5 NFL Coordinators and Coaches Who Should Already be on the Hot Seat After Week 3

There are several head coaches and coordinators whose seats are getting rather warm less than a month into the 2026 NFL season.

Although these coaches may have come into the new campaign in a seemingly stable position, they're already on shaky ground following some disappointing early results.

Week 3 represented a new low for several teams that have slumped out of the gate. Five teams remain winless through three games and many others have mustered just a single victory in that span. There's still an opportunity for each of these squads to turn things around, but time is quickly running out.

If these franchises don't get back on track and string together some wins in the next few weeks, major changes will be inevitable. Although most clubs won't take the nuclear option of dismissing key staff in the initial months of a trying season, drastic measures such as a shift in play-calling duties aren't far off.

With that in mind, let's highlight five coaches who are firmly on the hot seat after Week 3.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have been a middling team for much of the Todd Bowles era. Rather than steadily improve with the head coach at the wheel, the Bucs have backslid following the three consecutive playoff appearances that opened his tenure.

After an 8-9 campaign last year resulted in the franchise's first missed postseason berth since 2019, Bowles had to be feeling pressure to get Tampa back on track in 2026. Losing three consecutive games to open the season hasn't done anything to help Bowles' job security and there's now a chance he becomes the first coach to be fired this year.

No Bucs coach has survived two consecutive losing seasons since the Glazer family purchased the franchise in 1995. While ownership has waited until the conclusion of a second down year to fire the likes of Greg Schiano, Lovie Smith and Dirk Koetter, this utterly dismal start could force a change prior to the offseason.

Things are looking especially bleak in Tampa now that star quarterback Baker Mayfield—the recipient of a blockbuster contract extension just before the 2026 season kicked off—is set to miss upwards of a month or more with a dislocated thumb on his right throwing hand. The Bucs now must turn to undrafted rookie Jalon Daniels to run a passing offense that already ranked in the bottom quarter of the league with Mayfield under center.

While the Mayfield injury is unfortunate, the Bucs' struggles aren't new. The team opened 2025 on a 6-2 tear before fumbling away a fifth consecutive NFC South crown with a 2-7 finish. Bowles made a litany of staffing adjustments following the 8-9 season, including dismissing the team's offensive and special teams coordinators in addition to several key positional coaches.

Those changes clearly haven't worked, leaving Bowles as the final domino left to fall. His fate is all but sealed, so expect a regime change in Tampa barring a miraculous winning streak over the next few months.

The Tennessee Titans came into the 2026 NFL season with real potential to follow in the footsteps of the New England Patriots, becoming the latest team to orchestrate a worst-to-first turnaround engineered by a promising second-year quarterback and new coaching staff.

After an embarrassing 0-3 start, the Robert Saleh-led Titans are now facing an uphill battle to even post a winning season, let alone punch a playoff ticket after a half-decade absence or make a Super Bowl appearance for the first time since the 1999 campaign.

The main catalyst behind Tennessee's shortcomings has been offensive coordinator Brian Daboll's inability to develop 2025 No. 1 overall pick Cam Ward.

Although the Titans largely struggled during his rookie campaign, Ward flashed the potential to be a franchise quarterback and appeared poised to make a significant Year 2 leap.

Unfortunately for the Titans, Ward has seemingly regressed rather than improve over the first three games of 2026. He's completed just 62.5 percent of his throws for a meager 504 yards and two touchdowns in that span.

While the 2025 No. 1 overall pick has only turned the ball over once and taken just five sacks after leading the league with 55 last year, he's failed to make the type of impact expected from a franchise-caliber quarterback.

With Tennessee ranking No. 30 in both scoring and passing offense while putting up just 37 points across three contests—the third-fewest in the league—there is cause for genuine concern regarding Saleh's selection of Daboll as his offensive coordinator.

Daboll came to the Music City following a rough tenure with the New York Giants, putting together just one winning season during his four years at the reins. The offense was largely inconsistent during that span, problems that are now reflecting far worse on Daboll than the players he had tasked with running his system.

While Daboll will have a few more opportunities to figure things out—starting in Week 4 when the Titans take on a middling Baltimore Ravens defense—he can't expect to remain with the franchise long if he doesn't get far better results from his offense over the next few weeks.

The Los Angeles Chargers' 0-3 start is one the most surprising storylines of the 2026 NFL season.

While there are glaring issues with offensive coordinator Mike McDaniel for his inability to spark a talent-laden unit and defensive coordinator Chris O'Leary's failure to achieve the same strong results that predecessor Jesse Minter received from this group, head coach Jim Harbaugh deserves the lion's share of blame for the Chargers' struggles.

Harbaugh didn't properly prepare his team for the new season. While injuries were a huge component of the team's late-season skid in 2025—as well as its second consecutive playoff crash-out under the head coach—there are no such excuses this time around.

The Bolts were soundly beaten by two inferior opponents in the Arizona Cardinals and Las Vegas Raiders to open the year, setting up a must-win Week 3 showdown with the Buffalo Bills.

Rather than prove those two losses were flukes and that the Chargers can hang with the class of the AFC, L.A. could not close out a Bills team that turned the ball over five times and tallied a season-low 24 points.

With the Chargers now ranking in the bottom half of the league in every major offensive category besides rushing (including No. 29 in scoring offense), every major defensive category and tied for the third-most giveaways in football, it's impossible not to place Harbaugh on the hot seat.

While Harbaugh has gotten consistently strong results at every stop of his career and helped a listless Chargers squad reach the playoffs in each of his first two seasons, that streak is in serious jeopardy due to this abysmal start.

The Bolts won't find it any easier to turn things around over the next couple months. This stretch includes showdowns with the Seattle Seahawks, Denver Broncos and Kansas City Chiefs leading up to a Week 7 bye, as well as a date with the in-town rival Los Angeles Rams coming out of it.

If L.A. stumbles through this portion of the schedule, the team will be out of the running and Harbaugh will be forced to make sweeping changes to his staff well before things get any easier in the back half of the campaign.

Preseason Contenders in Desperation Mode

The Green Bay Packers have been one of the league's more consistent teams during the Matt LaFleur era, but they've yet to make a leap into serious Super Bowl contention.

Hopes for the club to level up in 2026 have rapidly diminished after the team limped out to a 1-2 start during what was arguably the easiest three-game stretch on their entire schedule.

Green Bay hasn't looked right since the fourth quarter of the opener against the rival Minnesota Vikings, a contest in which the Packers were outscored 22-0 in the fourth quarter and lost by a 39-22 margin despite leading for much of the game. They rebounded to knock off the lowly New York Jets in overtime, but fell flat once again against a previously winless Atlanta Falcons opponent in a prime-time Thursday Night Football contest.

LaFleur called the Atlanta loss "humbling" and described it as a "butt-whooping," admitting he needs to work with his team to "try to figure out what we do well, because right now, I don't know what we're doing well offensively."

The slow start to the 2026 season follows Green Bay's collapse in the Wild Card Round of the playoffs. The Packers blew a 21-3 lead to their bitter NFC North rival, the Chicago Bears, the latest in an increasingly disappointing string of postseason shortcomings under LaFleur.

While LaFleur has had just one losing season since taking the reins in 2019, he hasn't made it back to the NFC Championship Game since Aaron Rodgers' last MVP season in 2020 and has only advanced past the Wild Card Round once since Jordan Love assumed the starting quarterback role on a full-time basis in 2023.

Although he's earned a longer leash than most coaches for his consistent winning ways, LaFleur will be forced to make some major adjustments if the Packers continue to slide over the next few weeks.

If he can't turn the ship around, there will be serious discussions about his future in Titletown.

Defensive woes were the main culprit behind the Dallas Cowboys' disappointing 7-9-1 finish last year, a glaring issue that led head coach Brian Schottenheimer to relieve Matt Eberflus of his defensive coordinator post.

Christian Parker, Eberflus' replacement for 2026, has arguably done less with more after the Cowboys spent the offseason reinforcing multiple areas of weakness across their defensive lineup.

Those pricey investments, which included expending five of seven draft picks on defensive prospects (including first-rounders Caleb Downs and Malachi Lawrence) and adding impact veterans such as Rashan Gary, Von Miller and Quinnen Williams, haven't paid off. The Cowboys currently rank No. 31 in rushing defense, No. 30 in total defense and No. 25 in scoring defense.

Although the Cowboys are dealing with several notable injuries, the team's inability to put pressure on opposing signal-callers (Dallas has just two sacks on the year, the third-fewest in football) and create turnovers (also tied for the third-fewest with two) is inexcusable. Even the passing defense, which rates a more respectable No. 15, has severely let the club down.

While a series of errors allowed the Baltimore Ravens to set up a walk-off field goal in Week 3, Parker's decision to play man-to-man defense on the penultimate snap was among the most consequential. Zay Flowers then beat Dallas' secondary for a 27-yard gain, putting the Ravens in position to walk it off.

The humiliating defeat dropped the Cowboys to 1-2 and has put them in danger of missing the playoffs for the third consecutive year. The team is squandering another solid offensive season with inept defensive play and must figure things out before it's too late.

Parker will get another chance to fix things when the Cowboys face the winless Houston Texans in Week 4. If he can't get the defense to shut down a toothless foe that rates in the bottom quarter of the NFL in both rushing offense and scoring, Schottenheimer has to give serious consideration to changing his defensive play-caller.