The 2025-26 NFL HC Cycle is all KC's Fault!

This year is crazy for NFL head coach openings. The average open positions in the league, year to year, is six or seven. (DON’T DO IT.) This year, there have been a whopping TEN! Most of which have been in the AFC. The Titans, Giants, Cardinals, Raiders, Browns, Falcons, Steelers, Ravens, Dolphins, and lastly the Bills, after letting go of Sean McDermott following their Divisional Round playoff loss.

So what’s the deal? Why did so many teams let go of their coaches this year? Particularly teams like the Steelers and Ravens, who had the two longest-tenured head coaches in the whole NFL. Well, guess what? It all has to do with the Chiefs. Well, maybe not ALL of it… Don’t believe me? Here, I’ll prove it.

Now, I’ll admit, the Chiefs have almost nothing to do with Brian Daboll and the New York Giants decade of disfunction, the Arizona Cardinals and Johnathan Gannon, or the Atlanta Falcons firing Raheem Morris. But since this article is about the Chiefs’ connections to this abnormality in major changes for a third of the teams in the league this year, let’s focus on those. After all, teams like the Titans and Raiders, who are on a stretch of awful performances and looking to pull themselves out of mediocrity, are part of the average yearly firings, rather than this year’s exceptional ten.

Now, how many times have we heard fanbases of the AFC contenders say “we just gotta get past the Chiefs, we just need to beat Mahomes,” year after year? Well, this year, you didn’t. That obstacle was no longer in the way. The Chiefs extended run of uninterrupted success finally caught up, they suffered a season from hell, and everyone had their shot. Contenders were finally out of excuses NOT to make major changes. The Ravens couldn’t even make the playoffs, and so they knew they were heading in the wrong direction. And with a two-time MVP Quarterback, you’re really only left with one option.

A whole section of this article could be devoted to the AFC North, since the Raven’s division also saw the Browns fire Kevin Stefanski, and Mike Tomlin part ways with the Pittsburgh Steelers after 19 years. Admittedly, these are more attributive to each other than their connections to Kansas City, especially since the division has been one of, if not the single toughest in football for quite some time. Until the Bears this year, the AFC North was the only division in the NFL where every single team had made at least one playoff appearance within the last decade! But even so, there is still some connection.

The Browns playoff appearance with Baker Mayfield in 2020 was ended by - you probably guessed it - the Kansas City Chiefs. A big part of the Steelers and Mike Tomlin parting ways, despite never having worse than an 8-8 record in nineteen seasons, was because of a now nine-year playoff win draught, going 0 for 5 in that time. (Their last playoff win, coincidentally, being against KC.)

The Bills and Sean McDermott needs little explanation. Some may think the move emotional and poorly-thought out, considering that McDermott’s culture and leadership pulled the franchise from the mud and made them a playoff team with Tyrod Taylor. But after going 0-4 in playoff meetings with the Chiefs since drafting Josh Allen in 2017, losing at home to the Cincinnati Bengals in 2022, how much longer is the organization supposed to sit tight and hope that their core could finally clear that hurdle?

Recent public relations blunders aside, as much as half the league would love a 8-7 playoff record over the past nine years, all of NFL history shows us that if a coach/quarterback combo doesn’t win a Super Bowl in it’s first seven seasons together, it never will. Coincidentally, the 2025 season marked Lamar Jackson and John Harbaugh’s eighth, and McDermott and Josh Allen’s seventh. No rings. Translation: the window of the team as it was constructed had closed, and they had to change something before the Chiefs complete a roster rebuild and started another run of dominance.

The Chiefs and their past nine-year run even connects to the teams we’ve seen take a big step up this year. Now, whether they just had a great season or it’s a sign of things to come remains to be seen, but let’s focus on how this ties to KC’s dominance. Ugh, I guess we should start with the 1-Seed, the Denver Broncos... Gross.

Denver was just like most of the other teams trying to rebuild after a championship peak with an all-time QB in the 2010s: a Head Coach/Young QB carousel. They thought Russel Wilson would be the guy to lift them out of the gutter, but he, along with Nat Hackett, couldn’t hack it. That’s why they went out and hired Sean Payton, a SB Champion himself, and known around the league as a top offensive mind, and pretty savvy with roster construction. He saw what anyone saw, real solid potential. A top, young defense, offensive tools, and room to close any gaps on the team, even while dealing with the horrible Wilson contract. To capitalize on it, he wanted to get a young, cheap QB to run his offense as designed. Insert Bo Nix, bada-bing, bada-boom.

Being a divisional rival, like the long-horrible Las Vegas Raiders, meant that Denver was taking it in the teeth for the past decade from Kansas City. But that also means they had time to build this top defense, manage their salary cap well - again, Russell Wilson deal aside - and when the new owners brought in Sean Payton, their trip to playoff ascension had officially begun, thus completing their rebuild. A situation that, in some weird sense of irony, wouldn’t have been possible without being owned by the Chiefs for nine straight seasons.

The New England Patriots, the 2-seed this year, have been in the same hole. After Mac Jones didn’t pan out and Belichick had officially become stale, they needed to make some serious changes. A new HC, and drafting their own top QB prospect in Drake Maye. Now, Jerod Mayo didn’t pan out, but Mike Vrabel - somehow - hadn’t gotten a new job since being let go from Tennessee, so returning to the team he played for was a natural fit. And, sure enough, they hit on some other draft picks, have maximized their offense by also bringing back Offensive Coordinator Josh McDaniels, and Vrabel’s culture and connection to his roster have led them to what might be their first Super Bowl appearance in the post-Brady era. But whose conference has it been since ole Tommy swapped Boston for the Bucs? The Kansas City Chiefs.

Now, the NFC has gone through something of a renaissance in the past couple seasons, too. While there was a time, not too long ago, when it felt like there were three – maybe four – true Super Bowl contenders. The 49ers and the Eagles, naturally, who each met the Chiefs in two Super Bowls, the Rams, who won in 2021, albeit with a brief year or two afterwards to restructure their roster before now being a top contender once again, and the outside pick, the injury-plagued Detroit Lions. But now, taking a broad look at the landscape of the league, it would seem we’ve reached a new phase of the NFL life cycle.

The AFC teams that dominated most of the last decade with young, cheap, amazing quarterbacks, have now paid those top players, and therefor can’t build as strong of a 53-man roster from top to bottom. During that time, the NFC teams – the good ones, anyway – have made one of two approaches: get an established veteran quarterback to lead your young, mostly inexpensive, but stacked team, like the Rams or Lions, now the Seattle Seahawks, or, draft a young QB, and if he works out, build a stacked roster around them, like the Eagles with Jalen Hurts, or what we see the Chicago Bears attempting with Ben Johnson and Caleb Williams.

We’ve seen this sort of ebb-and-flow throughout the NFL’s history. The AFC has won a total of 28 Super Bowls, while the NFC has won 29. Sometimes we see teams sustain an extended, lengthy era of dominance, or hit the peak of their powers at the right time, having a singular, historically great season.

What are we in for moving forward? Does Matthew Stafford win his second Super Bowl and first MVP, etching his name into the Hall of Fame? Do the faces of this next generation of quarterbacks rise up to attempt to wrestle dominance of the league from the likes of Mahomes, Allen, and Jackson? I suppose only time, and the ten new head coaching positions in the league next season, can tell…