4-11 record.
Hackett committed one of the more egregious game management mistakes in recent memory on opening night of the 2022 season, intentionally winding the clock before allowing kicker Brandon McManus to attempt what would’ve been a game-winning, 64-yard field goal. Denver hired Jerry Rosburg, a 66-year-old former special teams coordinator, in Week 3 to assist Hackett after he continued to make clock management mistakes.
Meanwhile, the Broncos’ offense scored fewer points than any team in the league. Quarterback Russell Wilson, whom Denver had acquired and extended that offseason, posted the worst season of his career. Hackett ceded play-calling duties to QB coach Klint Kubiak by Week 11.
Hackett’s tenure in Denver was so catastrophic that his successor, Sean Payton, went outside typical NFL protocol and openly criticized Hackett’s decision-making with the Broncos. Payton eventually apologized, but nothing he’d said was inaccurate.
1) Urban Meyer, Jacksonville Jaguars (2021)
Urban Meyer had been out of coaching for three years and had zero NFL experience when the Jacksonville Jaguars hired him as their head coach in 2021. While Meyer was a three-time NCAA champion, his collegiate accomplishments couldn’t prevent him from posting the worst coaching tenure in NFL history.
It’s difficult to know where to begin with Meyer, who was fired before the end of his first season, having won just two of 13 games.
Soon after being hired, Meyer added strength and conditioning coach Chris Doyle to Jacksonville’s staff. Doyle had been fired from the University of Iowa after allegations of racial discrimination and was soon forced to resign from the Jaguars.
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Meyer signed Tim Tebow to play tight end. After a September loss to the Bengals, Meyer infamously stayed behind in Ohio and was spotted dancing with a woman who was not his wife. He reportedly held a staff meeting where he referred to his assistants as “losers.”
But the breaking point came in December, when Jaguars kicker Josh Lambo revealed that Meyer kicked him in the leg while he was preparing for a preseason game. Lambo said Meyer told him, “Hey dips—, make your f—— kicks!” before kicking him with some force.
Meyer was fired hours after Lambo reported the incident, mercifully ending the worst head coaching tenure in NFL history.
