As of this writing (12 p.m. ET on Wednesday, January 7), the New York Jets have interviewed, are scheduled to interview, or have requested to interview a total of 13 candidates for their head coach vacancy.
Time to sort them into tiers. We’ll start at the bottom and work our way up.
F tier
Rex Ryan
Has anyone other than the New York Jets scheduled an interview with Rex Ryan?
That’s what I thought.
The Jets likely will not hire Ryan, but their decision to even interview him is embarrassing. Ryan has not had any success in the NFL since 2010. He has not touched the grass of a football field since 2016. There is absolutely no reasonable justification for him to deserve a head coach interview in 2025 besides the Jets being nostalgic for mediocrity due to having the lowest standards in professional sports.
Giving into Ryan’s nationally televised pleas for an interview is not the work of a first-class organization. Hopefully, the Jets nail this hiring cycle, finding the right men to seize the reins from Woody Johnson and restore respectability, because as long as Johnson is okaying decisions such as interviewing Ryan, the franchise will remain a laughingstock. The rest of the NFL is cackling at the Jets’ decision to interview Ryan.
Ron Rivera
Rivera is slightly less disastrous of an option compared to Ryan; he has a Super Bowl appearance to his name (five years more recent than Ryan’s last playoff appearance), and his last season with double-digit victories was seven years more recent than Ryan’s. Yet… even that was back in 2017.
Rivera’s tenure in Carolina ended disastrously, burying the franchise in a hole it still has not dug itself out of. He followed it up with a tumultuous four-year tenure in Washington that exacerbated the woes of an already fledgling organization. One year after his removal, the Commanders have enjoyed their best season in decades. This is the antithesis of what the Jets are looking for.
D tier
Brian Griese
The former 11-year NFL quarterback has served as the San Francisco 49ers’ quarterbacks coach since 2022. He has done excellent work with the development of Brock Purdy, but this is the only coaching that Griese has done in any capacity since his last NFL season in 2008.
Unless Griese hits a grand slam in his interview, he is far too risky of a head coach candidate at the moment. Stepping up to an offensive coordinator role is a more realistic step forward.
Matt Nagy
Nagy had an uninspiring four-year run as the head coach in Chicago (2018-21), going 34-31 with no playoff wins. He finished with three consecutive losing seasons after a 12-4 debut year, which was powered by Vic Fangio’s defense, not Nagy’s offense.
Nagy has spent the past two seasons as the Chiefs’ offensive coordinator. That title is not the glowing endorsement it was back in 2017 when he used it to get hired by Chicago. While the Chiefs have earned back-to-back No. 8 finishes in offensive DVOA, their offense often seems sluggish and a shell of what it once was. They come through in important situations to win games, which is what boosts their DVOA (which adjusts for efficiency based on situational context), but they only ranked 15th in points per game in each of the last two seasons.
There isn’t much to be excited about with Nagy. It’s nice that he has head coach experience, but that’s only if mediocrity constitutes experience. His current run as a coordinator is nothing to write home about. You can do worse – Nagy is respected enough by Andy Reid to have two stints as his OC – but this is a last-resort option when there are numerous other coaches with higher ceilings.
Arthur Smith
Arthur Smith made his name in the NFL with two strong seasons as the Tennessee Titans’ offensive coordinator from 2019-20, which he parlayed into a head coaching job with the Atlanta Falcons from 2021-23. It was a rough go, as Smith led the Falcons to three consecutive 7-win seasons. Smith’s offenses routinely underperformed, as he was often criticized for misusing the team’s weapons.
Smith put his name back on the head coaching radar with a strong start to 2024 as the Pittsburgh Steelers’ offensive coordinator. Through 13 games, Smith was garnering praise for restoring Russell Wilson’s career and rejuvenating the Pittsburgh offense. However, Pittsburgh’s final four games of the season were disastrous offensively, lowering Smith’s stock.
There isn’t much to be enthused about with Smith. As a head coach, his appeal was supposed to be that he gives you an elite offensive schemer in the top position, allowing you to establish an offensive system without fear of its mastermind being poached. His demeanor does not present the “CEO” style that the Jets desperately need, i.e. someone who demands the respect of a locker room.
If Smith isn’t cooking up elite offense to the level of a Kyle Shanahan, he isn’t head coach material. His body of work over the past four years does not suggest that he is strong enough of an offensive schemer to overcome what he lacks as a cultural leader. The OC role is where Smith fits best.
Bobby Slowik
Slowik was a much hotter name one year ago. In his first season as the Houston Texans’ offensive coordinator, the 36-year-old led a Houston team with low expectations and a rookie quarterback to shocking success. C.J. Stroud had a historic rookie season, and Slowik led the Texans to 14th in offensive DVOA after they were 31st in 2022.
Fast-forward one year, and Slowik no longer looks like the wunderkind that he seemed to be after 2023. Houston’s offense was wildly underwhelming in 2024, finishing 26th in DVOA. Stroud regressed, failing to build on his promising debut season. Overall, the Texans’ offense was brutal, luckily being bailed out by a defense ranked third in DVOA.
Everyone in the NFL is eager to hire the next hotshot coordinator under 40 years old, but it’s not the slam dunk that people seem to think it is. If you’re going to take a shot on a young head coach with limited coordinating experience, he better have one hell of a resume, and Slowik does not after a brutal season in Houston.
C tier
Josh McCown
Like Griese, McCown is an outside-the-box candidate due to his lack of coordinating experience. He’d be making the rise from quarterbacks coach to head coach, as Zac Taylor did with the Cincinnati Bengals and Andy Reid did with the Philadelphia Eagles.
However, contrary to Griese, who has an extremely limited resume, McCown has a lot going for him. He could have a legitimate chance of making the same meteoric rise that Taylor and Reid did.
McCown, who was praised for his mentorship at the quarterback position throughout his playing career, is earning high praise for his work as the Minnesota Vikings’ quarterbacks coach in 2024. He has played a pivotal role in the breakout of his former Jets teammate, Sam Darnold. But unlike other impressive position coaches trying to make the rise to a head coach, McCown’s resume goes further than that.
McCown has been coaching high school football since 2010. During his playing career, he would fly down to North Carolina twice per week for practice and game day. Having displayed a fervent passion for coaching, McCown just might have that “it” factor that allows him to crush an interview and land a head coaching job despite not being a coordinator yet.
Plus, McCown’s exposure to the world of high school football allows him to relate to modern athletes in a way that many older coaches cannot. His recent playing career (last playing in 2020) also gives him exposure to the modern wave of the NFL from a player’s perspective, so he is in tune with the league’s schematic and cultural zeitgeist in a unique fashion compared to other head coach candidates.
McCown isn’t new to this cycle. He interviewed for the Houston Texans’ head coach vacancy in 2021 and 2022. Not only does this show that people close to McCown saw legitimate head coaching potential in him, but the experience should aid him as he goes through the cycle once again in 2025.
It’s certainly a longshot that McCown lands any head coaching job in 2025. Most likely, he will have to be a coordinator first. And due to his lack of coordinating experience, he remains a major risk, which is why I have him in the C tier despite all of the positives. However, his ceiling is very intriguing, and he might not be as much of a longshot as some think.
Darren Rizzi
Rizzi has been a special teams coordinator in the NFL since 2011, serving with the Miami Dolphins from 2011-18 and the New Orleans Saints from 2019-24. He also served as the Dolphins’ associate head coach from 2017-18, and the Saints’ assistant head coach from 2022-24.
After the Saints fired head coach Dennis Allen, Rizzi took over as the Saints’ interim head coach for the team’s final eight games of 2024. He led them to a 3-5 record after a 2-7 start.
As for his work on special teams, Rizzi has a strong resume. Across his six seasons in New Orleans, Rizzi led the Saints to an average finish of 12th in special teams DVOA, including three top-10 finishes and five top-16 finishes.
It is much more difficult for outsiders to judge a special teams coach compared to an offensive or defensive coach. However, as John Harbaugh, Bill Belichick, and Bill Cowher have shown, great head coaches can be found from special teams backgrounds. If Rizzi can command a locker room and establish a culture, then he is fit to be a head coach. It’s up to the Jets and other interested teams to make that determination.
Vance Joseph
Joseph is one of four coaches on this list who is looking for his second stint as a head coach.
His first run was disastrous. From 2017-18, Joseph led the Denver Broncos to an 11-21 record. He only lasted two seasons with the team and has spent the last six seasons rebuilding his reputation as a defensive coordinator.
Joseph was the Arizona Cardinals’ defensive coordinator from 2019-22, earning mixed results as the team finished 12th, 17th, 14th, and 27th in defensive DVOA. He returned to Denver in 2023 as the defensive coordinator under Sean Payton, leading the Broncos to 30th in defensive DVOA.
Before the 2024 season began, there was little reason to view Joseph as a viable head coach candidate. But his reputation has taken a 180 after one of the best coaching campaigns in the NFL.
Joseph was widely praised throughout the 2024 season for his work with the Denver defense, which finished fourth in DVOA. The unit carried the Broncos to victories early in the season while the offense and rookie quarterback Bo Nix worked out the kinks. Numerous unheralded players, whether they were veteran cast-offs or unproven youngsters, experienced career years.
I would have ranked Joseph lower based on his resume prior to 2024, but his success this year is enough to make him at least slightly interesting. He remains a significant risk, though. While his 2024 performance was excellent, it was his first outstanding season of coaching in a long time.
Still, there is something to be said for second-time head coaches who have had the opportunity to step away and learn from their experiences, similar to Dan Quinn in Washington right now. Joseph deserves a shot to prove he can do the same.
B tier
Brian Flores
Flores does not get enough credit for his run with the Miami Dolphins from 2019-21. Some people expected the 2019 team to go winless, but he led them to five wins.
After that, he led the Dolphins to records of 10-6 and 9-8, against preseason over-unders of 6.0 and 9.0, respectively. Overall, his three-year tenure was a respectable job with a team that did not have the highest of expectations or the most talented of rosters.
Flores served as a linebackers coach and senior defensive assistant in Pittsburgh for the 2022 season, learning under Mike Tomlin. Since then, he’s been the Minnesota Vikings’ defensive coordinator, achieving great success. The Vikings finished 11th in defensive DVOA in 2023, a 13-spot improvement compared to 2022, and they jumped another nine spots to second-best in 2024.
Flores is an elite defensive mind who could repair a once-proud Jets defense that plummeted to 20th in defensive DVOA this season. More importantly, though, his coaching style might be precisely what this organization needs.
A tough-minded coach from Brooklyn who is known for his hardnosed mentality (he rose up the coaching ranks under Bill Belichick for 15 seasons), Flores won’t take any nonsense. His mentality might be the cure to New York’s social media shenanigans, circus tendencies, and chronic lack of accountability. The Jets are a talented team, but the Robert Saleh coaching staff did not do enough to get the most out of its impressionable young stars. When accountability was needed, excuses were made and unwarranted praise was endlessly heaped. That will come to an end with Flores.
Flores also has the potential to build a strong offensive staff thanks to his connections in Minnesota. Perhaps McCown could follow him as an offensive coordinator.
The main concern with Flores is how he handled Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa during his first two years in the NFL. Flores would pull Tagovailoa in and out of the lineup in favor of Ryan Fitzpatrick as the young quarterback struggled early in his career. When Flores left and was replaced by Mike McDaniel, Tagovailoa broke out, and he has publicly stated that the difference in coaching was a big reason for his improvement.
Tagovailoa did not mention Flores by name, but he essentially called him out with his comments about the Dolphins’ coaching change in 2024.
“To put it in simplest terms, if you woke up every morning, and I told you that you suck at what you did, that you don’t belong doing what you do, that you shouldn’t be here, that this guy should be here, that you haven’t earned this right, and then you have somebody else come in and tell you, ‘Dude, you are the best fit for this. You are accurate, you are the best whatever, you are this, you are that.’ How would that make you feel, listening to one or the other? You see what I’m saying?”
Developing a quarterback is the most important goal for any head coach to accomplish, so I’m knocking Flores down a tier because of this aspect. He must prove in his interviews that these issues are a thing of the past and he is ready to properly develop a young quarterback.
Outside of the Tua drama, though, I find Flores to be a strong candidate.
Joe Brady
Jets fans have wanted the team to hire an offensive-minded coach (who is not named Adam Gase) for decades. We’ve mentioned a few offensive candidates on this list, but all of them have significant concerns.
Brady might be the Jets’ best bet among the offensive candidates they have been linked to. He is unique in that he falls into the “young hotshot” umbrella as a 35-year-old, but his resume is thicker than most candidates in the same shoes. Unlike a candidate such as Slowik, Brady has had success at multiple spots and in multiple roles, and he’s had some time to learn and grow from prior failures. This is all a product of Brady bursting into the coaching limelight at an extremely young age.
Brady first began generating buzz after the 2019 college football season, when he was credited for his role in LSU’s explosive passing game as the team’s passing game coordinator and wide receivers coach. He landed a role as the Carolina Panthers’ offensive coordinator in 2020, when he was just 31 years old.
Brady’s first season in Carolina was successful. On a team with an over-under of 5.5 wins, he led the Panthers to 16th in offensive DVOA after they ranked 27th the year prior.
Rising rapidly at this point, Brady was a coveted candidate in the 2021 head coach cycle, even interviewing with the Jets. However, he did not land a job, and returned to his role with the Panthers.
The 2021 season was a massive failure for Brady as the Panthers fell to 31st in offensive DVOA. He failed to get anything out of the newly acquired Sam Darnold and watched Carolina’s offense crumble.
This led to Brady’s firing, and he landed in Buffalo as the Bills’ quarterbacks coach in 2022. After Buffalo’s 10th game of the 2023 season, they fired offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey and promoted Brady to replace him. Brady didn’t necessarily improve the Bills’ offense (26.2 PPG pre-change, 27 PPG post-change), but they did finish 6-1 after the change, going 5-5 beforehand.
Buffalo retained Brady as the offensive coordinator in 2024, and he’s enjoyed a marvelous season. The Bills lost their top two receivers in the offseason and elected to replace them with a committee approach. Brady stuck the landing, turning Buffalo’s offense into the most well-rounded and balanced juggernaut that it’s ever been in the Josh Allen era. Buffalo ranked second in offensive DVOA, had a whopping nine players with at least 250 receiving yards, and finished top-four in both passing and rushing DVOA for the first time since 1991.
Having gone through the head coach cycle before, Brady will have valuable experience going into this year’s interviews, something that other young wunderkinds do not have. In addition, his 2021 failure with Carolina is a humbling experience that he’s been able to learn and grow from. That adversity is another unique advantage in Brady’s favor compared to your typical young breakout coach.
The only reason I have Brady in the B tier is that we do not know about his chops as a CEO and locker room leader, two things that are vital for this particular Jets team. Without knowing how he fares in those areas, Brady is a risk as a head coach.
It’s difficult to doubt Brady’s acumen as an offensive schemer at this point, but can he inspire an entire football team? That is a different question (ask Mike McDaniel), one that is hard for us to answer as outsiders who do not watch him coach on a daily basis. From our perspective, one of the few things we can glean about Brady’s coaching is that he has always called plays from the booth, which, to me, raises the question of whether his coaching impact is limited to his schematic acumen and falls short of team-wide leadership. It certainly does not rule him out from being HC material, but it’s a minor red flag, in my opinion.
Outside of that, though, there is a lot to like. Brady would have a strong likelihood of finally giving the Jets a quality offensive mind in the head coaching spot. Still, this team cannot afford a McDaniel-type (great schemer, not a culture changer) with the current state of its culture, and since I have concerns about whether Brady falls into that group, it knocks him behind the two men I have in the A tier.
A tier
Mike Vrabel
You get the gist with Vrabel at this point, so I won’t bore you. He went into Tennessee and established a clear-cut identity, and that, to me, is what makes him most appealing. The Jets haven’t had an identity in years. Nobody has been able to tell you what Jets football is all about since 2009-10 (yes, give Rex credit for that… but it was centuries ago in football years).
When you played Vrabel’s Titans, you knew what you were in for. You had to fight tooth and nail to pull out the victory. It was a tough, physical team that often outplayed its talent level or true performance level because they won the margins.
Tennessee never had the gaudiest point differential or the flashiest statistics under Vrabel, but they won games, and it was because they had mental fortitude in key moments. That trickles down from the head coach. If you’re a Jets fan, you do not need me to tell you that the opposite effect existed in New York.
Over Vrabel’s first four seasons, the Titans went 16-7 in one-score games, second-best in the NFL over that span. Even if you include his last two seasons when the Titans struggled (mostly due to injuries and terrible drafting deteriorating the talent), the Titans still had the sixth-best record in one-score games throughout Vrabel’s tenure (26-20). The top four teams in that department were coached by Mike Tomlin, Andy Reid, Matt LaFleur, and Peter Carroll. Good coaches have their teams ready to execute when it matters most. Vrabel did that.
Vrabel must prove he can build a quality offensive staff and conform to the modern NFL, as Robby Sabo explained. Being tough is great, but it doesn’t mean you need to run the football for three yards and a cloud of dust all day. It is 2025, after all. Tennessee collapsed in Vrabel’s later years mainly because its offense was behind the curve in a pass-happy NFL.
Vrabel must prove he can blend his old-school mindset with new-school strategies, and that is his main concern. The rumors that Vrabel is considering having Josh McDaniel as his OC are not a good sign on that front, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt until those are proven true. He is a strong candidate who checks a lot of the boxes that are most important to New York.
Aaron Glenn
I understand that it may be unpopular to hold Glenn in such a high regard, but consider me fully bought into him. Everything about his resume and his aura (I’m using that word in the traditional sense, not the 2025 internet slang sense) screams “great head coach” in my mind.
Glenn is viewed in such a positive light by the league that he was receiving head coach interviews before he ever called a play. The Jets interviewed him back in 2021. At that point, he was coming off his fifth season as the Saints’ defensive backs coach; prior to that, his only other coaching stop was in Cleveland as an assistant defensive backs coach from 2014-15.
If you are getting head coach interest with this resume, it means you have made a strong impression on the people around you, leading to a tremendous reputation around the league. It serves as evidence of Glenn’s individual talent as a coach, even if we, as outsiders, did not have any statistics to measure him by in the same way we would for a coordinator.
Glenn became the Lions’ defensive coordinator in 2021. While Detroit’s defense was awful in Glenn’s first season (mostly due to a lack of talent on a rebuilding team that entered the season with an over-under of 4.5 wins), he still earned head coach interviews in the following cycle.
Throughout Glenn’s four years as Detroit’s defensive coordinator, he has gradually developed the unit each season, growing it from the bare roots he inherited to one of the NFL’s best units in 2024. The Lions rose from 29th, to 27th, to 13th, to fifth in DVOA, achieving this year’s fifth-ranked finish despite an unfathomable onslaught of injuries.
Glenn’s success is impressive as it relates to his head coaching potential because he did not rely solely on improved talent (similar to the Jets’ defensive improvement under Saleh). His willingness to adapt schematically was a large part of Detroit’s defensive ascension.
When Glenn arrived in Detroit, he initially tried to run a zone-leaning defense. The Lions ran man coverage 29.1% of the time in 2021, per Next Gen Stats (below the league average of 30.6%). In 2024, the Lions lead the NFL with a 47.7% man coverage rate. Glenn did not just wait for the right ingredients to his recipe; he changed the recipe to fit the ingredients he was given. That malleability bodes well for a potential head coach.
So, Glenn has the on-field schematic success. Other candidates we’ve talked about have that too. What Glenn has and those candidates do not is enticing appeal as a CEO and leader of the locker room.
Anytime you watch one of his press conferences, see him talking to his players on the sideline, or hear him mic’d up at practice, Glenn’s passion is palpable. His demeanor is exactly what the Jets should be looking for in their next head coach: an energic and tenacious hype man who players want to run through a brick wall for, but also a strong-willed leader with standards who will hold people accountable and challenge them to be the best version of themselves.
While it is nice to hire a head coach with a proven track record you can rely upon, it is not always necessary. The most popular head coach in the NFL right now, Dan Campbell, was hired out of an assistant role in New Orleans at the same time Glenn nearly made the same leap. Campbell wasted no time bringing Glenn over to Detroit as the architect of his defense, and his inclination was correct. Perhaps Glenn could have had similar success to Campbell if he was hired to a head role in 2021.
It also doesn’t hurt that Glenn played with the Jets for a long time, so he understands the New York market and the specific culture of the Jets, making him uniquely prepared for the unrivaled challenge he is walking into.
Another underrated aspect of Glenn’s candidacy is that he has a background in the scouting world. He spent two years as a personnel scout for the Jets. This experience gives him familiarity with the other side of the business, which most coaches do not have before stepping into the head role. Head coaches need to put their fingerprints on every branch of the organization. For Glenn, it’s a plus that he can understand and relate to the jobs of the scouting staff in a unique way.
Glenn also has strong connections to build a quality offensive staff from his time with two superpowered offensive teams in New Orleans and Detroit.
Count me as all-in on Glenn.
- A tier: Mike Vrabel, Aaron Glenn
- B tier: Brian Flores, Joe Brady
- C tier: Josh McCown, Vance Joseph, Darren Rizzi
- D tier: Arthur Smith, Bobby Slowik, Matt Nagy, Brian Griese
- F tier: Rex Ryan, Ron Rivera
