NFL Hot Seat Watch: 3 Coaches feeling pressure in Week 11
These NFL head coaches are feeling the pressure on the hot seat entering Week 11.
We are rolling into the back half of the 2020 NFL season and there is a pretty clear division between the haves and have nots in the NFL hierarchy. Several teams are somewhere in the middle and, for some of the head coaches, finishing anywhere from mediocre to downright awful should spell doom for their tenures.
Some teams are awful by design and thus won’t be included in this list, Adam Gase and Doug Marrone for example, and others are still in their first year of a rebuild. Gase and Marrone are steering ships straight towards the iceberg in what should be a loaded quarterback class and, while they’ll likely get fired, it probably will not be until the end of the season.
The coaches really feeling the pressure this week are those whose seasons are circling the drain when they expected to be contenders and those who may just be running out of chances with their respective owners. Let’s jump in and take a look at the whose seat is getting hot ahead of Week 11.
NFL Hot Seat candidate No. 3: Matt Patricia, Detroit Lions
The Detroit Lions have been one of the most up and down teams in the NFL this season. From a brutal Week 1 loss to the Bears to a win gifted to them by the hapless Falcons, the Lions are 4-5 and that feels about right for their level of talent and coaching.
They are still in the hunt for an NFC Wild Card spot and that may be their ceiling under head coach Matt Patricia. The former Patriots defensive coordinator is another Bill Belichick disciple who has underwhelmed running his own team and has reportedly alienated a number of his players.
The primary issue with the Lions is their defense and considering that is supposedly Patricia’s expertise, their struggles there are even more inexcusable. They currently boast the 29th-ranked defense and have done little to help franchise quarterback Matthew Stafford navigate this 2020 schedule.
If Patricia wants to keep his job into 2021, the Lions will need to fight their way into a Wild Card spot and can jumpstart that with a win over Carolina on Sunday who may be without Teddy Bridgewater and Christian McCaffrey. If they can’t beat a flawed Panthers team without their best two players then Patricia might as well put his house on the market.