The duality of this cycle's coaching hires, and the moves still to come, with Jourdan Rodrigue
The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL
The Athletic
4.6 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 22 January 2026
⏱️ 72 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Nearly every coaching hire looks fine on paper. Many of them look good. Great, even! But we know not all of them turn out great or good or even fine. So how could each hire in this year's cycle go right, or go wrong? Robert Mays and Jourdan Rodrigue, Athletic NFL senior writer, go over all of them on this episode of The Athletic Football Show. After that, they play a game of "What this job is, and what this job ins't" with the openings still remaining, and highlight who they believe are the best candidates for each of those positions.
Rundown (timestamps are approximate)
5:03 Where John Harbaugh and the Giants could go right, where it could go wrong
15:26 Where Kevin Stefanski and the Falcons could go right, where it could go wrong
30:09 Where Jeff Hafley and the Dolphins could go right, where it could go wrong
36:34 Where Robert Saleh and the Titans could go right, where it could go wrong
44:17 What is, and what isn't, the Cardinals job?
50:23 What is, and what isn't, the Bills job?
58:26 What is, and what isn't, the Ravens job?
1:02:33 What is, and what isn't, the Steelers job?
1:05:18 Mike McDaniel as the Chargers OC
1:11:17 Drew Petzing as the Lions OC
1:12:52 Robert on the Browns job
1:16:17 Robert on the Raiders job
Connect with The Athletic Football Show
Please take our listener survey: theathletic.com/survey26
YT: https://www.youtube.com/@TAFootballShow
Podcasts: https://podfollow.com/the-athletic-football-show/view
X: https://x.com/TA_FootballShow
IG: https://www.instagram.com/tafootballshow
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tafootballshow
Discord: http://discord.gg/theathleticfootballshow
Call us: 847-448-0701
Email us: athleticfootballshow@gmail.com
Host: Robert Mays
With: Jourdan Rodrigue
Executive Producer: Michael Beller
Video Producer: Katy Duffy
Audio Producer: Michael Beller
Social Producer: Scott Krinch
Follow Robert on Bluesky: @robertmays.bsky.social
Follow Derrik on Bluesky: @qbklass.bsky.social
Follow Dave on Bluesky: @davehelman.bsky.social
Follow Robert on X: @robertmays
Follow Derrik on X: @QBKlass
Follow Dave on X: @davehelman_
Theme song: Haunted
Written by Dylan Slocum, Trevor Dietrich, Ruben Duarte, Kyle McAulay, and Meredith VanWoert / Performed by Spanish Love Songs
Courtesy of Pure Noise / By arrangement with Bank Robber Music, LLC
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Athletic Football Show. |
| 0:05.4 | I'm Robert Mays. |
| 0:07.0 | Stick in with the coaching carousel on the midweek show this week. |
| 0:10.9 | Really nothing else we could do. |
| 0:12.3 | So much stuff has happened over the last seven days. |
| 0:15.4 | And I mean, there are coaching hires that we haven't even hit on the show. |
| 0:18.0 | Kevin Stefanski, Robert Sala, going to the Titans. |
| 0:21.1 | So Jordan Roderig joined me today to run through the hires that have happened. And for those, |
| 0:25.9 | we played something of a little game where I wanted to look at recent success stories that |
| 0:31.3 | kind of align with the archetype of that coach and the coach that these teams hired |
| 0:35.2 | and recent failures. You know, what is the best case scenario |
| 0:38.4 | for this based on some recent examples and what is the worst case? So we did that for all four of the |
| 0:42.8 | hires that have already happened. And then for the jobs that are open, we also kind of gamified it a little |
| 0:47.7 | bit. We went through each of the jobs and talked about what they are, what they are not. And when you |
| 0:53.7 | consider both of those things, who is the right person to get these jobs at the |
| 0:58.4 | end of the day? |
| 0:59.0 | So really enjoyed this conversation with Jordan. |
| 1:02.1 | Let's get to it right now. |
| 1:07.8 | Joining us today, a senior writer at The Athletic, also a member of the NFL daily podcast team it's our |
| 1:14.1 | old friend jordan roddrey jordan how you doing hi robert i'm good i was just in your city uh i loved it but also |
| 1:20.6 | almost died from wind chill no exaggeration not being dramatic so now i'm soft and back in L.A. |
| 1:45.3 | So how are you? I spent five years in Los Angeles and I can't tell you how long it took me to get to a place where I was fine being outside in Chicago in the winter. So the fact that you parachuted in for the weekend and couldn't handle it, it says nothing about you. I want you to know that. Thank you. I really needed to hear that actually. We're spending today scooping up more of the coaching news. We do show every day and I still, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Athletic, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Athletic and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.