The 5 most fireable coaches of Week 14, featuring ... Bill Belichick? Really? Huh.

Bill Belichick is a great coach. His ability to scour every letter of the NFL’s rule book to glean even the slightest advantage or mismatch against opponents is legendary. His obsessive attention to detail and unflinching commitment to precision has turned the New England Patriots from former laughingstock to one of the league’s most successful franchises.

So when a guy like that screws up, it’s a big deal.

On Sunday, it was his call to play deep Hail Mary prevent coverage when Ryan Tannehill — a man whose longest pass the past three seasons traveled 59 yards — took a snap from his own 31 on the final play of a 33-28 game. That swapped out All-Pro safety Devin McCourty for decidedly not-a-safety Rob Gronkowski, and the resulting “Miami Miracle” delayed his Patriots the opportunity to clinch their 15th AFC East title in the past 16 seasons for at least a week.

It seems like everyone on either sideline knew a Hail Mary pass to the end zone was impossible.

But Belichick went with his standard deep ball prevent defense anyway, leaving his tight end to get exploited in the worst possible situation and costing the Patriots valuable ground in the race for home field advantage in the playoffs. For New England to ensure the road to the Super Bowl runs through Gillette Stadium, they’ll have to finish the season with a perfect 3-0 record while Kansas City goes 1-2. If not, they could have to face the Chiefs in a rowdy Arrowhead Stadium — and the Pats haven’t won a road matchup in the AFC Championship Game since 2004.

Belichick isn’t going to get fired — not for this or any other gaffe. It’s just uncharacteristic to see him make an entirely avoidable mistake. And when you’re as successful as Belichick is, it’s newsworthy when a preventable error causes your team to lose a game.

So who else joined Belichick in dreading their weekday press conferences in Week 14?

America’s least-anticipated game Sunday took place in Glendale, Arizona. Observed in a vacuum, it would have appeared to be a showdown between two NAIA schools in the great year of our lord, 1973. All that was missing from Week 14’s Lions-Cardinals tilt was a foreign-born kicker, one foot exposed to the elements, quickly dashing out a cigarette before taking the field for his extra point.

In the middle of this throwback to America’s gas crisis was Wilks, whose most notable contribution to the NFL landscape has been turning All-Pro tailback David Johnson into the anchor dragging fantasy rosters across the globe to the depths of the sea. With Wilks lighting the lamps, Johnson’s path Sunday against a deficient Detroit defense led him to 23 touches and 61 total yards.

Under Wilks’ leadership, the Cardinals’ offense recorded seven drives that lasted five plays or fewer. He may only be in his first season as a head coach, but the former defensive coordinator certainly hasn’t looked like a big-league play caller in 2018. The good news is he should be in line for a premier draft pick next spring. The bad news is Wilks might not be around to give input on the pick

On Nov. 25, it looked as though the Broncos had turned the corner. The once 3-6 team had rallied to back-to-back wins over the Chargers and Steelers to establish Denver as a legitimate, if flawed, contender. Their reward for those upset wins was a gilded road to the AFC’s second Wild Card spot; the Broncos’ final five games of the season featured just one team with a winning record — a Los Angeles team they’d already beaten on the road.

That laid the blueprint for Denver to finish the season on a seven-game winning streak and slide into the playoffs as one of the league’s hottest teams. Joseph wasn’t interested in those plans, however. Instead, he saw a challenge against the 2-10 San Francisco 49ers and their third-string quarterback and decided Sunday was the perfect time for a detour.

The Broncos’ vaunted defense allowed Nick Mullens, a player who began his season on the Niners’ practice squad, to throw for 332 yards and two touchdowns. In response Joseph crafted an offensive game plan that allowed rising rookie Phillip Lindsay — a player who had gained 267 rushing yards his past two games — to gain a whopping 30 yards on 14 carries in a 20-14 loss.

This was not the kind of outcome the 49ers have been known for in 2018:

Take Keenum’s four scrambles out of the equation, and Joseph’s offense gained just 3.4 yards per carry against a pretty average Niners defense. And when his team needed a big play on fourth-and-3 in the fourth quarter, the best Joseph and his staff could come up with was a check-down pass to Lindsay that net a single yard.

There are plenty of factors in Denver’s struggles this fall. Case Keenum has failed to reach the standard he set in last year’s breakout season in Minnesota. An inconsistent offense has been held to 17 points or fewer four times this fall. A once-fearsome defense ranks just 21st in the league in 2018 after allowing 5.9 yards per play.

Standing in the eye of this hurricane of mediocrity is Joseph. He got general manager John Elway’s backing at 3-6 — but a loss to a two-win Niners team could put him back into the brunt of the storm when Black Monday comes.

Gruden did an admirable job guiding Washington to the top of the NFC East after a 6-3 start, but Week 11 cost him his $94 million quarterback. Alex Smith’s broken leg gave way to a broken leg for backup Colt McCoy, and that forced the fifth-year head coach into a tough position.

Gruden was forced to dig through a sparse free agent pile of quarterbacks and came up with ... Mark Sanchez. Gruden’s rationalization was that Sanchez, thanks to past gigs with quarterbacks coach Kevin O’Connell and offensive coordinator Matt Cavanaugh, would be familiar with his offense and be able to pick it up quickly. This was a bad excuse for several reasons, most notably because the last time Sanchez spent any regular season time with either coach was back in 2012 — which was also a season where the former Jets quarterback threw 13 touchdown passes and 18 interceptions while recording a regrettable 66.9 passer rating.

Sanchez’s first appearance with the club was unimpressive — 21 passes for 100 yards and an interception. His first start, bolstered by a full week of preparation, was gruesome.

Sanchez completed just six of his 14 pass attempts for 37 yards and two interceptions. His adjusted yards per pass, a stat that balances sacks and turnovers against a quarterback’s positive gains, clocked in at -3.7 yards per attempt. He was so bad he eventually got benched for Josh Johnson. Before Sunday, Johnson hadn’t thrown a regular season pass since 2011.

It was Johnson who was responsible for Washington’s only two touchdowns in Week 14. They came after the New York Giants, a lead that scored 15 points or fewer in four of their first eight games, had already run out to a 40-0 third quarter lead. Circumstances or no, falling behind the 2018 Giants is an awful look for a head coach. It’s even worse for a playcaller who has never won more than nine games during his tenure in the nation’s capital.

The Steelers’ mid-season lull has turned into a budding free-fall, and now Pittsburgh has lost three straight games in advance of a much-hyped showdown with the Patriots. The most embarrassing defeat of the franchise’s quickly-souring 2018 came Sunday against a Raiders team Jon Gruden is deliberately razing to dust before rebuilding in his own, magenta image.

Tomlin’s team stalled out in Week 14, partly thanks to Ben Roethlisberger’s absence in the middle of the game. The Pro Bowl quarterback left due to a rib injury, but was cleared to return to the game soon after. But he stayed on the bench a while longer because Tomlin was comfortable throwing his backup quarterback at a lesser opponent.

Here’s what the longtime Pittsburgh coach had to say on the matter:

“He got looked at at halftime, he got treatment, he came back out. We were waiting to see if he was going to able to come back in, he was. Probably could have come in a series or so sooner, but we were in the rhythm and flow of the game. He was ready to go when he got back out there.

He was medically cleared when he got back out there. Obviously, he wasn’t back out there at the start of the third quarter.”

Tomlin didn’t want to disrupt Dobbs’ rhythm, but it wasn’t as though he was about to turn Roethlisberger into Wally Pipp. He finished his afternoon — the first meaningful extended snaps of his pro career — with a 4 for 9, 24 yard, one interception performance. Pittsburgh gained 64 total yards on his four drives, turning the ball over on downs once, ending another interception with a pick, and punting twice.

Tomlin gambled, hoping his backup quarterback could handle the Raiders and give the Steelers the latitude to rest Roethlisberger in advance of a pivotal Week 15 game against New England. But he crapped out with one of the most embarrassing losses of his coaching career. Tomlin’s been a reliable winning coach over the course of 12 years in Pittsburgh, but his recent lack of postseason success, combined with Sunday’s defeat, may have some Steelers fans looking at Mike McCarthy’s firing in Green Bay and getting some ideas.