Did Seahawks get John Harbaugh fired?

Mike Macdonald's success could be the spark that turned hot seats into flaming piles of ...

It took a long time for the NFL to go from two head coach openings for months to six openings by Black Monday, but no time at all to go from six openings to eight after the Ravens and Dolphins made changes on Grey Tuesday and Teal Thursday. Now entering the first playoff weekend, there are rumors that as many as three more teams will re-evaluate their head coach if they lose in the wild card round: Packers’ Matt LaFleur, Bills’ Sean McDermott, and Steelers’ Mike Tomlin.

If one more coach gets fired, it’ll tie the record for most changes in a single year since the AFL-NFL merger. If two more get fired, it’ll be unprecedented.

So WHY is this happening? Well, Saturday is the 2-year anniversary of this:

In a copycat league, how many owners are noticing that the Seattle Seahawks fired the most successful head coach in franchise history because the team had not made a serious playoff run in nine years, pounced on their opportunity to replace him with a play caller, and two years later are the number one seed?

Nobody’s saying that there’s another Mike Macdonald out there in 2026, truly nobody, but it’s easier to assess if your franchise is stagnant than it is to know if your next head coach will be a culture revelation:

I always bring this up: In 2017, Sean McVay was often ranked as a risky, second-tier hire and usually graded below the Chargers hiring Anthony Lynn. Was McVay a better hire on paper than Klint Kubiak is now? Probably not.

The best thing going for Harbaugh and Tomlin was fear of the unknown; that’s not gonna work at a time when the Seahawks and Patriots are back on top just two years after firing Carroll and Bill Belichick.

A surprise like Harbaugh’s dismissal isn’t much different than Seattle’s decision to fire Carroll despite having a winning record in 11 of his previous 12 seasons:

• Harbaugh and Carroll are Super Bowl winners but…

• Carroll had a 1-4 playoff record in his last 7 years

• Harbaugh has a 3-6 playoff record in the last 11 years

• Carroll won multiple playoff games 2 times in 14 years

• Harbaugh won multiple playoff games 2 times in 18 years

• Carroll and Harbaugh aren’t coordinators

There are only so many times you can blame offensive or defensive coordinators, as Seattle and Baltimore had been doing for many years. Not every good play caller is meant to be a head coach and not every good head coach is meant to be a play caller, but Carroll lacked the cache to fix the Seahawks problems on defense on his own and consistently fell short of finding a brilliant mind to run the offense.

-Carroll had coordinators like Gus Bradley, Dan Quinn, Darrell Bevell, and Brian Schottenheimer.

Similarly, Harbaugh is a former special teams coordinator and has never had to call a play on either side of the ball. He had seven different defensive coordinators during his tenure but the one true wunderkind was scooped up after two seasons because that’s what happens to great play callers who aren’t head coaches yet.

-Harbaugh had coordinators like Rex Ryan, Chuck Pagano, and Greg Roman. Not guys meant to be head coaches, but they can call plays.

Some head coaches are best in small doses

Maybe it’s just too much to ask coach managers like Harbaugh and Carroll to have sustained Super Bowl success over 10-15 years knowing that their best coordinators will need to be replaced and their worst coordinator picks are…well, they’re just not good enough. The sustained-success head coaches like Belichick and Andy Reid had some or total control over play calling.

Then factor in the point that Seattle actually tabbed Carroll’s replacement off of Harbaugh’s coaching staff and Macdonald turns out to be the best head coaching prospect that the Ravens have ever had?

Doesn’t it start to make sense that the Ravens fired Harbaugh — and potentially set off the domino chain that next led to Mike McDaniel — because the Seahawks and Patriots are back on top?

If not a direct reason, the Seahawks are representative of the franchise model that could make teams like Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Green Bay question if they’re committing to quality at the cost of excellence. Or what’s the saying? Good is the enemy of great:

Sustained regular season success without any significant playoff success is no longer going to cut it. If anything, regularly making the playoffs without winning playoff games is just a REMINDER that you fall off in the playoffs.

Mike Tomlin

It’s brought up every year now but the Steelers haven’t won a playoff game since 2016. Tomlin has won multiple playoff games 3x in 19 seasons and Pittsburgh is often cited as the 7th-best team in the 7-team AFC playoffs.

Context: Tomlin’s Super Bowl win happened the year that Matt Ryan was drafted. Is that crazier than the fact that Calais Campbell was drafted that year and is still in the league?

Sean McDermott

Having an MVP quarterback can work for you or against you. Harbaugh is taking more blame for Baltimore’s failures than Lamar Jackson. The Bills have won a playoff game in each of the last 5 years, but there’s talk of firing McDermott for an offensive play caller if Buffalo is knocked out this week so that they can maximize Josh Allen’s window.

The Bills have seven consecutive 10-win seasons under McDermott and he has as many playoff appearances as Marv Levy. Yet he’s being questioned because since he and Allen arrived the expectations in Buffalo (who didn’t make the playoffs from 2000-2016) have gotten that high.

(I don’t think the Bills are firing McDermott under any circumstances.)

Matt LaFleur

A change in Green Bay is picking up steam on Friday, which seems to be following the trend of other organizations since Baltimore opted to part ways with Harbaugh. Sort of an “if they can do it, we can do it” mentality, if not FOMO that your team needs to strike while the carousel is hot.

The Packers won 39 games from 2019-2021, but they’re just 37-30-1 since 2022. Some organizations would kill to be in the playoff hunt every year but “just making the playoffs” is kind of blasé to Green Bay; this is the franchise that fired Mike Sherman after one losing season (he averaged 11 wins/season before then) and Mike McCarthy after two mediocre seasons (after making the playoffs 9 times in 10 years with four appearances in the NFC Championship and a SB win).

Relatively speaking, LaFleur was already getting away with murder.

Where will they land?

I’m pretty curious myself because it’s not as though Harbaugh, Tomlin, McDermott, or LaFleur would have trouble finding immediate work. Kevin Stefanski has already interviewed with the Ravens. Harbaugh is thought to be the prime target for the Giants.

-If LaFleur is fired, he’d be an immediate upgrade for teams like the Titans or Falcons.

-If the Steelers want to part ways with Tomlin, they could have a trade opportunity on their hands. Raiders?

-McDermott would have no shortage of suitors: The Bills almost made the Super Bowl just last year!

Mike McDaniel is certainly going to be a popular name for fans of teams that need offensive coordinators—including the Seahawks—although I’m not sure the fit is as simple as we’d like it to be. It could be that simple, but coordinators are rarely one-team-fits-all and aside from one season our of four, the Dolphins were not an offense to envy. But maybe…

Just don’t get your heart set on one coach today. You might want to wait and find out what coaches could be surprisingly available tomorrow.

Speaking of Seattle’s future, do you want to do a live wild card chat today? I’ll open it up just before Rams-Panthers if you want to join us and talk about the playoffs with fellow Seaside Joe members.

Join the Chat at 1 PT to talk Rams-Panthers:

Get the Substack app and/or click that^^^ to join us for the chat today.

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