There are always a bunch of new storylines that develop in each NFL offseason, and you can rest assured that the media that covers all of them until saturation. Free agency, the draft, and off-the-field shenanigans are just part of the typical offseason for fans. As bettors, we need to do our best to keep up with all the changes, especially the more influential ones. In that sense, there may not be a more important transition that occurs than the head coaching changes each year. For 2023, we will have several new faces commanding the sidelines for various clubs, although not as many as we’ve seen in recent years. In fact, there will be five new men put in charge of franchises across the league, three of them rookies, and the other two being veterans that previously served in the same capacity in other locales. With changes like this, there is a good supply of data that we can use to make projections for the upcoming season.
As I begin my annual spring preparations for the upcoming NFL season, I dig deep into the recent data surrounding coaching changes and use it to get a feel for what might happen in 2023 with the current group of new coaches. Without giving away too much early, I can tell you that based on the crunching of different data sets, the early prospects for the teams with first-time head coaches are typically far brighter when compared to the teams that are bringing in new but experienced head coaches.
Here is a look at each of those new head coaches that will be leading franchises in 2023:
Rookie Head Coaches for 2023
Jonathan Gannon, Arizona
Jonathan Gannon takes over the spot vacated when the Cardinals fired Kliff Kingsbury, who had become somewhat of a lightning rod for the franchise as his relationship with quarterback Kyler Murray soured. Gannon has served as an assistant defensive coach for five different teams dating back to ’07, so he is well-familiar with the league’s inner workings. His most recent work with the Eagles as Defensive Coordinator is what boosted his stock as a Head Coach. This will be a very interesting change for Arizona in that it is clearly a mindset shift going from the offensive-oriented Kingsbury to the defensive-minded Gannon. The former finished 28-37 SU and 34-32 ATS in his four seasons but was unable to record a playoff win. As the Defensive Coordinator in Philly last year, Gannon helped lead the Eagles to a Super Bowl berth, but to be fair, the talent on that side of the ball at his former stop trumps that in Arizona. Stabilizing the relationship with Murray and improving a defensive unit that ranked 31st in the league with 26.4 PPG allowed will be top priorities.
DeMeco Ryans, Houston
DeMeco Ryans will be the fifth different head coach of the Texans since the start of the 2020 season, and the franchise hopes this hiring will finally be one that can stand the test of time. Houston is just 11-38 over the last three seasons and desperate for a spark to get back to the success that came in the latter years of the Bill O’Brien era. Obviously, the legal troubles of QB Deshaun Watson have debilitated this team in recent seasons, and finding a legit quarterback that can ignite this offense is job #1. Is that guy in the building currently or on the draft board? That remains to be seen, but with the Texans being outscored by 7.7 PPG last year, there is plenty of room for improvement. Can the former defensive coordinator of the 49ers spark a surge? Ryans is easily the least experienced new NFL coach for 2023, having only served at various defensive levels with San Francisco since 2017. In fact, his playing career ended just two years earlier. With so much work to be done here, the fear is that the only thing on the side of Houston with this hire is youthful exuberance.
Shane Steichen, INDIANAPOLIS
You have to credit Indianapolis with taking some big swings the last few years to try and get over the hump, particularly at quarterback where the Colts have tried Philip Rivers, Carson Wentz, and Matt Ryan, with none of them proving to be the missing ingredient to taking the franchise to the next level. Now it’s time for a fresh approach, which figures to be spearheaded by the combination of a rookie head coach and a rookie quarterback. There is some decent talent in place, and enough front-office support, to where it could be an ideal situation for a first-time coach like Shane Steichen to come in and succeed. Steichen comes over from Philadelphia, where he helped lead the dynamic Eagles to a Super Bowl as Offensive Coordinator. He gets some due credit for helping Jalen Hurts emerge as an MVP-worthy quarterback. Can he do the same with what figures to be a rookie first-round draft pick? There’s a decent offensive line, an elite running back, and a defense that allowe d just 20.3 PPG in the first eight under Frank Reich last year. If any of the rookie coaching situations see a quick turnaround, my bet would be on this one.
New “Re-Tread” Head Coaches for 2023
Sean Payton, Denver
For a second straight offseason, Denver has made some massive personnel moves. Last year it was the addition of QB Russell Wilson and Head Coach Nathaniel Hackett, a combination that was expected to be the boost the offense needed to make the team championship level. Suffice it to say, that experiment ended miserably, with the Broncos scoring a league-worst 16.9 PPG, and Hackett being fired after just one season and five wins. He has since found work with the Jets as their new Offensive Coordinator. Wilson, on the other hand, is still around, and figures to be for several years as his contract leaves the franchise with no other choice. As the Broncos set out to find a new head coach for ’23, I’m not sure they could have found a more ideal candidate than Sean Payton, a coach who has earned a reputation as an offensive guru, and one that helped guide another diminutive quarterback to hall-of-fame numbers and a Super Bowl title. My opinion might not be consensus, however, as there are a lot of folks around the NFL who are skeptical that Payton can turn around Wilson’s play. In fact, it has been suggested that this is a make-or-break year for the veteran quarterback, and the team could move on from him by eating money should he continue to struggle. That said, he did have 10 total TDs in the last four games and showed late signs of getting more comfortable. Payton did not coach last year, instead spending his time as an analyst with NBC, but he did go 8-8 or better in 11 of his 15 years with the Saints. This will be an intriguing coaching situation all year long, and it’s not hard to see it working well.
Frank Reich, Carolina
In his 4-1/2 years with the Colts, Frank Reich enjoyed a pretty good run, although after his first season coincided with the last year in the career of would-be franchise QB Andrew Luck, he had dealt with an unending quarterback carousel. Now, landing in Carolina, he figures to have his franchise QB arriving via the NFL draft, with the Panthers owning the first pick and seemingly leaning toward Alabama star Bryce Young. The Panthers have also struggled with inconsistent play at the game’s most important position, seemingly ever since moving on from Cam Newton after the 2018 season. When you analyze the prospects of this coaching hire however, one of the more promising factors in the potential for Reich to succeed in Carolina, and perhaps as early as 2023, is the unstable situation of the NFC South Division, where there is really no clear favorite and all four teams have major question marks. Also, unlike a lot of other teams that find themselves in the position of drafting t he first player off the board, this team won 7 games a year ago, being outscored by just 1.6 PPG. Reich finds himself in a pretty good spot and should command respect from day one.
Rookie Head Coach Recent History
The important question that bettors need to ask themselves as they get ready to handicap these new head coaches heading into the 2023 season is…How do these coaches tend to fare, both early and overall? Unfortunately, there is no set formula for predicting the success level of rookie head coaches in the NFL. We all recall the Urban Meyer debacle in Jacksonville in 2022. That was as bad as things get, as he was fired after 13 games, and as he didn’t complete a full season, he is not on our chart or in the analysis. On the flip side, there have been major success stories, most recently Kevin O’Connell of the Vikings or Brian Daboll of the Giants a year ago, both of whom led their teams to five-win improvements over the prior season.
There are some things that we can look for as potential hints of what to expect. I’ll go through some of those things in a little bit. For now though, here is a chart showing all of the rookie full-season Head Coach results over the last 10 seasons. There have been 43 different coaches that have started their careers over the last decade and lasted at least one full season. For each coach, you’ll find their record that season, the next season, and the franchise’s record in the season prior to that coach taking over.
A few highlights from this chart:
– For the most part, rookie head coaches have been successful in improving their teams in their first seasons. In fact, over the last 10 years, of the 43 different first-time head coaches that spent a full season with their new teams, 27 have led their teams to improved won-lost marks, six have produced equal records, and only 10 have seen their teams drop. In 2021, two of the rookies’ teams improved, one stayed the same, and two saw a decline.
– The average win improvement by rookie head coaches over the last decade has been 1.74 wins per season. The greatest improvement seasons have been seven wins by any team, and that happened for five different coaches, most recently Matt LaFleur of Green Bay in 2019.
– LaFleur has been the most successful rookie coach over the last decade, not only winning 13 games in his rookie season but following that up with that same total the next season and last year as well. That will be the test for O’Connell this year in Minnesota, although his team will face the challenge of overcoming the fact that they were outscored by opponents in the regular season.
– Brian Daboll of the Giants set a new benchmark for the last decade by going 13-4 ATS in 2022-23, beating the old mark of 12-4 set by Matt Nagy of Chicago in ’18.
– The worst decline of a team following the hiring of a first-time coach was by Arizona in 2018, as the Cardinals went from 8-8 in 2017 to 3-13 under Steve Wilks. He was let go after that miserable campaign. Three other rookie coaches oversaw four-win drops.
– Zac Taylor of the Bengals had the worst first-year mark of any rookie coach over the last decade, going 2-14 in 2019. However, his career turned around quickly, so much to the point that he was coaching the team in the Super Bowl in his fourth season and in another AFC title game this past year. The Bears’ Matt Eberflus came close to matching Taylor’s first-year futility this past season, going 3-14. Does his team have a similar turnaround to look forward to in the coming years?
– Of the 34 coaches to stick around for a second season with a team over the last decade, only 13 have built upon their rookie campaign with an improved win total the next season. Doug Pederson and Nick Sirianni, coincidentally both of Philadelphia, are the shining stars of that bunch, leading their Eagles to the Super Bowl in their second seasons. The difference between the two resumes? Pederson won an NFL title, and Sirianni’s team came up short. Interestingly, Pederson led a six-game turnaround in Jacksonville this past season in his first go-round there.
– In terms of statistical improvements, Sean McVay’s 2017 Rams team made the biggest jump in scoring under any first-year head coach of the last decade, improving by 15.9 PPG. Defensively, Ben McAdoo’s Giants of 2016 improved their points allowed total by 9.8 PPG under his leadership.
– The worst offensive decline guided by any first-year head coach over the last decade came last year with David Culley at Houston, who dropped by 7.5 PPG. Marc Trestman’s 2013 Bears fell the worst defensively, going from 17.3 PPG allowed in 2012 to 29.9 PPG allowed in 2013.
As far as the new head coaches for 2023, here are a few rookie coaching systems to keep an eye on:
– Of the 37 rookie head coaches that inherited teams that finished under .500 the prior season, 27 of them led their teams to better records the next season, and 16 of them finished over .500 in that first year. All three of this current rookie crop of coaches teams (Arizona, Houston, Indianapolis) finished well under .500 in 2022-23, so that would mean that chances are at least two would figure to improve. If the number is three, my guess would be Houston and Indianapolis.
– Of the 11 rookie head coaches over the last 10 seasons that inherited offenses that scored at least 23.5 PPG the prior season, only one saw his team produce a worse record the next season. The others improved by about 2.3 wins per season. None of the three rookie coaches for ’23 will be fortunate enough to inherit this situation.
– Obviously, there has been a lot of room to grow when a new head coach takes over a team that scored less than 18 PPG the prior season. There have been immediate results for this lucky group of coaches, as all nine teams that fit this bill over the last decade have improved, by an average of 4.9 wins per season, including Daboll of the Giants last year. For ’23, count Ryans of Houston and Steichen of Indianapolis as coaches whose teams have the greatest room for improvement.
– Point differential has also proven to be a good indicator of potential improvement as none of the last 11 rookie coaches to inherit teams that were outscored by 8.0 PPG or more saw their teams get worse in that first season. In fact, 10 of them improved their franchise’s win total that first season, by an average of 4.2 wins per. For 2023, we have one candidate— Shane Steichen (Indianapolis).
As far as in-season game-by-game betting opportunities, it should be noted that rookie head coaches have produced a regular season record of 317-382-2 SU and 336-347-18 ATS over the last decade. In other words, they lose more than they win, both on the scoreboard and at the betting window. Here are some other things to consider regarding betting on and against rookie head coaches throughout the NFL season: