NOVEMBER 24: Corroborating Rapoport’s report from Thursday, Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk writes Rivera is likely safe for the remainder of the 2023 season. That update comes as little surprise in the wake of defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio being let go in a move which Rivera appears to have recommended. Still, signficant progress will likely need to be made down the stretch for the Commanders’ evaluation to result in anything but a new head coach taking the reins relatively soon.
NOVEMBER 23: While today’s contest against the Cowboys could carry signficant sway in the decision on Rivera’s future, Ian Rapoport of NFL Network confirms an in-season coaching change “is not the team’s desire.” He adds that Harris and Rivera have a strong working relationship, but that an evaluation will be conducted no later than after the conclusion of the regular season. While Rivera may be safe past the bye week barring further underwhelming performances, signs therefore continue to point to this season being his last in the nation’s capital.
NOVEMBER 22: With the Commanders trading Montez Sweat and Chase Young on deadline day, Ron Rivera‘s 2024 fate appeared sealed. The team won its first game without the two former first-round defensive ends but has since lost back-to-back contests, dropping to 4-7. The well-liked HC looks to be in the final weeks as the Commanders’ leader.
Some in the Washington building have wondered if Rivera will be canned during the team’s Week 14 bye, per ESPN.com’s Jeremy Fowler. The Commanders face the Cowboys on Thanksgiving and then match up with the Dolphins in Week 13. Starting at a potential 4-9 mark going into the bye, Washington could look into an early firing. The Commanders are coming off an upset loss to the Giants, committing six turnovers in defeat.
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That said, Fowler adds some around the league would lean toward new owner Josh Harris not making changes during his first season in charge. Ownership had not applied early-season pressure on Rivera, with Harris praising the veteran HC. But the long-term thinking points to a change. The timing here may be ultimately inconsequential. Whether the firing takes place in December or January, Rivera’s time as Commanders HC will likely wrap after four seasons. Two more losses will ensure the former Super Bowl HC will not post a winning season in four years at the helm.
Should Rivera be fired, it will mark the second time a new owner will have pulled the trigger on an ouster. If Rivera is axed during the upcoming Commanders bye, it will remind of the Panthers’ move four years ago. David Tepper officially became an NFL owner in May 2018, and while he gave Rivera that season, walking papers emerged 12 games into the 2019 slate — one that involved Cam Newton going down in Week 2 with a foot injury. Rivera, 61, is on track to be available again in 2024.
The Commanders have two-time HC Jack Del Rio and an interview circuit mainstay — OC Eric Bieniemy — on staff as interim options, in the event Harris decides to cut bait early. The Dan Snyder successor took over in August, and the Philadelphia 76ers owner — whose NBA franchise conducted a radical rebuild aimed around stockpiling draft assets during the 2010s — is believed to have played the lead role in driving the Commanders to not stop at just trading Sweat. The owner instructed his football ops staff to explore trading both D-ends. Less than an hour before the deadline, the 49ers acquired Young for only a third-round compensatory pick. This has certainly hurt Washington’s defense, though Del Rio’s unit was struggling on the whole before the trades.
Rivera did lead Washington to the playoffs in 2020, and despite being down to in-season pickup Taylor Heinicke, the team tested the eventual champion Buccaneers in the wild-card round. Though, Washington only went 7-9 — Rivera’s second sub-.500 playoff season, following a 7-8-1 2014 campaign in Charlotte. Washington needed Heinicke throughout the 2021 season, losing starter Ryan Fitzpatrick in Week 1. The team’s aggressive 2022 QB approach did not yield its top-tier targets, producing Carson Wentz. The Commanders bailed on Wentz after one injury-truncated season. Rather than make another big push for a veteran or attempt to draft a passer in Round 1, the Commanders committed to 2022 fifth-rounder Sam Howell.
It is unclear if Howell will definitively be back under center in 2024, though the North Carolina product is the NFL passing yardage leader. Howell is the only QB over 3,000 yards (3,038) presently. But he will almost definitely have a new head coach. With Harris also not in place yet when Bieniemy was hired, it is certainly possible the Commanders will have a new play-caller in 2024 as well.
Rivera’s biggest failures imho:
1) Not firing Jack Del Rio years ago
2) neglect of OL on the roster
3) Early round draft misses
4) overall roster construction-so many assets poured into D line with other glaring needs ignored for luxury picks
5) instability at the QB position-After 4 years you had to have found an answer at QB. Maybe it’s Howell, but if it is, then you’ve had 4 years to build a more complete roster to aid a 5th round 2nd year QB. You should’ve had a good OL, a capable defense in addition to offensive weapons at every position
is he head coach or GM?
draft busts and o-line woes plague almost every team
I think they’ve done pretty well with Howell.
I have him as a top 15 QB this year
He’s both. He has final say on personnel
then why do they have a GM?
agreed their drafts have been pathetic
and while the Commanders are pretty foreign to me, I know that Mike Tomlin also has final say on personnel , but that definitely doesn’t mean he’s gm or makes the picks, he can overrule certain moves.
by comparison Bill Belichick now and Chip Kelly of the Eagles were both literally HC/GM
Drafts have not been pathetic. The Redskins/Commies have hit on a bunch of middle round picks and struggled with the first round picks (Chase Young, Haskins, Davis, to name a few). Haskins was pre-Rivera though I think.
What’s been missing have been big swings at top tier offensive line prospects. The leftovers OL dooms what is otherwise a talented offensive roster.
Makes all the sense in the world for them to replace him with Bieniemy, no?
I think he deserves a shot at it. But someone who can completely rebuild the defense schematically needs to be brought in
No…….
No……. Absolutely Not.
With his rap sheet and history of bad decisions he shouldn’t be allowed to coach ankle biters. It would be a PR nightmare for new ownership of a team and fan base that has just endured 10+ years of bad news and decisions.
The man is a legend at Colorado University and yet he is banned from the campus. Things like this do not happen — Just because. Also, his decisions didn’t improve as a pro player or coach.
Always with the ‘fire the coach’ yet who’s the main hiring of players guy – normally the GM and in some cases influence comes from ownership verses coaches.
There’s a mentality within owners ‘I’ve build successful businesses and having a pro team is nothing but business’ yet they can lack knowledge of ‘football team’ building. Look to the Panthers, Raiders, Chargers, Jets and other teams with losing records.
It takes time to get players that gel and with free agent movement you don’t get to keep everyone you think performs well within your structure and you get guys that looked good in a system other than your yet they don’t blend.
GM & Owners need to establish good scouting and personnel evaluations to provide the assets coaches can use. Ron isn’t a bad coach he gives hus coordinators leash to do their jobs, Jack has a defensive push that needs the right players and Eric needs more time and the ‘so-called’ skill positions filled.
You do have a point. Obviously Rivera hasn’t produced many results, but you do wonder how much had to work with. This isn’t Brandon Staley, who has been handed an All-Pro members only club and lost consistently. Washington has had a culture issue that precluded it from winning for years. Rivera hopefully has done at least a little to address that, so that the next coach can build on it and finally elevate the team. I don’t think that Rivera has earned any votes of confidence, and his results haven’t given much confidence, but Harris needs to realize how tough the next coach is going to have it. It probably won’t be as tough as Rivera did, because Snyder is gone, but there’s still a lot of culture building that needs to happen.
We all knew that it wasn’t going to end well for Riverboat Ron in D.C. when he was hired. But, if anything, Harris should look to Carolina to see that his expectations should be tempered with patience when it comes to team building. He can still start moving other pieces into place with Rivera in place, after all. Bienemy is probably being evaluated right now, as are younger players for future help. The season is still ongoing, and outside coaches should be evaluated as the year continues so that Harris can see who impresses him. Patience has its place when you’re stepping into a new field, and Tepper should be able to show you what happens when you get impatient and try to demand your way into results.
Had Wentz delivered on his promise or Fitzpatrick not been injured in series two of game one, the Rivera might look very different. There’s an element of luck involved in NFL football as parity has overtaken the league.
It’s a fair point except for Rivera demanded and was given complete control over personnel when he was hired. So, if it’s not the coaching, it’s the roster……he’s in charge of that too.
Oh, no disagreement regarding Rivera’s lackluster results. But that was a tough assignment from the start, and I don’t know how many of us expected this experiment to ultimately succeed.
I think that the personnel demand was made more to protect against Snyder’s interference than anything else. I can understand that, given the reputation of Snyder (though, being outsiders, none of admittedly really know the situation completely). Even though I wouldn’t peg personnel as Rivera’s strength, which showed in Washington, I do understand the impetus for that request. Martin Mayhew was an average to below average GM in Detroit, but I don’t know how much he influenced/influences those decisions in Washington though. I’d still probably trust him more than Rivera if I had to put one in charge of personnel, for experience if nothing else. But all of that is purely hypothetical and/or speculative.
Point is, though, that we know that Rivera is not the future of the team. Harris should, however, understand (and maybe he does) that no matter how badly he wants it to change, it won’t do so overnight, or even in a season or two. It will take time, and patience. Unless they want to give Bienemy an audition, it may behoove them to let Rivera finish the year. Even if not, this is a culture building project that will take time. The hope is that Rivera at least would help set that up, because that’s his selling point as a coach, but that will remain to be seen after he’s gone.
My response was more to the OP’s comment. They seem to want to let Rivera completely off the hook because of the roster, which doesn’t make sense given it’s his roster. He’s not a skapegoat, he’s the architect.
But I do agree with what you’re saying here and on other comments. Rivera deserves some credit for moving the culture forward, and there’s still work to be done. He had a huge hole to dig out of, and he’s done a good job resetting a level of respect for the organization that was in the tank. I’d say he’s gotten us back to zero, in a good way. But we need someone to come in and win, and win consistently. It’s no longer a place that free agents and front office candidates avoid like the plague, and he deserves a lot of credit for that. I’d say Washington is arguably one of the best potential head coaching vacancies out there right now, given the cap room, young QB with potential, draft capital, and new ownership with both deep pockets and good reputation. That’s not a position this franchise has been in years.
My mistake. I do agree with your comment.
While I do agree that coaches sometimes take an unfair amount of the blame, I don’t see that as the case in this instance. Rivera has had complete control over the personnel he’s coaching. If he’s been saddled with players that don’t fit, it’s only because he’s chosen players that don’t fit the scheme. There’s also the infamous quote about Sam Howell…
“You can ask Stephanie, all we talked about was the quarterback, what the quarterback did, who he was. I kept saying, ‘—-, if I would have known this, I would have played him sooner.’” –Ron Rivera
He’s talking about a Quarterback that he drafted. If he didn’t have a clue in regards to any of those things, then why did you draft him?
Despite how it sounds, I’m not trying to trash Rivera as a HC here, either. He’s shown he can be a very good one. I just think he’s either gotten himself in over his head trying to do too much, or he’s checked out on this particular situation. Regardless, the franchise is going to need to make some sort of change. Maybe Ron should cede some power, allowing the franchise to bring in someone to run the personnel side of things? He could focus solely on coaching that way. For a coach of his stature, I fully realize that could be a bitter thing to take. The only other alternative is a parting of the ways between Ron and the franchise. They can’t maintain the status quo, however.
Fair enough. My main purpose here, as much as it may not seem to be, is not to defend Rivera necessarily. I mostly wanted to say that Harris should still remember that even though Rivera is not the team’s future, he should still take his time in finding a replacement and focus on that coach’s capabilities long term rather than focusing on getting Rivera out the door as soon as possible. Harris’ first coach will need to be someone who he can stand by long term, because there’s a lot of work to be done.
If Harris’ focus is more about “I need to fire this guy” rather than “I need to get a guy I can stand up for for years” then he could make the same mistakes as Tepper in Carolina. I don’t know if I am communicating this effectively, but I would encourage Harris to focus more on the team and less on Rivera himself-the future more than the immediate. Like I said, it was a tough job when Rivera got it. It still is, even though Washington will hopefully have a better owner and command staff that will set a better tone going forward from here on out. I probably focused too much on giving reasons why Rivera had it tough than I did making that point.
You’re correct. I think there is respect for him from new ownership, which is why he’s letting him finish out the season. However, he has had full control over the team for 4 seasons and the team looks the same every season. Collectively he has had 3 winning seasons out of 13 as a head coach. He’s had plenty of opportunity, so blaming others doesn’t apply.
I agree, very valid points. I’ll give him credit for a getting some results from some lackluster teams in certain instances, but when he should succeed, Rivera seems to regress to mediocre. Hopefully, though, he’s set the next regime up better culture wise than what he inherited (nothing against Jay Gruden; more towards the Allen/Snyder effect from up top).
Ron is gone. A new era is coming to DC.
If you’re paying attention the issues on the D have been on the LB Corp and the secondary which is playing way way too much zone…. Rookie QB last week and they made it very easy on him… that ones on Jack Del Rio no question
Seems defenses play zone more than man2. That leads the question, is this due to players steeped in zone during college and/or they’re just not an athletically gifted enough these days?
I don’t think that it’s athleticism on its own, with the consideration as well that man and zone capitalize on different skillsets sometimes. Either could use press coverage too, which usually requires some greater amount of strength, which is another factor to consider.
I think that you do have a point, though. Man puts a greater emphasis on a player’s instincts in many ways-that’s not to say that zone doesn’t involve instincts, but man is putting a defender in charge of anticipating the offensive player’s moves and can leave a defender alone in single coverage to be in the correct position. Zone relies a lot on discipline, as players have to resist the urge to leave their areas of responsibility and stay rigid in coverage in some sense. A lot of zone coverages, though, rely on speed, especially on the back end (or even for a linebacker in some zones that involve a deep middle). Larger zones=more speed. Zones can also rely heavily on corners to tackle, especially if they drop them into the flat to handle backs, screening receivers, or even sometimes tight ends that could end up there. James Bradberry is a good example of a good tackling corner who made his name doing that in Carolina.
I think that a lot of depends on what players grow up doing. I think that man is more basic for an individual player because it relies on a player’s ability to read his opponent and stay with him, but that zone is less adaptable and allows smart/aware quarterbacks to manipulate it if they have time, because they know where defenders will generally be. The zone does give the coach a little control I think, because he can dictate where every player should be. I think that in college, coaches mostly stick with the basics of either concept and rarely switch compared to the pros, because they only have a couple of years with each good player to teach it and the top programs’ strategies are usually to just out-athlete opponents.
I might be wrong though I’m thinking years past ‘man’ was the base defense and ‘zone’ was – a change up.
60-70s I saw more line of scrimmage contact as in ‘bump and run’ and I don’t know why it’s not used these days with the 5 yard rule. Knock ‘em off the route timing. Then again there’s ‘officiating’ you never really know what those fools are seeing or imagining.
That makes sense to me. Back then, most defenses DID play most of their guys on the LoS. The ‘85 Bears are a prime example, but it was much more true before that. Lombardi’s old 4-3 defenses were really more like 6 man fronts. Monte Kiffin’s refinement of Dungy’s Tampa 2 really popularized a lot of zone concepts around the league. A lot of other defenses, as far as I know, had done zones for certain players in their coverages in the past. The Tampa 2 was probably the pinnacle of zone base defenses, in my opinion, in the 90s with Dungy, and then Kiffin’s perfecting that right behind him.
From what I know, zone coverage started in the 60s, albeit very primitively. Teams would drop one or two safeties. Lombardi used to do that; he would have one safety cover the tight end (teams rarely ran more than one tight end on passing routes), and the other would just “play free”, which involved some freelancing from what I can gather. Teams started dropping three safeties as time went on, from the 60s to the 80s, with each playing a deep third of the field. All this time, the other defenders would usually play either man or rush.
In the 80s, offenses started throwing the ball more and running a lot more receivers on more complicated routes (think Dan Fouts and Don Coryell, for instance) that attacked different parts of the field. The Cover 2 type zones started here. More defenders started dropping into zones, to the point that every non rusher started having zone assignments. It’s all in an attempt to put defenders where offensive players could attack, which became more necessary as offenses started running more players on more types of routes, and as quarterbacks got more attuned to throwing with timing and precision. Of course, the rules got geared more to passing and the season got longer, which hurt the longevity of the old school run games. Tony Dungy and Monte Kiffin really influenced zone philosophies with the Tampa 2, because they set the precedent for committing fully to speed and rang-y players, even at the expense of size.
What kills zone coverages today are the offensive players starting to freelance. Wes Welker used to be notorious for this-being really good at reading a zone and not really running a route, but instead going to a spot. Kelce is probably the best example right now. He goes wherever he wants based on what he sees much of the time. Of course, this ONLY works if your quarterback has a feel for you to find you. Mahomes makes that possible.
In response to that, match coverages are a big thing. Defenders read the actions of an offensive player, and act based on that. It’s an “if my player does x, then I must play y” sort of deal. Not every defender does that, because you need smart and quick thinking defenders, but most defenses seem to incorporate that to some degree. Belichick and Nick Saban used to do this years ago, and now a lot of coaches do it to some degree. But yeah, zones used to be niche, but they’ve evolved as the passing game has become more prevalent and the rules have favored it, as well as the longer schedule rewarding that.
I passed on part of the 70s – was busy in another country.
Thanks for the lesson explained your points well.
Receivers seem to not adjust within zone very well. I get that Kelce has free rein and a QB that makes ridiculous throws.
Just think that giving a WR or TE a ‘punch’ at the line would buck up DBs on my team. They’ve been burned by over the middle too much.
I imagine Ron could get an interview for a DC job with his old team the Bears, but perhaps he has enough sense to avoid that mess in Chicago.
Rivera isn’t the problem, you can’t win in the NFL with mediocre QB play. If you want to fire a HC then do it on a team that has a good franchise QB but still isn’t winning. Otherwise disrupting continuity every 2-3 years does more harm than good.
So if we want to address the QB situation….. I don’t believe that the Haskins debacle was on Ron as that situation was handed to him. The injury to Alex Smith was not a Rivera created issue, even the comeback as the medical staff should have stopped that. Getting hung up on Heinicke made him a fan favorite. I honestly think that Carson Wentz was a favor to Irsay as both PR and a monetary move. Sam Howell is the classic rookie starter to save my job move.
As Jack Del Rio would point out, this has nothing to do with the defense and trading of key players for draft capital and cap space.
Anyone actually wasting time watching D whip up on the Redskins