NFL Mid-Season Head Coach Changes

With the recent resignation of Bobby Petrino as head coach of the Atlanta Falcons (and his replacement by veteran assistant Emmitt Thomas), let’s take a look at the teams that replace coaches mid-season.

Unlike baseball, basketball, and hockey… it’s somewhat unusual for an NFL team to change coaches during the season. This is mainly because there are only 16 regular season games in the NFL where other sports have far more than that. There are 32 teams in the NFL and since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger there have been mid-season coaching changes 59 times, that’s less than two in-season coaching changes for each team on average.

So, which team has changed managers the most during the season?

The list of teams that have changed managers mid-season once or twice since 1970 is a decent size, but from there we move into the upper echelon of manager instability.

NFL teams that have changed midseason head coaches three times since 1970:

Arizona/St. louis cardinals

Cincinnati Bengals

buffalo bills

NFL teams that have changed midseason head coaches four times since 1970:

Detroit Lions

Tennessee Titans (done when they were still the Houston Oilers)

New England Patriots

cleveland browns

But, the champions of this category are…

NFL teams that have changed midseason head coaches five times since 1970:

Atlanta Falcons (newly joined the club)

New Orleans Saints

san diego chargers

Indianapolis Colts

There you have it, where does your team rank in terms of coaching stability?

A couple of interesting side notes that make for great trivia:

There are eight teams that have not changed mid-season managers since 1970:

Of these eight teams, four have a clear advantage since they arrived in the league after 1995:

Carolina Panthers, Jacksonville Jaguars, Baltimore Ravens and Houston Texans.

But, the four qualifying veteran NFL teams:

chicago bears

Dallas Cowboys

Green Bay Packers

pittsburgh steelers

And a bit of trivia on the bad side of this problem:

There are only two NFL teams since 1970 that have changed midseason head coaches in two consecutive years:

New York Jets (1975 and 1976)

Buffalo Banknotes (1985 and 1986)