The 5 most fireable NFL coaches heading into Week 13

Jason Garrett has spent nearly a full decade as head coach of the Dallas Cowboys. He is occasionally stellar in the regular season and only awful when disaster strikes.

That’s how he still has a job with the Cowboys despite winning only two playoff games since taking the helm in 2010. If he doesn’t add a third this January, he could be looking for a new job.

Garrett’s been the dividing line between good and great in the NFL. He’s finished with a sub-.500 record as head coach just once, only bottoming out when injuries took out starting quarterback Tony Romo for 12 games in 2015. He’s turned three NFC East titles into zero trips to the NFC Championship Game and has never won a playoff game on the road.

Bolstering that resume will almost certainly come as a home underdog in the Wild Card Round — assuming he can make it there. The Cowboys are 6-5 after failing another major test in a 13-9 loss to the Patriots. While they’ve still got the inside track toward a divisional title, a prospective showdown with whomever doesn’t win the NFC West would threaten to make their stay in the postseason a brief one.

Those nine-plus years have come together to push Garrett to the top of Week 12’s most fireable coach rankings, but he’s not alone. Some big names joined him in this week’s rundown. Let’s dive in.

Gruden isn’t getting fired. He’s still got eight years and $80 million (oh my god oh my god oh my god) left on his contract. Just as importantly, he has the Raiders’ pre-Vegas rebuild ahead of schedule thanks to a 6-5 record.

But, holy crap, we need to talk about what happened in north New Jersey Sunday. Oakland scored the first three points of the game, then got trampled by a Jets team that now, somehow, is in the midst of a three-week win streak. Before that, you could break New York’s schedule down into three different three-game stretches when they failed to score more than 33 points total. In Week 12, they ran roughshod over Gruden’s team in a 34-3 rout — the third straight game in which they’ve scored exactly 34 points.

(The Jets are weird, man. I dunno.)

Derek Carr’s quietly great 2019 was derailed on an afternoon where he dropped back to pass 28 times and threw for just 127 yards. Factor in a pick-six, and his net impact for the day was -4 points. Gruden, fully embracing this failure, turned the reins over to backup Mike Glennon toward the end of the third quarter, only to watch him fumble three times in five drives.

The upset loss — Oakland was a 3.5-point favorite on the road — unsealed the team’s grip on the AFC’s final wild card spot and dropped the club to the middle of a four-way tie for the sixth seed. With only two games left on the schedule against winning teams (the Chiefs and Titans), the Raiders can still get there. They’ll just have to prove Sunday’s mollywhopping was a wake-up call and not just a smorgasbord of all their fatal flaws.

On the plus side, it gave the chance for Gruden to show the world he’s still got it when it comes to cussing out the refs after a bad call.

How bleak were things for Jacksonville this weekend? Big Cat Country posted this sometime in the middle of the third quarter of their 42-20 loss to the Titans:

It was not premature.

Jacksonville’s once-fearsome defense gave up four touchdowns to a revitalized Ryan Tannehill and fell victim to the fourth 70+ yard run of Derrick Henry’s career — most in the NFL since 2016. That unit, the calling card of a team that was one quarter from Super Bowl 52, has given up 101 points over its last three games while allowing more than 423 yards per contest.

The Jags are now 4-7 with no margin of error remaining in their quest for a playoff spot. A strong finish to push the team to .500 or better, coupled with the built-in excuse of Nick Foles’ early-season collarbone injury, could be enough to buy Marrone another year in Florida. If Jacksonville keeps playing like it did in Nashville, that’s not an argument team owner Shad Khan will have to listen to this winter.

Quinn’s unexpected rally against NFC South opponents ended against, of all teams, the Buccaneers. After intercepting Jameis Winston twice over the course of Tampa Bay’s first three drives, the Atlanta defense returned to hibernation mode and made him look like an MVP candidate the rest of the way.

That turned an early 10-7 lead into a 35-22 loss and cemented Atlanta’s second straight season without a winning record.

It also highlighted all the problems Quinn, who built his name as a defensive assistant in Seattle, has had when it comes to stopping opponents the past two years. The Falcons made some minor changes on that side of the ball last offseason, but failed to make any other major moves in hopes better injury luck would spark improvement. Even though Atlanta’s been healthier, the defense has only gotten marginally better. The 2018 Falcons ranked 26th in the league after allowing 6.0 yards per play. The 2019 team ranks 24th at 5.9.

It doesn’t matter if you’re starting a backup quarterback. If you lose to Washington in 2019, you’re destined for the hot seat. Jeff Driskel fell to 0-3 as Detroit’s Matthew Stafford fill-in after a 16-13 loss to Dwayne Haskins and a formerly 1-9 Washington team.

Driskel has played roughly as expected for a backup castaway from the Bengals’ sinking ship. The Lions’ running game has exceeded expectations without Kerryon Johnson (injured reserve), utilizing players like J.D. McKissic and Bo Scarbrough to surprising effect. Instead, the onus for Patricia’s place on the hot seat remains a defense that continues to underwhelm.

Detroit spent big to bring Patricia’s players — i.e. former Patriots — to the NFC North. Trey Flowers and Justin Coleman signed contracts worth a total of $126 million in an effort to rebuild a defense that ranked 10th in yards allowed last season. While each has had his moments, they’ve been unable to create the kind of force the second-year coach had hoped; the Lions are giving up a shade under 400 yards per game, or fourth-worst in the NFL.

Patricia tried to remedy that by taking over some playcalling duties Sunday, which had a positive effect. Although the Lions held Washington to just 230 total yards and zero offensive touchdowns in Week 12, that defense couldn’t hold up when it needed a stop most. Detroit caved after Driskel’s second interception of the game, giving up a 17-yard passing play on third-and-5. Dustin Hopkins kicked a field goal one play later, and the Lions’ drop from .500 ball club to 3-7-1 mess was complete.

Dallas holds a one-game lead atop the NFC East. Not a single one of its six victories came against a team with a winning record. Four came against teams that are currently 2-9.

The Cowboys have an MVP candidate behind center, a Pro Bowl-caliber running back flanking him, an offensive line that’s allowed the fewest sacks in the NFL, and a defense that among the league’s top six teams in both points allowed and yards allowed. At face value, that’s the kind of resume you’d expect from a Super Bowl contender. Instead, Dallas is barely clinging to a playoff spot.

That dissonance hasn’t been lost on team owner Jerry Jones.

So what’s the problem? Garrett shoulders some of the blame, especially as his conservative approach — settling for a field goal with six minutes to play in a seven-point game on the road, in awful weather, in a game where his team had only one drive longer than 55 yards — proved costly in Week 12. Two weeks before, he stuck with his running game entirely too long in a loss to the Vikings. As a result, a quarterback with 14 game-winning drives from 2016-18 has none this year.

The other issue is that this team isn’t as good as it looks on paper. Those impressive defensive ranks were built up against losing teams with no postseason hopes, the Saints without Drew Brees, and a Patriots offense playing in a stormy, 40-degree afternoon when swirling wind made every downfield pass an adventure. Prescott’s having the biggest year of his career, in part, because the Cowboys are screwing up early and often enough that he needs to throw the ball.

There’s some logic to Garrett’s strategy. He’s running Elliott on first and second down because he’s a workhorse, and the yards he’s gained have given Dallas the league’s third-shortest average yards-to-go on third down. He’s trusting Prescott to lead improbable touchdown drives because he’s an MVP candidate, and that’s what MVP candidates do.

The problem is he isn’t changing his mindset to match the flow of the game that’s unfolding in front of him. His inability to shift gears makes a good theoretical decision fall apart in practice, even if his decision to ignore analytics from the sideline is supported by Jones. Garrett can’t make the midgame adjustments he needs in order to be great. And no matter how good his roster is, that’s always going to be his biggest weakness with the Cowboys.