NFL Football Betting: Next NFL Head Coach to Leave His Position

It turned out that the NFL experts as well as the futures odds at BetOnline.ag were correct.  Jay Gruden was the first NFL head coach fired this season after the Washington Redskins opened the campaign with five consecutive losses.  Veteran coach Bill Callahan was named Gruden’s replacement on an interim basis and the move did result in some short term improvement as Washington won their first game of the season.  Sure, it was a narrow victory over the bottom feeding Miami Dolphins but a win nonetheless.

Speculation now turns to who will be the next NFL coach to be fired or otherwise leave his position.  This one is almost too easy.

BET DAN QUINN +150 NEXT NFL HEAD COACH TO LEAVE HIS POSITION

We were going to include Cleveland Browns’ head coach Freddie Kitchens along with Quinn in this writeup.  That was before Cleveland GM John Dorsey essentially said that Kitchens isn’t going anywhere in the short term:

“Our goal is to win the AFC North. We've said that. Now we have five home games and five divisional games, let's go for it.”

Kitchens is likely ‘coaching for his job’ the rest of the way but at least he’s got a chance to salvage his situation.  Atlanta Falcons’ head coach Dan Quinn is well past that point and it looks as if team management is just trying to figure out the best timing for the move.  It’s almost hard to believe that the Falcons were not only in the Super Bowl in 2016 but took the New England Patriots to overtime before losing.  The team went 10-6 in 2017, 7-9 last year and have started the season 1-5.

After last season’s disappointing performance, Quinn threw his assistant coaches under the bus.  Even though he cleaned house, the team hasn’t shown any improvement.  That means he’s out of cards to play.  Atlanta is also 1-5 against the spread this year.  It’s doubtful that team owner Arthur Blank is concerned about the Falcons’ performance against the betting line but it’s a convenient metric to help measure effort.  Teams that lose games but cover pointspreads are often teams ripe for a turnaround.  Unfortunately, Atlanta hasn’t done that this season—their only cover came in their lone straight up victory.

Blank is likely to completely clean house, though general manager Thomas Dimitroff might last until the end of the season.  Blank—he made his money founding Home Depot—has never been shy about changing coaches in midseason.  Since he bought the Falcons in 2002, he’s been through 7 coaches. Two of the coaches were replaced midseason (worth noting that Bobby Petrino resigned as Falcons’ coach 13 games into the 2007 season to accept the head coaching gig at Arkansas and wasn’t fired).  Atlanta also made two mid-season coaching change during the tenure of previous owner Rankin Smith so it’s not like firing Quinn at this juncture would be unprecedented.

The writing on the wall is obvious.  Most of the media coverage over the past few weeks hasn’t focused on if the Falcons will fire Quinn but when.  A Sports Illustrated article posted on October 14 was entitled: “How Much Longer Will the Falcons’ Downward Spiral Last?”.  CBS Sports reported on October 13 that Blank will make a decision during bye week which will come after the Falcons game against Seattle on October 27.  The owner had said that he wanted to ‘see some improvement’ but it’s unclear if the team could improve enough in two weeks facing tough opponents (LA Rams, Seahawks) to save Quinn’s job.  A Seattle Seahawks beat website reported on October 15 that “Quinn’s tenure as Falcons head coach could end after Seahawks game”.

There’s a chance that Quinn could get the ax sooner than that.  Atlanta faces the LA Rams this weekend and the defending NFC Champions have lost 3 straight games.  The Falcons could be in the ‘wrong place at the wrong time’ against an opponent looking to take out some frustrations and get back on the winning track.