The 5 most fireable NFL coaches heading into Week 12

Congratulations, Adam Gase. You’re off the hot seat. For now.

The embattled Jets head coach earned team owner Christopher Johnson’s support last week, then validated that confidence by crushing an overmatched Washington team to deliver New York’s third win of the season. That’s provided deliverance from the list of this year’s most fireable coaches and given Gase a little extra leeway to experiment at the tail end of what promises to be a lost season.

Other coaches saddled with losing records aren’t as lucky. The final six weeks of the season could be the final opportunity for a handful of playcallers to make a positive impression on their bosses. If their teams wind up eliminated from the postseason in the opening stages of the Advent calendar, they may spend the winter looking for new jobs.

That includes Pat Shurmur and Dan Quinn, last week’s starring duo on the list of fireable coaches. Neither man lost last week — Quinn trounced the Panthers for his second straight double-digit road win over a division rival, while Shurmur’s MASH-unit Giants took some time to heal up in a bye — so they’ve escaped scrutiny for now. In their place, a few fresh faces join the rankings.

Here are the five coaches who could be cruising toward their destinies after unfortunate Week 11 performances.

Someone’s gotta take the blame for the Chargers’ descent from 12-win contender to playoff non-factor over the past 10 months. Los Angeles’ steep decline has been a confluence of several factors: Philip Rivers’ sudden regression, Melvin Gordon’s early-season holdout and the shaky play that followed, and some absolutely horrible luck. But the burden of a unfulfilling season may ultimately fall on Lynn’s shoulders.

The Chargers are, in theory, one of the best teams in the NFL. They are, in execution, a 4-7 mess. Every one of Lynn’s team’s losses have come by seven points or fewer. Rivers has a 6:2 touchdown-to-interception ratio in his victories and a 9:12 mark in defeat. On Monday night, with a chance to topple the Chiefs in Mexico City, he threw four picks — two of which came on plays originating inside the Kansas City 25-yard line.

Lynn is in a tough situation. Rivers has rebounded before; after leading the league in interceptions in both 2014 and 2016, he came back to be one of the game’s better QBs in 2017 and 2018. Now he’s a liability once more, and his gunslinging tendencies have ruined several solid defensive efforts.

Can Lynn fix his veteran quarterback? Does he have the pieces for a rolling rebuild if Rivers is done? The longtime Charger isn’t under contract for 2020, and while there aren’t many reliable options to replace him, the franchise could be getting antsy after a 13-plus years of mostly good seasons and zero Super Bowl appearances.

Los Angeles’ future hinges on what comes next. Although Lynn proved himself the right man for the job the past two seasons, the team’s ownership could see another season of wasted potential as the third-year head coach’s fatal flaw. Lynn doesn’t deserve to be fired — he’s got a 25-18 overall record despite coaching in the Chargers’ Bermuda Triangle of disappointment — but if ownership decides to swing its ax after a major letdown, he could wind up chopped anyway.

Marrone hoped a returning Nick Foles would snap the Jaguars out of their funk and spark a late run to the top of the AFC South. Instead, the Super Bowl 52 MVP was largely ineffective as Jacksonville fell to rival Indianapolis in a blowout Week 11 loss.

The Jags have now lost four of their last six games. The only wins in that span came against the Jets (bad) and Bengals (worse!). Marrone’s team is 0-5 against opponents with winning records through Week 11, and though Jacksonville isn’t out of the playoff hunt, no one’s buying the team as a legitimate threat. Foles’ return was supposed to be the catalyst to an offensive revival, but he managed just seven points before a garbage-time touchdown — and even that saw his two-point conversion attempt returned 99 yards in the wrong direction.

Foles wasn’t the only one to struggle as the Jags have crashed back to the “pretender” side of the AFC. Leonard Fournette, once among the league leaders in rushing, has sputtered to just 136 yards (and 3.7 yards per carry) in his last three games as opposing defenses have been less and less threatened by the Jags’ passing. A once-fearsome defense ranks fourth in the league in sack rate (9 percent) but has failed to turn those big plays into stops. Jacksonville ranks just 22nd in the league in yards allowed per play (5.7) and has allowed opponents to convert nearly 40 percent of their third downs.

A smothering defense was Marrone’s calling card as he ventured one good quarter from a spot in Super Bowl 52. Now it’s fallen back to the middle of the pack and neither Foles nor the mania-generating Gardner Minshew II have brought enough consistent firepower to overcome its regression.

The Jaguars are staring down Marrone’s second straight losing season. While the team’s 2016 Cinderella run may be enough to convince owner Shad Khan to give him another chance, the franchise could be looking for someone new to unlock Foles’ top gear outside of Philadelphia.

Rivera has Carolina at 5-5 despite starting the season 0-2 with a hobbled Cam Newton. However, the bloom is off backup Kyle Allen’s onion (I’m pretty sure that’s the saying) now. The Panthers have balanced a four-game winning streak with a 1-3 follow-up that reached the season’s nadir with a 26-point loss to a formerly 2-7 Falcons team.

Carolina’s given up nearly 30 points per game since September, digging holes too deep for a second-year second-stringer to climb from. Allen’s four-interception performance Sunday casts a massive shadow over the back end of the Panthers’ schedule, where games against contenders like the Colts, Seahawks, and Saints (twice) await. If Allen can’t elevate his game against a series of NFL defenses that now have plenty of game tape to point out his flaws, Rivera could miss the playoffs in back-to-back seasons for the first time since 2012.

That could be a major issue for owner David Tepper. Tepper didn’t make many sweeping changes after purchasing the club from Jerry Richardson in 2018, instead opting to stay the course with a head coach who’d yo-yoed between postseason berths and forgettable seasons. Tepper is less likely to remain in stasis if Carolina remains stuck in gridiron limbo.

The former hedge fund manager recently hosted a question and answer session and discussed his hatred of mediocrity and refused to address the futures of Rivera and general manager Marty Hurney. That sets a big expectation for the Panthers’ final six games; finish under .500, even without Newton in the lineup, and it could be time for the team to be torn down in order to become the one Tepper wants.

Kitchens led the Browns to a win over Pittsburgh Thursday night — the first time Cleveland has beaten the Ravens and Steelers in the same season. A hard-fought victory is not what people are going to remember from the game, however. Myles Garrett clubbing Mason Rudolph with his own helmet is.

Kitchens now faces an uphill battle to the postseason without his top pass rusher. Garrett was suspended indefinitely after hitting Rudolph with his own helmet and will miss the rest of the season (and possibly more). At 4-6, there’s little room for error if the Browns are going to meet their lofty offseason expectations.

The problem for him is that error is the Browns’ primary currency. Despite his postgame rejection of the idea Cleveland is undisciplined, no team in the league has given up more penalty yardage than the Browns through 11 weeks. Kitchens’ team has been flagged 112 times in 10 games, resulting in 882 lost yards.

Fortunately for Kitchens, the final six games of 2019 should offer the rookie head coach plenty of runway to build the momentum he needs to keep his job. Only one of those games comes against a team with a winning record. If you take the Ravens off the schedule, Cleveland’s remaining five opponents are a combined 10-40-1 (the 0-10 Bengals show up there twice). There’s an easy route to get to 8-8, which would be the team’s first non-losing season since 2007.

This means Kitchens is likely to survive a season when his division title hopes crumbled, his franchise quarterback turned into a less effective Jameis Winston, and Garrett, well, you know. That doesn’t mean he will, but the outlook looks a little sunnier after beating the Steelers and Bills than it did after Week 9’s loss to the Broncos.

Patricia won’t fall under scrutiny after 2019 because of his offense. Matthew Stafford was in the midst of his best statistical season of his career (19 touchdowns, 5 interceptions, 9.1 adjusted yards per attempt, and a 106.0 passer rating) before broken bones in his back took him off the field in Week 10. Backup Jeff Driskel, once a Bengals castoff, has been useful in his stead despite the team losing top tailback Kerryon Johnson to a knee injury.

Instead, Detroit’s concern lies in the fact a coach who built his career as a defensive coordinator now commands a unit unable to stop anyone. The Lions rank 27th in the league in points allowed and 31st in yards given up per play (6.1). The only team that didn’t score 26+ points against them in the past five weeks is Mitchell Trubisky’s Bears.

In Week 11, they shut down two of the league’s top players at their positions and still gave up 500+ yards against the Cowboys.

The 3-6-1 Lions have been unable to shake the malaise that’s followed the franchise through the past six decades. All but one of the team’s games this fall has been decided by eight points or fewer. They gave up an 18-point fourth-quarter rally to a debuting quarterback and settled for a Week 1 tie. They lost to an arch rival thanks to some nonsense penalties against their prized offseason signing. They’ve gained 400+ yards of total offense four times and won none of those games.

This is all very on-brand for Detroit. That’s awful news for Patricia.