No NFL head coach has been fired during the 2026 season. CBS Sports put Todd Bowles at the top of its hot seat rankings on Tuesday, and the case against him is not complicated.
Tampa Bay is 0-4. Bowles is 2-12 over his last 14 games. The Buccaneers lost 17-14 at home to Green Bay on Oct. 4.
All Four Losses Were Close, Which Is the Problem
Every Tampa Bay loss this season has come by one score. That sounds like bad luck until you stack it against a 2-12 stretch going back into last year.
Teams that lose close games in October are usually fine. Teams that lose close games for 14 straight games have a coaching problem, because that is exactly the sample where game management, situational calls and fourth-down decisions stop being noise.
Bowles entered this season 35-33 in Tampa with a 1-3 playoff record. He is now 35-37.
He is not hiding from it. “I’m the head coach. I can do more. I can always do more,” Bowles said after the Green Bay loss. He added the line that matters: “We can’t keep getting close to not winning. That’s not good enough.”
The Roster Changed Under Him
Mike Evans left for San Francisco. There was friction around the Baker Mayfield extension. Bowles signed a contract through 2028 alongside general manager Jason Licht in 2025, which is the single biggest thing keeping him employed right now.
Left tackle Tristan Wirfs gave the most telling answer of the week when asked about his coach’s future. “No comment. I love Coach Bowles,” he said. Those two sentences do not usually appear together.
Who Else Is on the List
Jim Harbaugh is second on the CBS board. The Chargers are 0-4 after losses to Arizona, Las Vegas, Buffalo and Seattle. That is a strange place for a coach who went 11-6 in both 2024 and 2025 and signed a five-year deal in January 2024 reported at roughly $16 million a year. Los Angeles lost in the wild card round both seasons, including a 3-16 defeat to New England last January.
Dan Quinn has cooled to seventh. Washington is 1-3, having lost at Philadelphia, beaten Carolina and Seattle, then lost 30-13 at Indianapolis. Quinn went 12-5 and reached an NFC Championship Game in 2024, then 5-12 in 2025, leaving him 6-15 since that title game.
DeMeco Ryans in Houston and Robert Saleh in Tennessee are also 0-4. Aaron Glenn is 4-17 with the Jets since the start of 2025, though he is signed through 2029.
What Actually Happens
Ten head coaches were replaced after the 2025 season, including Kevin Stefanski, Sean McDermott, John Harbaugh, Pete Carroll, Jonathan Gannon and Raheem Morris, with Mike Tomlin stepping down in Pittsburgh. The league already had its purge.
My read: Tampa Bay does not fire Bowles mid-season unless the close losses turn into blowouts. Owners hate paying two coaches, and a contract through 2028 makes an October decision expensive.
Harbaugh is the more interesting name, and he is also the least likely to be fired, because 0-4 with that resume gets a coach a mulligan everywhere.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
