NFL Coaching Carousel Spinning at Break-Neck Pace

For 20 NFL teams, the 2008 regular season has been over for a single day. But for three of those teams, a change couldn't have come fast enough.

By noontime Monday, Eric Mangini, Rod Marinelli and Romeo Crennel had a brand new title: former NFL head coach.

The list of coaches that could feel the swing of the ax doesn't stop with Monday's victims. Buffalo's Dick Jauron, Kansas City's Herm Edwards, Cincinnati's Marvin Lewis and St. Louis' Jim Haslett may not return next season. Seemingly everyone but Cowboys owner Jerry Jones wants Wade Phillips gone, but Jones has adamantly stated Phillips will return in 2009.

Some coaches - Edwards and Lewis come to mind - deserve to lose their jobs. Crennel, Jauron and Haslett don't. Mangini surely didn't.

Following the 2006 season, New York media was referring to Mangini as Mangenius. Two years later, following a 9-7 season, he is unemployed.

Was it because the Jets missed the playoffs? If it was, I fully expect to see Bill Belichick fired by week's end. Even though the Patriots went 11-5, their season is over.

Last season, the Browns stunned the NFL and finished 10-6. Thanks to the NFL's complicated tie-breaking system, a Week 3 loss to Oakland was essentially the only thing that kept Cleveland out of the playoffs. But Crennel is out of a job just a year later.

NFL coaches have always been on short leashes. But the turnover rate for NFL coaches is becoming sad. It has reached an extreme to which winning—and winning big—is seemingly expected every year.

Will it reach a point that a man in the position of Tom Coughlin - the head coach of the defending Super Bowl champions—will be in danger of losing his job if a division championship and deep playoff run doesn't follow the next season? Did New York's 12-4 campaign this season save Coughlin's job?

It is time for NFL owners and general managers to loosen the reigns a little bit. Crennel lost his job because his quarterbacks don't make smart throws and his biggest offensive star, wide receiver Braylon Edwards, couldn't hold on to the ball. The mistakes made by Crennel's, and other coaches', team was not his fault.

The players on the field need to start shouldering more of the responsibility for failures of the team. Quarterbacks don't get cut for having a bad season. Nor do running backs. Or any other position player.

In a win-now league, the pressure on NFL head coaches has never been higher. When team owners say win now, it seems they are more serious than ever.