Towards the end of every year, it becomes one of the NFL’s side-stories. Games still going on, a playoff race to be had, but in offseason previews, you hear it each season.
Will some team trade their head coach?
That talking point was as prevalent as ever this year. Bill Belichick, Mike Vrabel, Pete Carroll, and for a time, Mike Tomlin. All specu-ported towards the end of the season. And three of them, everyone except Tomlin, won’t be their team’s head coach in 2024.
And yet none have been traded. Or even shopped. Belichick parted ways with Robert Kraft, the Tennessee Titans fired Vrable, and Carroll was moved into a consulting role, though it’s possible he leaves the organization if a coaching job emerges elsewhere. All are expected to find new homes through the normal process of coaching “free agency,” let go and able to be hired through the standard interview process.
For the media, coaching trades create buzz. Who could be interested? What will the compensation be? Who will the trading team hire? It’s a combination of two high-appeal stories, a team effectively firing their coach while another team hires him all in one swoop.
No one loves talking trade more than Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio. Every step, every chance he can even float the idea, he will. Bill Belichick to Washington, Mike Vrabel to New England (way back in November), and even with Tomlin saying he wants to coach in Pittsburgh, anticipating a contract extension, and Art Rooney II agreeing with both those things, Florio as recently as Friday still left the door open for teams to call Pittsburgh about Tomlin’s availability.
Now, he’s not the only one who jumped on the trade-speculation trade about Tomlin and others. It’s fun to think about. To plan, map out, and it’s good for business. Florio has his moments, anything where football and law mix is enjoyable to listen to, but this harping gets old in a hurry.
The reality? Coaches trades are rare. Especially for those like Belichick and company, coaches in current roles and not taking time off. Sabbaticals and retirements are the most common path to trades actually taking place. Sean Payton from New Orleans to Denver, Bruce Arians from Arizona to Tampa Bay. Coaching trades, yes, but Payton had taken a year off while Arians came out of retirement (an actual retirement, not a Steelers-dubbed “retirement”).
Within the same context, the last two coaches to be traded while currently coaching a team are Herm Edwards in 2006 and Jon Gruden in 2002. Meaning the last example came nearly 20 years ago. These things just don’t happen.
If there was a year a coach could get dealt, this felt like it. Rarely are there this number of big-name coaches out of work. Belichick has six Super Bowl rings, Vrabel is an excellent coach who many thought got a raw deal, and Carroll wanted to keep coaching until the front office blocked that idea.
But Kraft said it was unfair to send Belichick somewhere and the Titans didn’t want to wait around and go through the messy and length process to deal Vrabel. Trading a coach isn’t like dealing away a player. The coach has to want to go there. And determining fair compensation is tough while many teams don’t want to hamstring themselves by trading top picks for a coach and give him less capital to work with.
Dot-connecting a coach trade is always more bark than bite. If this cycle couldn’t prove to be the exception, it’s time to put away the narrative. Could a head coach get traded again a la Edwards or Gruden? Sure, it’s possible. Probably, it’ll happen again. But the attention it receives on the airwaves to the actual outcomes, each scenario fizzling out and forgotten, makes it one of the sport’s biggest non-stories completely driven by media speculation and little else.
