For struggling NFL teams, the end of the regular season triggers an annual exercise in bloodletting known around the league as Black Monday.<\/p>\n
This year proved no exception.<\/p>\n
After failing to make the 14-team play-off series that will culminate with next month’s Super Bowl, the Cleveland Browns, Las Vegas Raiders and Arizona Cardinals showed their coaches the door on Monday, local time.<\/p>\n
The Browns parted ways with Kevin Stefanski after six seasons, one day after the team put the finishing touches on a 5-12 win-loss campaign that left them in last place in the AFC North division for a second consecutive year.<\/p>\n
Stefanski led Cleveland to two play-off appearances and became only the second coach in team history to record multiple seasons with at least 11 regular-season wins.<\/p>\n
He was also named NFL Coach of the Year twice.<\/p>\n
“We appreciate all his (Stefanski) hard work and dedication to our organisation,” Browns managing and principal partners Dee and Jimmy Haslam said in a statement.<\/p>\n
“But our results over the last two seasons have not been satisfactory and we believe a change at the head coaching position is necessary.”<\/p>\n
The Raiders sacked Pete Carroll after he went 3-14 in his first season with the team, which was tied for the worst mark in the league with the Cardinals, New York Jets and Tennessee Titans.<\/p>\n
Carroll, who won a Super Bowl as head coach of the Seattle Seahawks in 2014, had signed a three-year deal with the Raiders last January.<\/p>\n
Raiders owner Mark Davis said general manager John Spytek and minority owner Tom Brady would be in charge of identifying the team’s next coach.<\/p>\n
The Cardinals moved on from Jonathan Gannon after three losing seasons and one day after their dreadful 3-14 campaign ended with a nine-match losing streak.<\/p>\n
Gannon went 15-36 during his tenure and the team missed the play-offs each year.<\/p>\n
A day before the Browns, Raiders and Cardinals sacked their coaches, the Atlanta Falcons got the ball rolling.<\/p>\n
The Falcons parted ways with head coach Raheem Morris and general manager Terry Fontenot after the team extended its play-off drought to eight seasons.<\/p>\n
The head coaches of the Tennessee Titans and New York Giants, Brian Callahan and Brian Daboll, respectively, were both fired during the season.<\/p>\n
Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For struggling NFL teams, the end of the regular season triggers an annual exercise in bloodletting known around…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394444,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[1258,64,63,1238,187821,41434,1250,593,30575,85],"class_list":["post-394443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-arizona-cardinals","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cleveland-browns","tag-jonathan-gannon","tag-kevin-stefanski","tag-las-vegas-raiders","tag-nfl","tag-pete-carroll","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}