New NFL Head Coaches 2025: Good, Bad and Questionable

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Seven new NFL head coaches enter 2025 with uncertainty. Some have pedigree, others have nothing. Will they be good, bad, or questionable?

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Each offseason, a slew of teams turn their rosters over to new head coaches. Some turn into great hires right away. Think Jim Harbaugh or Dan Quinn last year. Some seem great at first but see their luster fade away, leaving the team thinking they may need to make another change. Think Brian Daboll in 2022, Shane Steichen in 2023, or probably, Dan Quinn next year. Other hires never pan out at all, and the franchise immediately pulls the plug. Think Jerod Mayo or Antonio Pierce. 

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We have a bunch of new NFL head coaches in 2025. Let’s bucket each of them into where we think they settle: great, questionable, or bad. It’s as easy as that! Seven men enter, but maybe one will keep his job beyond two years. Aaron Glenn, Mike Vrabel, Pete Carroll, Ben Johnson, Brian Schottenheimer, Liam Cohen, and Kellen Moore enter the NFL arena.

 

New NFL Head Coaches 2025: Great, Bad and Questionable

 

 

Todd Salem:

GREAT:

Pete Carroll – Las Vegas Raiders – I don’t know if the Raiders will turn into winners (which, maybe, should be the point of this exercise), but I do know Carroll is a great coach. The deck seems stacked against him in Las Vegas with ownership, the shape of the roster, and the division. I envision him doing an objectively good job and still not turning that into playoff victories. If he didn’t have any other offers, I understand taking the chance here, but a lot has to go right for him to succeed in Vegas.

Mike Vrabel – New England Patriots – Vrabel was THE coach I would have targeted this offseason. He was fantastic in Tennessee, before falling out with his front office and ownership. Nothing was wrong with the job he did on the field. It may seem like the Patriots only hired him because he’s a former Belichick guy, and they are afraid of change. That is technically true, but Vrabel was also the best coach on the market in my opinion. 

QUESTIONABLE:

Ben Johnson – Chicago Bears – I know he seems like the slam dunk hire that everyone was after. I’m skeptical though. Reports are he has a weird personality that may align more closely with being a coordinator than the man in charge of everything. That isn’t always enough to submarine a successful head man, but it raises questions. If he only cares about one side of the ball, if he can’t control/command the entire locker room, it will be tough to sustain winning.

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Aaron Glenn – New York Jets – These days, guys like Ben Johnson get all the publicity because teams need offensive gurus. Glenn, to find success, will have to unearth his own offensive guru. He isn’t one himself. People say his personality is reminiscent of Dan Campbell, which is great if he can find the right coordinators. It also slightly worries me that Glenn’s defenses in Detroit were always the weakest part of the team.

BAD:

Liam Coen – Jacksonville Jaguars – So Coen interviewed with the Jaguars, then went back and seemed willing to accept a new contract from his current team to stay…only to see Jacksonville fire its general manager and then accept that job after all? Even if it was the right decision, it was a bad look all-around and speaks to bad process in Jacksonville at the very least. I don’t know much at all about Coen’s acumen as a head coach because no one does. But I’m scared off by what led up to it.

Brian Schottenheimer – Dallas Cowboys – Maybe “bad” is too strong a category for him. More just “meh.” Questionable hire implies, to me, that the guy could turn out great or bad. I don’t foresee a scenario where Schottenheimer turns into a great head coach. In fact, it would be an utter surprise if Dallas doesn’t take a consistent step back, if for no other reason than the extended regular-season success they found under Mike McCarthy.

Kellen Moore – New Orleans Saints – Moore has been a highly regarded offensive coordinator for years now, though has bounced between homes. He didn’t work with Los Angeles and never entered that territory of prized play-caller or offensive guru either. This was more of the old-school process to finding a head coach: coordinator gets brought in after paying his dues at a number of different stops. He didn’t shoot up out of nowhere to gain national acclaim. He also isn’t a retread veteran circling the league. This is his first head-coaching job, and it’s going to be tough to find success with the roster hell the Saints currently find themselves in. I think the most likely outcome is Moore ends up being a more successful head coach in his second stop, a la Todd Bowles, Raheem Morris, or on the grandest scale possible, Andy Reid.

 

 

Dan Salem:

Whether or not these coaches can or do become great at their jobs has everything to do with their current new team. But it also is very different from the question of whether or not these were great hires or not. Most of these coaches are great hires for their respective new teams. Heck, all but one of these teams could only wish to do better than who they got. That team is of course the Cowboys. So as a reminder, we are rating whether these coaches can be great. Plain and simple.

GREAT:

Aaron Glenn – New York Jets – I can’t think of a better coach for the New York Jets than a former player of theirs, but that doesn’t mean he’s any good. Glenn is very good and is the archetype to be a strong leader.  He’s always said all the right things and surrounded himself with other positive and successful people throughout his career. Glenn will succeed with the Jets and lucky for him, the bar is exceptionally low. Simply finishing with more wins than losses is light years ahead of the previous slew of coaches. I even believe Glenn gets his team into the playoffs. Yes, I said it.

Mike Vrabel – New England Patriots – No matter how well Vrabel had his team playing, something stunk in Tennessee for him to get fired. It also stinks to high hell that the Patriots fired Mayo, because they were a bad team that was expected to be bad and yet were not quite as bad as we all thought they would be. New England is still a bad team, even though they seem to have a promising quarterback. The reason Vrabel will be great is because he is going to be given the leash that Mayo was not afforded, simply because Vrabel became available. Both are former Patriots, so this stinks of racism to me, even if it’s not. Setting all of that baggage aside, within two or three seasons Vrabel will have New England in the postseason.

QUESTIONABLE:

Pete Carroll – Las Vegas Raiders – Carroll is a great coach, but I’m highly skeptical if he will be one with the Raiders. He obviously wanted to keep coaching and was pushed out the door in Seattle. Regardless of whether he can get his team to overachieve, the division is so strong that it might not matter. I’m not saying this will tarnish his legacy, but it’s trending towards Carroll ending his NFL coaching career much like it started with the New York Jets, lackluster and disappointing.

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Ben Johnson – Chicago Bears – I want to see Johnson succeed. Hell, everyone wants the Bears to actually turn the corner and succeed. Caleb Williams is stuck between actually growing as a player and being squished into a little box that he won’t climb out of until he’s on his second team. We see this a lot with USC quarterbacks, so Johnson has a lofty task ahead of him. He’s technically capable, but much like the Jets, the Chicago franchise is quite obviously incapable and dare I say handicapped. The bar to succeed is quite high with the Bears, which makes Johnson’s prospects all the more questionable.

Brian Schottenheimer – Dallas Cowboys – Jerry Jones doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing, but he made the safe choice with Schottenheimer. The Cowboys underachieved last season, yet also dealt with injuries that derailed their prospects. It seems like the only reason that Dallas has a new coach is because a contract could not be agreed upon, so Schottenheimer is tasked with keeping continuity and trying to run it back with a healthy team. The issue is that a healthy Dallas is still behind Philadelphia and only even with Washington. I have no idea how well Schottenheimer will do. He could crash and burn just as easily as he could get ten wins out of the Cowboys this season.

BAD:

Kellen Moore – New Orleans Saints – Moore deserves a shot at being a head coach, but he’s starting the race a full lap behind his competition. The Saints are simply not ready to be competitive, so the only way he turns out to be ‘not bad’ is if he gets three or more seasons to build something. And even then, the thing might only look like a .500 football team. New Orleans is treading water while it retools and likely brings in a new coach once the roster has finished turning over.

Liam Coen – Jacksonville Jaguars – Coen is in trouble because he is working for a reactionary franchise that is also seemingly okay with being bad. Jacksonville has simply not made moves to make itself better. A new general manager will help, which is why Coen took the job in the second place. But we know Trevor Lawrence’s ceiling and Coen is being forced to squat underneath it. Not good.

 

 

Meet our Sports Writers:

Dan Salem is Lead Editor and Co-owner of BuzzChomp. He’s an award winning Actor, Director and Producer. Visit M Square Productions for his film work, or get lost in his old-school comedy on Pillow Talk TV. You can follow him on X, TikTok and Instagram. His latest film ‘Alone’ is now on Amazon.

Todd Salem is a Staff Writer and Contributing Editor at BuzzChomp. He’s also a champion of fantasy football and fantasy baseball, dominating leagues for over two decades. Comment below on his unfiltered opinions.

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