One question that starts circulating almost as soon as the beginning of the NFL regular season is which head coach will be fired first. The season only has 17 games, which means that if a team gets off to a disappointing start, the fan base may get restive — which means ownership will make a change. Some franchises are more mercurial than others when it comes to patience with a head coach, and if you get a sense of the sports betting pulse for this prop, you can make a lot of money.
Read on to learn about the NFL Coach odds and find out which coaches occupy a “hot” seat going into 2021.
NFL News: Coaching Futures Props
Odds to Get Fired First in 2021
| Mike McCarty (Dallas), Vic Fangio (Denver) | +750 |
| Matt Nagy (Chicago) | +850 |
| Jon Gruden (Las Vegas) | +1000 |
| Mike Zimmer (Minnesota) | +1100 |
| Kliff Kingsbury (Arizona), Zac Taylor (Cincinnati) | +1200 |
| David Culley (Houston), Matt Rhule (Carolina), Mike Vrabel (Tennessee) | +1600 |
| Matt LaFleur (Green Bay) | +2000 |
| Brian Flores (Miami), Frank Reich (Indianapolis), John Harbaugh (Baltimore), Kyle Shanahan (San Francisco), Pete Carroll (Seattle), Sean McVay (L.A. Rams), Sean Payton (New Orleans) | +2500 |
| Ron Rivera (Washington) | +2800 |
| Dan Campbell (Detroit) | +3300 |
| Joe Judge (N.Y. Giants) | +4000 |
You can get odds on every head coach, including Kansas City’s Andy Reid, at +50000, but this article will focus more on head coaches who are more likely to get fired. Reid has taken the Chiefs to two straight Super Bowls, so he isn’t going anywhere. Bill Belichick is another example — he will coach the Patriots as long as he wants to, even if the post-Tom Brady rebuild is a rocky period.
Mike McCarthy was a bit of a surprise hire by Dallas after the 2019 season, when the team did not renew Jason Garrett’s contract. McCarthy had left the game for a year, learning about such aspects of the contemporary game as analytics. He brought in his friend Mike Nolan as defensive coordinator despite Nolan’s lackluster record as a DC in other places, and the result was a defense that was not only the worst in the league but also the worst in the 62-season history of the Cowboys. In 2020, Dallas posted a 6-10 record, although much of that had to do with quarterback Dak Prescott going down with an awful leg injury and missing the last 12 games. After that, such players as Andy Dalton, Ben DiNucci and Garrett Gilbert had starts at quarterback. Dalton went through a case of COVID-19 but eventually rebounded to post impressive wins against Minnesota and Cincinnati. The Cowboys have a new DC in Dan Quinn, and they invested heavily on defense in the draft, although they did not sign any solid free agents on that side of the ball. Prescott is healthy, so the Cowboys should be better. I don’t see them winning the division, though, with Washington looming. Even so, Jerry Jones doesn’t like the humiliation of firing a coach mid-season, so McCarthy should make it all the way this year.
Vic Fangio has coached Denver for two seasons now, following a 7-9 debut season with a 5-11 record last year. In 2020, Von Miller missed the whole season, and quarterback Drew Lock was out for three games. The Broncos had to play the Saints without a quarterback, because all of their quarterbacks had met without masks, and a positive COVID-19 test ruled all of them out for the game due to contact tracing. These are not things that are likely to happen again in 2021. Even so, Fangio needs to show that he can lead a team in all phases; he has built an excellent reputation as a defensive mind. The Broncos have signed Teddy Bridgewater to give Lock some competition in training camp. They are also rumored to have an interest in trading for Aaron Rodgers, as mystery continues to swirl around his 2021 situation. The Broncos’ defense also gave up almost 28 points per game last year, and if defense is Fangio’s forte, that shouldn’t be happening.
NFL Betting Odds
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