Coaching hires can make or break a franchise, and the NFL’s history is littered with examples of both outcomes.
Some organizations treat the head-coach search like a formality — they recycle familiar names without ever addressing the structural problems that doomed previous regimes. Others have genuinely evolved and built smarter, more deliberate processes that have produced lasting results on the field and in the standings.
The Pattern Most Teams Keep Repeating
For years, the default move for struggling franchises was to fire a coach, hire a proven winner, and hope the results would follow. The problem is that retread coaches rarely solve root issues. When a team lacks a clear identity, a strong general manager, or a coherent vision at the ownership level, no single hire will fix it.
Franchises That Got It Right
Kansas City Chiefs
The Chiefs made one of the most consequential coaching hires in modern NFL history when they brought in Andy Reid in 2013. Reid had spent 14 seasons with the Philadelphia Eagles, guiding them to five NFC Championship Games and one Super Bowl, yet he left Philadelphia without a ring and with lingering questions about his ability to close in big moments.
Kansas City looked past that narrative, paired him with a franchise quarterback in Patrick Mahomes, and built an organizational structure designed to let Reid simply coach. The result has been four Super Bowl appearances and three championships since 2020, which stands as one of the clearest examples in recent memory of a franchise hiring with clarity and conviction.
Buffalo Bills
The Bills spent the better part of two decades as one of the league’s most directionless franchises. Their turnaround started not just with selecting Josh Allen in the 2018 draft but with hiring Sean McDermott the year before.
McDermott arrived from Carolina’s defensive staff with no head-coaching experience, which made the hire look like a significant gamble at the time. What made it work was real alignment among McDermott, general manager Brandon Beane, and ownership, with all three on the same page on culture, roster philosophy, and long-term vision.
San Francisco 49ers
San Francisco’s rebuild is a case study in patience and organizational discipline. After Jim Harbaugh’s tenure ended contentiously in 2014, the 49ers went through two coaches in two seasons before landing on Kyle Shanahan in 2017. The front office, under general manager John Lynch, resisted the urge to make a reactive hire and instead targeted a young offensive mind with a clear, replicable system at his core.
Shanahan has since guided the team to three NFC Championship Games and two Super Bowl appearances. This surely validated a hire that required genuine conviction at a genuinely difficult moment in the franchise’s history.
What Separates a Good Process From a Lucky Outcome
Not every successful hire comes from a brilliant process, and not every failed hire reflects poor organizational judgment. Injuries, quarterback development, and timing all play enormous roles. Just as a serious bettor knows that understanding the payment methods online in casinos in Ontario matters as much as reading the lines themselves, front offices that genuinely learn from past mistakes understand that the process matters at least as much as the name on the contract.
The franchises that have truly evolved share a few consistent traits. They tend to hire coaches who fit a specific offensive or defensive identity rather than simply pursuing the most recognizable name available. They align the head coach with the general manager before either hire is officially finalized. And they give new regimes enough runway to implement their systems.
The Role of Ownership
This is where many organizations quietly undermine even their best intentions. An owner who insists on involvement in personnel decisions or panics after a single losing season can unravel even the most thoughtful hire.
The Eagles, under Jeffrey Lurie, have demonstrated that engaged ownership need not be destructive. Lurie made the controversial decision to part ways with Doug Pederson following a Super Bowl victory, which drew significant criticism at the time, but the hiring of Nick Sirianni and the emergence of Jalen Hurts ultimately validated a sound process, even when the optics were tough to defend.
Lessons That Still Go Unlearned
For every Buffalo or Kansas City, there are still franchises stuck in the same cycle.
The New York Giants have shown real progress under Brian Daboll, but years of instability before that hire made the rebuild far more difficult than it ever needed to be. Carolina hired and fired multiple coaches in a short span before turning to Dave Canales in 2024, which showed some signs of organizational growth without fully breaking the old pattern.
The franchises that have actually learned from their mistakes are not always the ones with the most championship trophies displayed in their facilities. They are the ones with coherent hiring philosophies, patient ownership, and the organizational honesty to properly diagnose what actually went wrong before reaching for the next name on a list.
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