Coaching Hot Seats Heat Up Despite Expanded Playoffs, Massive Buyouts

One of the oldest truisms in football is that coaches are hired to be fired. But even in an era of expanding postseasons, the hot seats in the sport are only getting hotter.

Just two weeks into the 2024 season and three in college football, a growing number of head coaches are finding their jobs publicly at risk, including Florida’s Billy Napier, Florida State’s Mike Norvell, the New York Giants’ Brian Daboll, and Denver’s Sean Payton. The two college teams have started the season a combined 1–5. The Giants, meanwhile, are 0–2 and finished Sunday’s 21–18 loss to the Commanders without a backup plan for injured kicker Graham Gano, while the Broncos are winless, too. 

The margin of error in college football is notoriously thin, but this year is the first to feature a 12-team playoff, tripling in size from the prior four-team format and giving championship hopes to a far larger group of teams beyond the utmost powers of the sport. The NFL, meanwhile, introduced a 14-team postseason in 2020, adding two extra teams to the playoffs compared to the previous structure. 

Those changes, in theory, should give any coach a larger window to save a season, even after a tough start. But in an instantaneous media culture, the push to replace underperforming coaches is arguably faster than ever. 

“We can’t live in the shoulda-woulda-coulda, if-then, all that,” Napier said Monday, adding there has been no discussion with university officials regarding his future and that there is “a path to a fourth year” for him in Gainesville. “Ultimately, we have an obligation to the players and the leadership at the university to do our best this week. That’s all we can control. Anything else is a waste of time.”

Pricey Decisions

Firing these coaches, particularly so early in the season, would, of course, come with serious expenses. Letting Norvell go now would put Florida State on the hook for $65 million, equating to 85% of his base salary and supplemental pay for the remainder of his current contract, which ends Dec. 31, 2031. Napier would be due about $26 million should he be let go, a sum that Gator boosters have reportedly pledged to fund. 

Daboll, meanwhile, is in the third year of a five-season contract worth an estimated $25 million over the full term, while Payton is in the second year of a five-year pact worth roughly $90 million. 

“We just have to keep looking at it, and that starts with me. I’m calling the plays,” Payton said after Denver’s 13–6 loss Sunday to Pittsburgh. The Broncos have scored just 26 points this season, third-worst in the NFL among teams that played two games, and a total countering Payton’s reputation as an offensive innovator.