Five NFL teams fire head coaches

In what may be the biggest one-day purge in NFL history, five coaches were fired Monday less than 24 hours after their seasons ended.

One-sixth of the league’s coaches were dismissed: Ray Rhodes of Philadelphia, Dom Capers of Carolina, Ted Marchibroda of Baltimore, Dave Wannstedt of Chicago and Dennis Erickson of Seattle.

With the exception Erickson, who was three time zones away, word of four of the firings came within an hour.

“I think it’s disgusting. Some of the better coaches in the NFL got fired today,” said Miami’s Jimmy Johnson, a close friend of Wannstedt, who was his defensive coordinator in Dallas.

“I know we’re highly paid, but it’s a shame when coaches’ jobs are dependent on injuries, skyboxes, people in the stands and officiating calls. … It doesn’t give me a good feeling about our profession when I see things like I saw this morning.”

At least one owner seemed to agree that firing the coach is a way to address mistakes made by many others.

“In hindsight there would be a lot of things that we didn’t get done as well as we wanted to,” Carolina owner Jerry Richardson said. “I’m not dumping it all on Dom.”

Chicago owner Mike McCaskey, whose team finished 4-12 the last two seasons under Wannstedt, seemed to confirm what Johnson was saying.

“It hurts to see empty seats, people who’ve already paid for those seats choosing not to show up,” he said.

All the fired coaches knew what was coming or sensed it long before the dismissals were announced. In fact, this may have been a record day in a record year — there could be as many as 10 or 11 vacancies this year, approaching the 11 new coaches after the 1996 season.

There was one common denominator in the firings: All the coaches had losing seasons except Erickson, who was 8-8 this year for the third time in four seasons in Seattle despite millions spent on free agents.

“We are 3-13,” Rhodes said in the days leading to his firing. “A new coach will be in here shortly.”

And a lot of other places as well.

There already are seven vacancies: Monday’s five, plus the expansion Cleveland Browns and San Diego, where June Jones, who replaced Kevin Gilbride in midseason, has chosen to take the job at the University of Hawaii rather than take a shot at the permanent job with the Chargers.

There will be more.

Cincinnati’s Bruce Coslet got a vote of confidence Monday despite a 3-13 season, but Norv Turner in Washington is on shaky ground.

Also, the Mike Holmgren scenario won’t be played out until Green Bay is eliminated from the playoffs — the Packers’ coach is free to pursue a head coach-general manager slot and would be the first choice of almost everybody.

And San Francisco’s Steve Mariucci still hasn’t signed a contract extension because he’s unsure about the team’s future with Carmen Policy and Dwight Clark now running the new Browns in Cleveland.

One of many coaching rumors has Holmgren going to San Francisco, Mariucci to Cleveland and Rhodes, the NFL’s coach of the year in 1995, ending up as head coach in Green Bay, where he was Holmgren’s first defensive coordinator.

Capers, coach of the year two seasons ago for getting Carolina to the NFC title game in its second season, is a candidate for the vacancies in Baltimore and Philadelphia.

But the NFL office is most concerned about Rhodes, one of three black coaches in the league.

Since Tony Dungy was hired by Tampa Bay after the 1995 season, all 15 coaching vacancies in a league in which 70 percent of the players are black have been filled by whites. The league has gone so far as to hire a consulting firm to videotape potential candidates for owners to view.

Other than Rhodes, there are no obvious black candidates among the “hot” list of names for head coaching jobs.

Holmgren and former San Francisco coach George Seifert are at the top of most lists.

Others include Capers; offensive coordinators Gary Kubiak of Denver, Brian Billick of Minnesota and Chris Palmer of Jacksonville; and defensive coordinators Bill Belichick of the Jets, Jim Haslett of Pittsburgh and Greg Robinson of Denver. Add defensive coordinator Rich Brooks of Atlanta, the former coach of the Rams and the temporary replacement for Dan Reeves, who is recovering from heart surgery.

The list of potential black coaches, in addition to Rhodes, is headed by Sherman Lewis, Green Bay’s offensive coordinator. But there seems to be a feeling among team officials that Lewis’ time has passed after two years of interviews.

The most obvious candidate is Art Shell, Atlanta’s offensive line coach, who was the NFL’s first black head coach in the modern era and who is the last winning coach of the Raiders — he was 56-41 in 4 1-2 seasons. Shell, however, is devalued by some teams because Raiders coaches are considered pawns of Al Davis.

Among the other possibilities among the minority candidates are Tyrone Willingham, the Stanford head coach; Willie Shaw, Oakland’s defensive coordinator; and Herman Edwards, assistant head coach of the Bucs.

Associated Press