The Trend of Less Experienced Coaches in the NFL

Head coaches in the NFL are starting to become less experienced. Now that doesn’t mean they are losing their knowledge of football, it’s due to the average years of experience for NFL coaches has gotten smaller.

If you pay attention to sports news, it’s pretty well known that head coaches can have very short tenures based on how well the team they are coaching performs. Their behavior on and off the field plays just as much of a role in determining if they keep their job.

Former Jacksonville Jaguars head coach, Urban Meyer, was fired after week fourteen of the 2021 NFL season. During his time there he had multiple conflicts with players, and after a loss during week four, a video went viral of him dancing at a bar with a young woman who was not his wife. This came after the unorthodox behavior of not taking the plane ride home with his team after their loss that week.

The job of head coach in the NFL is considered very stressful and many factors come into play with determining if one can stay in the league as a head coach. The current average years of experience for head coaches coming into the 2022 season is 5.78. This number is pulled up by eight of those coaches having over 10 years of experience, and two of those eight having over 20 years of experience, those two being Andy Reid and Bill Belichick. The average is being pulled down by the other 24 coaches having less than 10 years of experience, with five of them having only five years of experience, and the other 19 having less than 5 years of experience. All of this coming from ESPN’s page on NFL head coaches.

With the 2022 NFL season almost here, there are currently six head coaches with no head coaching experience. There is Matt Eberflus of the Chicago Bears, Nathaniel Hackett of the Denver Broncos, Mike McDaniel of the Miami Dolphins, Kevin O’Connell of the Minnesota Vikings, Dennis Allen of the New Orleans Saints, and Brian Daboll of the New York Giants.