Final Report-Card Grades for Every NFL Head Coach

Black Monday is upon us.  There are several coaches who will be waiting on pins and needles throughout the day Monday to see if they will be retained for the 2012 season.

There are a variety of factors that determine the final grade.  For instance, Rex Ryan's grade is lower than some of the other coaches that finished at 8-8 because his team was expected to contend with the Patriots for the AFC East title.

Click through to see a grade for the performance of each of the 32 NFL coaches.

Ken Whisenhunt: Arizona Cardinals

The Cardinals have to be wondering what their season would have been like had they not gone on a six-game losing streak early in the season.  They obviously were not on the same level as the elite teams in the NFC, but they would have been in the playoff mix if they could have just split those games.

Ken Whisenhunt did a pretty good job this season considering the injuries his team faced.  Kevin Kolb was only able to start nine games, and Beanie Wells was banged up for the second half of the season.  

Even through all of that, they were able to win seven of their last nine games.

Grade: B-

Mike Smith: Atlanta Falcons

The Falcons had really high hopes coming into the 2011 season after being the No. 1 seed in the NFC playoffs in 2010.  They were not able to replicate that success, but they still had a really good season.

It turns out that Bobby Petrino leaving in the middle of the night was the best thing that could have happened for Atlanta because it brought them Mike Smith.

He took a lot of heat for his decision to go for it on fourth down in overtime against the Saints, but he is a really good football coach.

Grade: A-

John Harbaugh: Baltimore Ravens

The Ravens have become the model of a consistent franchise.  You can count on them being in the playoffs year in and year out.  That is in large part due to the great work John Harbaugh has done there.

The only thing left for Harbaugh to accomplish is playoff success.  He once again has a team that is going to be a favorite to advance deep into the playoffs. 

Is this the year he leads Baltimore to another Super Bowl appearance?

Grade: A

Chan Gailey: Buffalo Bills

Things were looking really good for Chan Gailey when his team was 5-2 after Week 8.  It looked like the Bills were poised for their first playoff appearance since 1999, but things went south in a hurry when they lost seven in a row.

Gailey is going to get some more time to turn things around in Buffalo, but they have to be concerned about the future of the franchise with how poorly Ryan Fitzpatrick played after getting his contract extension.  

Gailey's long-term success will be directly tied to how well Fitzpatrick plays in the future.

Grade: C

Ron Rivera: Carolina Panthers

The 2011 season will not end with a playoff berth for the Carolina Panthers, but they have to be excited about the direction of the franchise.  It does not look like it will take long for them to be a legitimate contender.

It was the Carolina defense that struggled in 2011, and you can bet that Rivera will be able to turn them around when he has a full offseason to implement his system.  2012 could be a big year for the Panthers.

Grade: B+

Lovie Smith: Chicago Bears

The Bears looked like they were in good shape for a Wild-Card berth before Jay Cutler and Matt Forte went down with injuries.  Now they will be watching the postseason from the couch.

Lovie Smith did about as good of a job as can be expected with all of the injuries his team sustained this season.  

The one thing he can be blamed for is running Caleb Hanie out there for so long when it is clear that he is not a good NFL quarterback. 

Grade: B-

Marvin Lewis: Cincinnati Bengals

It seemed that Marvin Lewis would be fired after last season.  When he was not fired, most people said it was just because they did not want to hire a new coach heading into a lockout.

Now that he has led the Bengals back to the playoffs, it is safe to say that he has pretty good job security.

The future is bright for Lewis and the Bengals because they will have some really good draft picks over the next two years from the Carson Palmer trade.

Grade: A-

Pat Shurmur: Cleveland Browns

That picture really says it all.  The Browns had high hopes heading into the season and got off to a pretty good start.  It became clear, however, that they were not a very good football team when their schedule got tougher.

Pat Shurmur will be on the hot seat heading into 2012.  His team under-performed in 2011, and he was also out there for the whole Colt McCoy fiasco, where it was clear McCoy had a concussion but was allowed to re-enter the game.

Grade: D

Jason Garrett: Dallas Cowboys

The Cowboys have too much talent on their roster to miss the playoffs, but that is exactly what happened.

Jerry Jones said last week that Jason Garrett's job was safe no matter what happened against the Giants. It will be interesting to see if Jones is a man of his word.

If Garrett does survive missing the playoffs this season, he will enter next season firmly on the hot seat. There is no way Jones will stand for missing the playoffs for the third straight year.

Grade: D

John Fox: Denver Broncos

The job John Fox did in Denver this season was pretty impressive.  The defense made massive strides as the season went along, and Fox showed that he was willing to change up his entire style when he inserted Tim Tebow into the starting line-up.

It will be interesting to see how the Tebow experiment plays out going forward.  Fox will need to continue to build that defense because they are going to have to be really good to win games as long as Tebow is at the helm.

Grade: B

Jim Schwartz: Detroit Lions

Jim Schwartz has done a phenomenal job in his short tenure with the Lions.  He came in after Detroit went 0-16 and has turned them into one of the best teams in the league.

Some people do not like the edge that the Lions play with, but it was necessary for Schwartz to go in there and change the culture of the club.  That is just part of the equation.

He has a football team with a lot of young stars.  The sky is the limit in the near future for Schwartz and the Lions.

Grade: A

Mike McCarthy: Green Bay Packers

There is not a whole lot that needs to be said about the coach who leads his team to the No. 1 seed in the NFC a year after winning the Super Bowl.  Of course, having Aaron Rodgers at quarterback is a huge help to McCarthy, but he designed the offense that Rodgers is running.

McCarthy is one of the best young coaches in the league and will have his name mentioned alongside the great Vince Lombardi if Green Bay can repeat as Super Bowl champions.

Grade: A

Gary Kubiak: Houston Texans

Gary Kubiak was believed to be on the hot seat coming into the season.  Some people thought it was playoffs or bust for him this season, because his teams had perennially underachieved.

His team this season did the exact opposite of that.  In fact, you could argue that he had the most overachieving team in the league.  The Texans sustained injury after injury but still easily won the AFC South.

Grade: A

Jim Caldwell: Indianapolis Colts

Jim Caldwell is not a good head coach.  That has not changed.  

The only thing that changed for him this season was that he did not have one of the greatest quarterbacks in the history of the game calling the signals for him this season.  That exposed Caldwell.

He probably will not survive this debacle of a season.  While not all of the blame can be placed on him, it is clear that he is in over his head without Peyton Manning out there.

Grade: F

Mel Tucker: Jacksonville Jaguars

Mel Tucker inherited a bad situation.  Jack Del Rio left him an injured team with a young quarterback who was not playing very well.  Tucker did about as well as could be expected.

It is very unlikely that Tucker will be in the mix for the job this offseason, but he did get some head-coaching experience that will be valuable to him wherever he ends up next.

Grade: C

Romeo Crennel: Kansas City Chiefs

Romeo Crennel did nice work in a limited amount of time calling the shots for the Chiefs.  Kansas City knocked off the then-undefeated Packers in his first week on the job.  They concluded the season by beating the AFC West Champion Denver Broncos.

Crennel might not end up with the head coaching job in Kansas City next season, but he improved his resume a little bit with the work he did there.

Grade: B+

Todd Bowles: Miami Dolphins

Todd Bowles is another interim coach who inherited a tough situation.  He got the Dolphins to play pretty well while he was at the helm.  

Bowles will get an interview for the job going forward, but odds are the Dolphins will look elsewhere when hiring their new coach.

Grade: C

Leslie Frazier: Minnesota Vikings

Leslie Frazier's first full season as a head coach did not go as well as he would have like.  It did not help anything that Donovan McNabb was not nearly as good as they thought he would be, or that Adrian Peterson was hurt for a chunk of the season.  

The Peterson injury is even complicated going forward, because there is the chance that he will not be at full speed when the 2012 season kicks off.

Frazier will probably have another season to get things right, but another season like the one he just finished will put him squarely on the hot seat.

Grade: D

Bill Belichick: New England Patriots

Bill Belichick just keeps churning out winners.  Once again, his team will have the luxury of having a week off before hosting a playoff game.

Belichick did an exceptionally good job this season improving the defense as the season went along.  The Patriots are always going to win games with Tom Brady running the offense, but it looked at one point during the season like the offense was going to need 40 points a game to win.  

That is not the case any more.

Grade: A

Sean Payton: New Orleans Saints

It was another banner year for the Saints.  They went 13-3, won the NFC South and Drew Brees set the record for passing yards in a season.

In fact, the only thing that went wrong for Sean Payton was the collision on the sideline tore his knee up and kept him in the box for a couple of weeks.  New Orleans is going to be a tough out in the playoffs.

Grade: A

Tom Coughlin: New York Giants

It seems that every season with the Giants is an up-and-down affair.  This year, they ended with an up when they beat the Cowboys in Week 17 to win the NFC East.

Tom Coughlin did a good job this season.  He has adapted his style a little bit from the hard-nosed coach he was when he first got to New York.  

Most of his players seem to really enjoy playing for him now.  It is funny how winning will do that.

All of that being said, this Giants' team did not live up to its full potential.  There is too much talent on that team to be squeaking into the playoffs.

Grade: B

Rex Ryan: New York Jets

Rex Ryan said before the season that he hoped someone besides the Jets could beat the Patriots this season.  Well it turned out that the Jets had their own problems they needed to worry about.

Ryan's attitude is fun when his team is winning, but it can wear a little thin when things are not going his way.  

The Jets are going to need to decide this offseason if Mark Sanchez is the answer.  The wrong call there could be the end of Ryan in New York.

Grade: D

Hue Jackson: Oakland Raiders

Hue Jackson did a pretty good job with the Raiders this season.  They were not able to win a Week 17 game that would have put them in the playoffs, but most people would have said you were crazy if you told them the Raiders were going to miss the playoffs by one game with Darren McFadden missing so much time.

Jackson's success in Oakland is going to ultimately be determined by how well Carson Palmer plays in 2012.  He was the one that wanted Palmer, and it will go down as a terrible decision if he does not play any better than he did in 2011.

Grade: C+

Andy Reid: Philadelphia Eagles

It was a roller coaster season for Andy Reid.  The Eagles made the most noise in free agency when the lockout came to a close.  

They did not get the results they anticipated on the field, but Reid never lost the team.  They fought hard even after they were eliminated from contention.

The finish to the season probably means that Reid will get to keep his job for another season.  He better produce results in 2012, or he will be gone after the season.

Grade: C-

Mike Tomlin: Pittsburgh Steelers

Mike Tomlin is one of the best coaches in the league.  You know the Steelers are going to be in contention every single year as long as Tomlin is at the helm.

This might have been one of Tomlin's best coaching jobs, because the defense was not as dominant as it has been in years past.  

He also kept the steady hand early in the season when a lot of the people had written the Steelers off as old and slow after a 2-2 start.

Grade: A

Norv Turner: San Diego Chargers

It is the end of the line for Norv Turner.  For a couple of weeks, it looked like his team was going to pull off another magical November/December run, but they were not able to do that this year.

Turner has been pretty successful in the regular season in his tenure in San Diego, but there should have been a lot more postseason success with a quarterback as good as Philip Rivers.  

Turner is just another guy who is much better as a coordinator than he is a head coach.

Grade: D

Jim Harbaugh: San Francisco 49ers

Jim Harbaugh is the coach of the year in the NFL.  Most people thought the 49ers would be in the mix for the Andrew Luck pick before the season started.

Instead, Harbaugh led the 49ers to a 13-3 record and a No. 2 seed in the NFC playoffs.

San Francisco is only going to get better when Harbaugh has a full offseason to implement his program.

It is hard to see them going 13-3 again next year, but it sure looks like anything is possible with this guy.

Grade: A+

Pete Carroll: Seattle Seahawks

Pete Carroll did a nice job this season.  He had a football team that was not very good in contention as late as Week 16.  

Of course, they benefit from playing in the NFC West, but his team pulled off some pretty impressive victories over the course of the season.

Carroll does not have to worry about job security for now, but if he wants it to stay that way, he better find a way to upgrade his quarterback play.  Tarvaris Jackson is not the answer.

Grade: B-

Steve Spagnuolo: St. Louis Rams

Steve Spagnuolo has already been fired in St. Louis.  That is what happens when your team goes from barely missing the playoffs to only winning two games.

It was not all Spagnuolo's fault.  Sam Bradford took a huge step back in 2011 after a successful rookie season in 2010.

Grade: F

Raheem Morris: Tampa Bay Buccaneers

It was a tough year in Tampa.  They had really high expectations after winning 10 games in 2010, but they were terrible in 2011.  There is a good chance that Raheem Morris will not survive that collapse.

Morris is another victim of a quarterback who regressed.  Josh Freeman looked like an up-and-coming star in 2010 but was terrible in 2011.  

Whoever the coach of the Buccaneers is in 2012 is going to have to figure out a way to get him back to 2010 form.

Grade: D

Mike Munchak: Tennessee Titans

Mike Munchak did an excellent job in his first season as the head coach in Tennessee.  

He had the limitations of the lockout as well as not knowing who his quarterback would be until the beginning of August.  Even with all of that, he guided the Titans to within one game of the playoffs.

The future looks bright for the Titans, but Munchak's success or failure as a coach is ultimately going to come down to what type of NFL quarterback Jake Locker ends up being.

Grade: B+

Mike Shanahan: Washington Redskins

The Redskins were excellent against the Giants but terrible against the rest of the league.  Mike Shanahan's leash in Washington is now very short.  

You can bet that he is down on his knees every night praying that Robert Griffin III enters the draft and is still on the board when Washington is on the clock.

Shanahan is going to need to show a lot of progress to keep his job after the 2012 season.

Grade: D