Another day, another dollar to be earned on the offseason betting markets available at BetOnline. This week, we’re looking at a sad but interesting one: the first head coach to be fired.

Usually, sometime in the middle of the season, a known tanking team will open the head coaching job early, to take a look at some internal candidates and test out some younger players as it slides into a top-five pick. As such, we can look at teams with potential 2021 nosedives as good candidates to fire their head coaches and accept the inevitability of a reload, if not a rebuild, in their football future.

Here’s the current list of head coach firing odds, listed at BetOnline:

Vic Fangio: +750
Mike McCarthy: +750
Matt Nagy: +850
Jon Gruden: +1000
Mike Zimmer: +1100
Zac Taylor: +1200
Kliff Kingsbury: +1200
David Culley: +1600
Matt Rhule: +1600
Mike Vrabel: +1600
Matt LaFleur: +2000
Brian Flores: +2500
Frank Reich: +2500
Kyle Shanahan: +2500
Pete Carroll: +2500
Sean Payton: +2500
John Harbaugh: +2500

Okay, so let’s knock some coaches off the list right away. Newly hired HCs will not be fired, so that takes David Culley off the board, even for how dysfunctional the Houston Texans organization is. Jon Gruden is legitimately unfireable, given how much money he’s due on his remaining contract. John Harbaugh, Sean Payton, Kyle Shanahan, Frank Reich, Pete Carroll, and Brian Flores are all way too good at their jobs—and are going to win too many games—to get fired.

So, let’s make the new list this:

Vic Fangio: +750
Mike McCarthy: +750
Matt Nagy: +850
Mike Zimmer: +1100
Zac Taylor: +1200
Kliff Kingsbury: +1200
Matt Rhule: +1600
Mike Vrabel: +1600
Matt LaFleur: +2000

Now we have to start talking wins and losses. The simple reality of in-season coaching fires is that they come for teams that lose a lot of games. And that’s not just under their expected win totals—that’s just raw losing. In 2020, it was an 0-4 Bill O’Brien and an 0-5 Dan Quinn. In 2019, Jay Gruden went 0-5, and in 2018, Hue Jackson’s Cleveland Browns went 2-5-1. Of course, those two wins were twice as many as Jackson’s Browns won in 2016 and 2017 combined, so he’s unique.

If we look at the same list above with expected win totals, here’s what we get:

Vic Fangio: 8.5
Mike McCarthy: 9.5
Matt Nagy: 7.5
Mike Zimmer: 8.5
Zac Taylor: 6.5
Kliff Kingsbury: 8.5
Matt Rhule: 7.5
Mike Vrabel: 9

Taylor’s win total stands out, and rightfully so. Taylor has been a disappointing head coach in the win/loss column with a 6-25-1 record over two years in Cincinnati. You may think that a young quarterback selection gives Taylor some leeway, but that hasn’t been the case for coaches like Jackson, Pat Shurmur, and Jeff Fisher in recent memory. Just because Taylor was part of the staff that selected Joe Burrow doesn’t mean he’s destined to stick with Burrow on his rookie contract.

Now, there’s a pretty big problem here. Taylor coaches for the Bengals, and the Bengals are famously inert. Taylor is only the third Bengals coach this century, as Marvin Lewis held down the job with famous mediocrity from 2003 to 2018. Lewis was immediately mediocre; Taylor hasn’t even shown that yet. The Bengals were also fairly stable at quarterback with Carson Palmer and Andy Dalton starting for most of Lewis’ tenure. If Burrow shows that he has star quarterback potential, then perhaps he’ll put a bit extra pressure on the Brown family to pair him with their stable head coach. The biggest concern here doesn’t have anything to do with Taylor, or with the Bengals suddenly getting better and winning a ton of games. It’s the lack of a clear replacement for Taylor on the staff. Nobody below Taylor has any head coaching experience; not Brian Callahan, the offensive coordinator, or Lou Anarumo, the defensive coordinator. Unless the Bengals believe internally that one of Callahan or Anarumo has a shot to be a good HC and want to take a look at that potential mid-season, there’s really no reason to fire Taylor early.

Beyond Taylor, the shortest listed win totals belong to Matt Nagy and Matt Rhule at 7.5 each. Nagy is a good bet if you don’t believe in the Chicago Bears in general, but I do, so I think they’ll be overachieving relative to their win total and accordingly stave off a quick hook in-season. Given Rhule’s power in Carolina, an in-season firing also seems unlikely there.

On the rest of the list, we see potential underachievers galore. With yet another new offensive coordinator in Minnesota and continued uncertainty around Kirk Cousins as the starting quarterback, I could see a dud season for Mike Zimmer; but he’s likely earned enough tenure to avoid an in-season hook. The same can’t be said for Kliff Kingsbury or Mike McCarthy, both of whom have only been with their franchises a short while and have yet to deliver. Both also carry ex-head coaches on their coaching staffs and will be experiencing pressure from ownership, so both represent reasonable bets. And finally, Vic Fangio and Mike Vrabel. Vrabel’s likely safe given the Tennessee Titans’ playoff success, though I think they step back this season. Fangio is a trickier case, as there’s pressure on him to be successful in Year 3, a 12-20 record to this point, and a still unstable quarterback room between Drew Lock and Teddy Bridgewater. With a new general manager also in place to potentially encourage some changes, Fangio is reasonably priced with the hottest seat on the market—though I don’t really think any of this is his fault.

The list of bets I’d be willing to take for first coach fires, accordingly, looks something like this: