Who Will Be the Next Packers Head Coach?
In the weeks since the Packers have fired head coach Mike McCarthy, we’ve been exploring potential candidates for Green Bay’s top job.
We’ve asked our Twitter followers (if you’re not already following us, let’s change that!) a simple question after each profile: Would you like to see [coach’s name] as the next head coach of the Packers?
Yesterday’s profiles of Packers defensive coordinator Mike Pettine and former Vikings offensive coordinator John DeFilippo put us at sixteen total candidates.
Based on the thousands of votes in our polls, here’s the current rankings for potential Packers head coaches by our Twitter followers:
Just three head coach candidates scored over 50 percent
Thirteen of the sixteen candidates received a majority of negative votes, leaving Oklahoma head coach Lincoln Riley (76 percent), Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy (56 percent), and New England Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels (53 percent) as the only coaches to receive a majority of positive votes.
Those three, however, come with their own baggage:
2018 will be just the second full season as a head coach for Lincoln Riley. Given the job security that winning can bring in a college program, it seems unlikely to The Power Sweep’s Jon Meerdink that Riley would be ready to jump ship to the NFL. Meerdink ultimately wrote that Riley moving to an NFL head coaching job feels “a couple years too soon.”
Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy was the Vikings’ running backs coach when Adrian Peterson joined the NFL, and guided the Chiefs running backs until Kansas City offensive coordinator Matt Nagy was hired by Chicago. Bieniemy is in his first season as offensive coordinator in Kansas City, but both Jon and Gary cited concerns about whether the run on successful head coaches from Andy Reid’s coaching tree can continue.
The Indianapolis Colts were set to hire Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels as their head coach last offseason until McDaniels had a sudden change of heart. In addition, Meerdink cited that “all of Bill Belichick’s assistants that have gone on to head coaching gigs have crashed and burned relatively quickly. Do you want to bet the last few years of Aaron Rodgers’ career on the Packers being the exception to that rule?”
Packers interim head coach Joe Philbin ranks 12th out of 16th candidates in a series of Twitter polls conducted by The Power Sweep.
Continuing coverage on the next head coach in Green Bay
The Power Sweep will continue to profile potential head coaches through our blog and our podcast, Blue 58. As our plans stand today, we have at least twelve more candidates on our shortlist to profile. If you don’t see a name on our list that we’ve written about yet, reach out and let us know.
If you’re new to The Power Sweep, you can catch up on all the profiles here: