NFL Head Coach Hot Seat Ranking: Who's Under Most Pressure To Win Now?

Not a single regular-season game has been played yet, but a good case can be made that about one-quarter of the NFL’s coaches are on seats that are already warming up.

Less than eight months after seven of the league’s 32 teams changed coaches at the end of last season, there are at least seven more who begin the season with at least one toe out the door. Some of them are in more danger than others. But all of them know they need to win.

How fast? And how long can any of them survive more losing? Listed below are the seven head coaches under the most pressure heading into Week 1.

*We'll update these rankings periodically throughout the season.

It’s a little unfair that McDaniel might enter the season on the hottest seat in the league, because a lot of his work has been undone by the health of QB Tua Tagovailoa. In Tagovailoa’s only fully healthy season with McDaniel, the Dolphins went 11-6. But overall, McDaniel is 28-23 and 0-2 in the playoffs, while the brilliance and speed of his offense has never lived up to its promise. There is a feeling in Miami that if they don’t reach the playoffs this year, and maybe even win a game in January, that both McDaniel and GM Chris Grier will be out amid a big housecleaning. Since the first half of the season is the easiest part of the schedule, it sure would help if Miami got off to a hot start.

The fate of new coaches who take over struggling teams are almost always tied to their young, franchise quarterbacks. Unfortunately for Steichen, his was tied to Anthony Richardson. And that’s gone so well that the Colts’ starting quarterback to begin the season is Daniel Jones, the failed franchise quarterback from the Giants. That’s not good news for a team that seemingly has a wild-card