The NFL’s Black Monday for coaches is still nearly a week away, but expectations are already rising around the league about several potential changes coming for non-playoff teams. 

As the league approaches the last weekend of the regular season, multiple teams are already bracing for large-scale transitions. Among the developing situations:

• Cardinals: Arizona head coach Jonathan Gannon said, “I feel good,” when asked this week about his job status. The team, however, is 3–13 as it finishes its fourth straight losing season, and it has reached the playoffs just once in the last decade. “No one’s happy. I’m not happy. Players aren’t happy,” Gannon said. “Through adversity, you’ve got to change. So, I’ve got to change, and we’ve got to change some things, but we’ll get to that.”
• Raiders: Las Vegas head coach Pete Carroll is both a Super Bowl champion and a two-time national champion in college football. This season, though, he hasn’t won a game since Oct. 12 as the Raiders have sunk to a 2–14 record and are in line for the first pick in the 2026 NFL Draft. Similar to Gannon, Carroll said he is confident that he will be able to retain his job. “From all the guys I’ve talked to, I do feel like I have [ownership’s] support,” Carroll said. “What does that mean? I don’t know, but our conversations have been really good.”
• Jets: After a celebrated run as the Lions’ defensive coordinator, Aaron Glenn’s tenure as the Jets’ head coach has been far worse. The team has sunk to a 3–13 record and has been outscored 153–46 in the last four games. Amid an ugly history of Jets coaches, only Al Groh in 2000 was a one-and-done in the last 45 years. Regardless of what happens with Glenn, a direct conversation with owner Woody Johnson is forthcoming. “I think Woody knows just as well as anybody, I’m not going to b.s. him about anything at all,” Glenn said. “I think that’s a good thing about our relationship, that we’re going to be straightforward with each other.”
• Chiefs: Andy Reid, the NFL’s highest-paid head coach at $20 million and a three-time Super Bowl winner in Kansas City, is set to return in 2026 after a surprising and highly disappointing campaign that includes an end to a decade-long playoff run. “I think I’m coming back, right?” the 67-year-old Reid said. “If they’ll have me back, I’ll come back. You never know in this business. That’s a tough one, but I plan on it, yeah.”
• Browns: Cleveland head coach Kevin Stefanski is a two-time NFL coach of the year, but the team is just 7–26 in the last two years, even after Sunday’s upset of the Steelers has restarted speculation regarding his status. “As you can imagine, my sole focus is on [the upcoming] game versus Cincinnati, but I would also tell you I’m privileged to have this job.”
• Falcons: Atlanta had a big win over the Rams on Monday Night Football, but the team has not posted a winning season or reached the playoffs since 2017. Owner Arthur Blank has brought in outside consulting firm Sportsology to review the team’s football operations, an assessment that will include GM Terry Fontenot and head coach Raheem Morris. 
• Steelers and Ravens: The two teams will play on Sunday Night Football for the AFC North division title. A report by ESPN’s Adam Schefter earlier this week suggested the losing coach in that game, Pittsburgh’s Mike Tomlin or Baltimore’s John Harbaugh, could leave his post, with a move to broadcasting possible. Tomlin has already been under rising scrutiny, despite never posting a losing record in his 19 seasons with the Steelers. 

Help Wanted

Already this season, the Giants have fired former NFL coach of the year Brian Daboll, and the Titans have dismissed Brian Callahan, and those teams are currently led by interim coaches.

An intriguing financial trend is developing in the second year of the expanded, 12-team College Football Playoff.

Like last season, resale ticket prices for the CFP quarterfinals at neutral-site bowl games are lower than the cost to attend first-round home games at schools’ campuses.

Here are the cheapest tickets available for each quarterfinal matchup on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day (data comes from each bowl game’s official ticketing marketplace as of Tuesday):

• Sugar Bowl: Ole Miss–Georgia, $181
• Rose Bowl: Alabama-Indiana, $109
• Orange Bowl: Oregon–Texas Tech, $70
• Cotton Bowl: Miami–Ohio State, $28

The Sugar Bowl, the most expensive CFP quarterfinal to attend, is also being played in the closest proximity to its participants’ home markets. 

Money Matters

The average “get-in price” for the four CFP quarterfinal games is $97, compared to $165 for first-round games in the days leading up to those contests earlier this month.

Last season, the get-in price for the Rose Bowl was nearly $200, but the cheapest seats for the other three games all cost less than $40. However, first-round games in 2024 were much more expensive, with resale prices for Indiana–Notre Dame nearing $1,000 at times. 

More CFP Home Games?

The relatively low resale prices for the CFP quarterfinals come as fans, and even some coaches, have bemoaned moving from on-campus games in the first round to neutral sites for the remainder of the Playoff. 

“In my opinion—we’re really excited to be going to the Orange Bowl—but this game should be played at Texas Tech, the higher-seeded team,” Oregon coach Dan Lanning said last week. 

The No. 5 Ducks hosted No. 12 seed James Madison in the first round, winning 51–34 in front of a home crowd of 55,124 fans at Autzen Stadium in Eugene. The No. 4 Red Raiders had a first-round bye.

Five years ago, Curt Cignetti and Kalen DeBoer combined to earn less than $2 million as head coaches. 

On Thursday, Cignetti’s top-seeded Hoosiers face DeBoer’s Crimson Tide in the College Football Playoff quarterfinals, a matchup between two coaches who began at smaller programs, have worked for each other’s schools, and now hold two of the richest contracts in the sport.

NAIA Roots, Alabama Riches

DeBoer’s first head-coaching job was at Sioux Falls, his alma mater and then an NAIA school, where he went 67–3 with three NAIA titles in four seasons as head coach. His success there vaulted him to Division I, where he spent time as a position coach and offensive coordinator at Southern Illinois, Eastern Michigan, Fresno State, and Indiana before the Bulldogs brought him back as head coach in 2020. 

DeBoer’s salary at Fresno State paid him $1.3 million and $1.35 million, respectively, in his two seasons at Fresno State, according to the USA Today database. Washington hired DeBoer in November 2021 and initially gave him a five-year deal that paid around $3 million annually. The Huskies gave him a new contract a year later after he went 11–2 in his first season in Seattle. His second contract increased his salary to more than $4 million. DeBoer led the Huskies to the College Football Playoff national championship game in 2023, when they lost to Michigan 34–13. 

When Alabama hired him to replace legendary coach Nick Saban in 2024, the school gave him an eight-year contract worth $87 million that pays almost $11 million annually, making him one of the highest-paid coaches in college football. The deal pays roughly 10 times more annually than DeBoer’s Fresno State gig did. 

Humble Start, Hoosiers Rise

DeBoer’s rise still pales in comparison to Cignetti’s salary increases. Cignetti was hired by James Madison in 2019 after head coaching gigs at Elon and Division II Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP). The Crimson Hawks hired Cignetti after he spent five seasons as Alabama’s wide receivers coach under Saban. 

At JMU, Cignetti’s first contract paid less than $500,000 per year, starting at $425,000 in 2019 and increasing by $12,000 each year until the Dukes gave him a new deal that increased his pay to $621,000 in his final two years with the program. 

Indiana hired Cignetti away in 2024 for a salary of $4.25 million and proceeded to give him three contracts through his first 19 games as he quickly turned the Hoosiers into a national powerhouse. His latest contract pays him an average of $11.6 million annually. Indiana made the College Football Playoff in 2024 and enters Thursday’s game 13–0 after beating Ohio State in the Big Ten title game for the program’s first conference championship since 1967.