Ralph Vacchiano
NFC East Reporter
Every new NFL coach said the right things at their introductory press conference. They all filled their speeches with optimism and insisted they had a plan. And considering the circumstances that led to their teams hiring a new coach, it was easy to trust all of them. Everyone wanted to believe.
Now comes the real test, though. It’s easy to be optimistic in the spring, but the task gets tougher as the calendar moves towards fall. There are eight new head coaches among the NFL’s 32 teams as training camps begin to open next week, all hoping to turn around their franchises, or at least give them a new-coach bump in the standings.
Not all of them will.
So which of the eight will have the most success at turning their optimism into actual wins? And which ones are in for a much bigger struggle than maybe even they imagined?
Here’s a look at the outlook for each of them, ranked by their projected record in 2024:
Jim Harbaugh, Los Angeles Chargers
Projected 2024 record: 10-7 (W-L improvement: plus-5)
There’s no doubt the Chargers won the biggest prize of the offseason when they landed Harbaugh, the man the NFL has been after for nearly a decade. Whatever anyone thinks of him, his personality or his methods, he wins everywhere he goes. That includes the NFL, where he went 44-19-1 from 2011-14 in San Francisco and took the 49ers to three NFC championship games and a Super Bowl.
Fresh off winning a national championship at his alma mater Michigan, Harbaugh inherits a Chargers team that has been a perennial disappointment thanks to an ugly combination of injuries and Brandon Staley’s terrible coaching. He’s got a good roster with one of the best young quarterbacks in the game in Justin Herbert. They did lose a lot of weapons in the offseason — like running back Austin Ekeler and receivers Keenan Allen and Mike Williams — but that shouldn’t stop Harbaugh from finally helping the Chargers…
Source link : https://www.foxsports.com/stories/nfl/ranking-eight-new-nfl-head-coaches-2024
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Publish date : 2024-07-16 18:30:29
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