The Ringer NFL Show - John Harbaugh Fired! Who Replaces Him, And Where Does He Land Next?

Episode Date: January 7, 2026

Sheil is joined by The Ringer’s own Diante Lee to share their instant reactions to the news of John Harbaugh being fired by the Ravens as their head coach. (00:00) John Harbaugh fired! (1:56) Why did the Ravens have to fire John Harbaugh? (14:10) Who should be the next coach of the Ravens? (22:19) What’s next for John Harbaugh? The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Host: Sheil Kapadia Guest: Diante Lee Producer: Chris Sutton Video Editor: Stefano Sanchez Social: Kiera Givens Production Supervision: Conor Nevins and Arjuna Ramgopowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Ringer NFL show. I'm Shield Capadia. Breaking news. Big news in the NFL. Ravens fire. John Harbaugh, after an 18-year stint. We're going to talk about every aspect of this story. Was it the right move for the Ravens?

Who will be the next guy to coach Lamar Jackson? And where does John Harbaugh end up? Does he get one of these head coach openings around the NFL? To talk about it all, we've got my friend from the ringer. Deontay Lee, let's take a break. We come back. We talk John Harbaugh. The Ringer NFL show is presented by Fandul.

Fan Duel's got it all. Same game parlay's quick bets for jumping in live and your way so you can build the bet that fits your play. Plus, don't miss out on the NFL playoffs all month long. Download the Fandual app or head to fandul.com slash ringer NFL to get started. 21 plus and present in select states or 18 plus and present in D.C., Kentucky or Wyoming, gambling problem. Call 1-800 gambler or visit RG-Hallp.com. Call 1-88-7-8-8-8-9-77 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut. Back on the ring of NFL show with my friend Deonté Lee. We got the breaking news. John Harbaugh out as the Ravens head coach. We're going to tackle everything.

Was this the right move? Who should the Ravens hire? And where will John Harbaugh end up? But Deonti, I saw a tweet from yours right after the news, broke and you said had to happen, had to. So explain why you think the Ravens had to make this move. I mean, things just kind of run their term, right? Like, I think that this is actually one of the few times. And there's been a lot of heat, right, on John Harbaugh, on Lamar Jackson. I would say really, since the 2022 AFC championship game, I think everybody has kind

of been white-knuckling a little bit with this job. Right. And definitely the heat cranked up after you lose to the bills last season. And then, you know, you go into this year, Lamar gets hurt, all of that. And it takes them so long to just get back to a place where they can compete. And I think I'm at the 2023, not AFC championship game, not 2022. Where I just think that the thing that run is course, right? Like if there was one thing that I, if there was one word I had to use to describe what we were watching in Baltimore, it just felt stale.

Right? It felt like the same solutions not working. for the same sets of problems over and over again. We are still looking at a team that has had issues with the dressing offensive line. We're looking at a team that still is struggling to utilize its wide receiver core, and its wide receiver core is probably just not developed

at the rate that we would like to see. We're still seeing this team kind of waiting in the water of trying to find a defensive identity after Mike McDonald. And you have these losses when you have these double-digit leads. And I think that the way the season opened in the first two weeks, ended up telling the story for what ultimately undid John Harbaugh's tenure. Not a bad coach. I think that on the market, he will be a very big draw.

But right now in Baltimore, I think that they just need to turn the page. And now it's one of those welcome to the real NFL moments. You don't get to, you don't really get to keep a coach for two decades the way the Baltimore has these days, right? And with the $75 million cap hit at quarterback, that means now that this has to be built and run the quarterback trying to get you over the hump. And I don't know if that was happening to maximal effect in Baltimore. for the last couple of years.

Yeah, I think two key things when I heard you describe that. Because at first you're describing it, and I'm going, John Harbaugh is not the GM. You're talking about O-line, you're talking about some of the other roster shortcomings. And that is not, this is a very, the way they're set up is Eric DeCosta is the GM. He loves the draft. He's talked about the draft. He takes great pride in putting together a roster.

And John Harbaugh, even though he's been there for 18 years, he is the coach, not the GM. So I think that's worth pointing out. But I think you nailed it. This isn't about John Harbaugh's a bad coach. John Harbaugh stinks. This is about in the NFL when you're in a place for 18 years. Sometimes when you're in a place for five years.

That's Bill Walsh. He's like, that is a long time in the NFL. And sometimes to your point, it just runs its course. The message is getting stale. The whole thing you need a little bit of a change. And it doesn't guarantee anything. And it does remind me of John Harbaugh's mentor, Andy Reid, in Philadelphia, there for 14 years.

Now Harbaugh won a Super Bowl. Reid never won a Super Bowl. But it was the same thing at the time. It wasn't that Andy Reid turned into a bad coach. It was that we've had a long run here. It's time for a change for both of us. Good luck. And we'll see what happens next.

That's really what this is about. That's one. And then two, the Lamar Jackson thing, we can't like, you know, that is a huge storyline here for a number of reasons. One could be because were Lamar Jackson and John Harbaugh on the same page? Was that relationship strain? The reporting started, I think really amplified. in the last few weeks here about, hey, Lamar Jackson, his nutrition habits.

You and I talked about it last week. Hey, he's sleeping in meetings. And like, is there a disconnect between head coach and quarterback? Because we know how the NFL works. When you have a quarterback with one multiple MVP's and is under 30, and if he doesn't see eye to eye with the coach, it's not a very difficult decision to know which direction you're going to go in. And if you're the Ravens, you look at this and say,

we've had a great run with Lamar Jackson, John Harbaugh. but do we want this to be the only person whoever coaches Lamar Jackson in his prime? Or do we want to go in a different direction? And obviously, they chose going in a different direction. So listen, I was just looking up. Since John Harbaugh became their head coach through various quarterbacks,

through various coordinators, through various rosters, fourth best winning percentage in the NFL, won a Super Bowl in the playoffs 12 out of 18 years. So it was a great run. But this to me is just that it's time for a change more than anything else. 100% like I said. I mean, the term on this is firing because that is accurate in the reporting.

But ultimately, I think that he can leave Steve Boshadis off with a handshake and a hug and say, hey, man, like we did some great things together. We've been very close in the Lamar Jackson era. You're going to get another job. We'll be just fine as an organization. I think that it's probably just in everybody's best interest that we go in another direction. Maybe. The handshakes and the hugs are when the camera's on or when. 100%. being like to reporters. Absolutely. You know, when you get in the house, when you get in the car,

it might not feel the exact same, right? And I do think that if you're John Harbaugh, you should be frustrated. I think it's totally fair if you're frustrated leaving this building, knowing all the opportunity that was in this organization's hands over the last half decade and to have squandered most of it, right? It's not just, oh, you know, Baltimore ended up on the wrong side of a bracket or, you know, oh, a kick bounced off of, you know, an upright.

And that was the difference between going to the Super Bowl. and not. For the most part, we walk away from most of these seasons feeling like Baltimore left points on the field. Baltimore did not meet the moment when they needed to. Some of that's Omar Jackson. Some of that's coaching. Some of that's the supporting cast around the both of them. Some of that has been roster issues, as you pointed out with Eric DeCosta in some of the ways that they've approached the draft and free agency. I do think if you want to be the most optimistic version of a Ravens fan, you take this to say, wake up call for everybody. We have to change the way that we've operated. We can't do what we did in 2005.

2006 in 2010, 2011. We can't do those things anymore because that just does not serve us in this era. We have got to kind of get with the times and pull this thing up to the way that most other teams are operating in this decade where, yeah, you're going to have to spend to bring an outside talent. You might have to be a little bit more aggressive in the draft for a team that's typically picking, you know, in that playoff area, right? You're picking in the back end of the first round.

You might have to be a little bit more aggressive. You're going to have to take more chances on players. I think that this should be a signal that the way the Baltimore typically does business, doesn't have to change wholesale, but does need to be tweaked in some pretty major ways. Yeah, the playoff stuff you mentioned, I was thinking about it, like the excuses that we make for Lamar Jackson, and I think you and I are probably on the same page, that most of them are valid. There are things out of his control that have happened in those games. But don't those apply to John Harbaugh?

Like, Zayflower's fumbling, you know, against the chiefs. Is that a coaching issue or is that a randomness? issue. Mark Andrews dropping a two-point conversion. Is that a coaching issue or is that just like if football's weird sometimes? Tyler Loop missing that field goal. That's the very interesting part of this. If he makes that field goal on Sunday night in a wild game against the Steelers, are we having this conversation. Maybe we are. Maybe the Ravens win. Not about this coach. It might have been the coach on the other side of this game. I mean, that's crazy, isn't it? You can be in a place for 18 years and they missed field goal from 44 yards out.

Could be the difference between whether you're moving on or not. So this isn't, I'm not going the route of, oh, my God, he was wrong. Then you're in a place for 18 years. You don't win. I understand why the Ravens did this. We'll see if they get a better coach. Not the last thing, though, before we move on to that, Deonté, this report I saw from the athletics, Diana Rossini.

I don't know if you saw this or not. Yeah. This is a developing story as we record. She said a key pressure point in the John Harbaugh dismissal, according to those familiar with today's discussions was his refusal to entertain any conversations about potentially moving on from offensive coordinator Todd Munkin. And she says that Cliff Kingsbury, who got fired by the commanders in a wild day, is potentially a name to watch for the Ravens.

And my ears perked up when I heard that because I thought, man, I don't really feel like Todd Bunkin was the issue with this football team. And so I do wonder just about a guy like, you know, Eric DeCost, feeling the pressure and other people feeling the pressure, we got to win a Super Bowl with the Mar Jackson. And do they have the answers or do they not have the answers? Can they identify what the issues are or can they not identify what the issues are? What did you make of that report about Munkin? I think it doesn't necessarily pass my smell test.

I think that the framing on that feels off. I'm not saying that Diana Rusina's reporting is off. I'm saying the feeling on the wording of that feels off to me. What my read is is that this was probably Eric DeCosta saying, hey, I have a guy for you to run our offense. And John Harbaugh may be saying, if I'm the one running this program, I'm telling you who I want to be my offensive coordinator.

I don't know if this was particular to Todd Monkin. This might have been Eric Dacosta trying to pull a Howie Roseman and saying, hey, man, if you want to keep this gig, as long as you want to keep this gig, I'm going to have, you know, this is my $75 million quarterback, right, for like a better term. And this is my roster for like we're a better term.

This might have been kind of a pulling rank maybe type of thing. And maybe John Harbaugh says, hey, I'm not operating that way. And now you kick that up the chain to the team owner and the team owner has to make a decision. I do think it's tricky. That's where you might feel really sour if you're John Harbaugh. Because if I'm him, I'm looking at this and saying, hey, in my 18 years,

we go to the playoffs all the time. I basically never have a bad team. Why does Eric, Eric DeCosta is an Ozzie Newsom, right? Like, respectfully. And I like Eric Costa. I think he's made up of the right kind of stuff. I think his approach is right when you hear him talk about. about free agency and how he values draft picks and all of those things and trying to retain

the talent you have in your building for as long as possible. I think all of those are effective tent polls to build a sustainable franchise today. However, I don't know if Eric DeCosta and the successes that he's had in walking those things out necessarily grants you the right to come in and say to John Harbaugh, who's a Super Bowl champion and is one of the best Ravens coach, if not the best Ravens coach of all time, to say you can't have this gig anymore. If you have this gig, you have to do on my term specifically. And again, if that's where you kind of have that parting of ways, and I think ultimately you do have to turn the page as an organization.

Yeah, I think more reporting will come out, not the last time we're going to be talking about this. Let's take a break and then get to the million dollar question, whereas Deonté might have said the $75 million question, who is going to coach Lamar Jackson and the Ravens and get them over the hump? We'll do that when we come back. The Ringer NFL show is brought to you by Fandul football fans.

We've waited all season for this. It's time to flip the switch to playoff mode on Fandul, America's number one sports book. Right now, all Fandual customers can get in on the action with a wildcard reward for the NFL wildcard round. Just pick your card and you can win up to a 100% profit boost. Head to fandual.com slash ringer NFL for a chance to double your winnings for the NFL wild card round. Play your game with Fandual, an official sports betting partner of the NFL playoffs. 21 plus and present in select states or 18 plus and present in D.C.,

Kentucky or Wyoming, opt-in-required. Rewards are non-m withdrawal ball restrictions apply, including bonus and token expiration, leg requirements, and max-wager amount. See terms at sportsbook. Fandul.com. Gambling problem?

Call 1-800 gambler or visit RG-Help.com. Call 1-888-78-9-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut. All right, we're back on the ringer NFL show. Deonti, this is easily the best job available by my estimation. You know, stable ownership. They'll stick with a coach for a long time if he's doing a good job. You have a GM in place. So even, you know, some of the not perfect, as we just alluded to,

but I still think a good GM has the right philosophy. They've been a good team. And most importantly, you don't have to answer the question that gets coaches hired or fired in the NFL, which is, what's your plan at quarterback? Because you have a quarterback who has two MVP's. under his belt. Who should the Ravens be calling to say this would be a great option for an upgrade for a guy who can get us over the hump and replace John Harbaugh?

Well, to the point that you made to open up this segment, right? Like, this is one of those jobs where if you're a head coach in search or you're a coordinator in search, you call your agent and say, whatever date you just said with X team, I need you to move that. I need my next week to be open because if Baltimore calls, I'm on the first thing smoking to Baltimore. I need to be able to get in there if they want to interview me

and I want to get in there as early as possible. I do think that because their quarterback situation is secure, this actually opens up the door for them to take considerations that you might not if you were Tennessee and you have a young quarterback who's not established yet. I think a place like Tennessee, you want to be very focused on my head coach needs to be on lockstep with my quarterback. I think in Baltimore, really your head coach's job is to go into Lamar,

is that Marine Lamarge acting into the office and say, What do you want to do with this offense? And then I will go try to find an offensive coordinator to maximize that, right? Like, you don't want to mess. There's no need to reinvent the wheel. So I think that if you're a defensive coach, this actually would be a great opportunity for you to come in and compete pretty early. So I put it out on the tweet right before we jumped on saying that to me,

the sequence in one way or another should probably be something like Brian Flores, Jesse Minter, and Kevin Stifansky is my top three. And you can maybe swap one of those guys out for Robert Sala. Right? Your mileage may vary on how you feel about. who owns the blame for the failures in New York, right? But I would say you want to call Jesse Mentor because he's been in the building. He knows Baltimore.

He was one of those guys, you know, like Mike McDonald, that you re-home to Michigan when Jim Harbaugh was at Michigan, hey, go learn how to call a defense, go learn what it's like to be in that chair to have to make those calls. And then when you're ready, we'll bring you back. And then Jim gets an NFL job and he brings Jesse with them, right? So it worked out that way. I would say if it's not going to be Jesse Mentor, then maybe you go call a guy like Brian Flores, he was probably the most tenuous name on this list for some people because of the

failings that happened in Miami, right? You obviously have the disconnect, but to a tongue of Iloa, this is to say nothing of the open litigation that's still being brought against the NFL and a giant specifically, right, because of all the Bill Belichick, text message drama about who did and didn't get that head coaching gig. And then there's also the Dolphins piece of it where he's talking about potential collusion with the team owner to try to bring Tom Brady out of retirement, et cetera, et cetera, right? I think that that would be a disqualifying factor for Flores for a lot of places. I think Baltimore is maybe one of the only organizations that can insulate a head coaching

candidate from all of that outside noise and just allow you to coach football. And then the third name on my list is Kevin Stefanski. And to me, that's like a stability. You know what you're going to get stylistically in terms of your offense, two-time coach of the year. If you're going for something that I think is probably more in line with what you just had with Harbaugh and maybe just a fresher voice with a similar message, I think Stafansky would probably be a good pick in that regard.

Those are the three that I had at the top of my list. As you were saying it, I was working it out in my head. Who do I actually think? The Minter thing makes a lot of sense to me, to your point. NFL organizations, they like familiarity. The Ravens, they would like to have a coach. This doesn't always work out, but I'm sure they would love to have a coach who is there for a long time. So from a personality standpoint, to have somebody who's been in your building,

who you know just how do they operate day to day, who do they get along with, what are they like from a relationship perspective, what are their philosophies on coaching, on team building, all those things. With Jesse Minter, there's not a lot of guesswork there. You're not meeting him for the first time. You've seen him do those things. You know he can coach a good defense. He's done that with the chargers there.

So that I think would be appealing to me if you feel like he's got those leadership skills. And then that goes back to the report we mentioned in the beginning. I wonder who does Jesse Minter? Because if you're a defensive coach, you have to say, here's who I'm bringing in as offensive coordinator. We're going to have a top five offense with Lamar Jackson. And who is that higher going to be? I was going to say, we don't have him tied to any offensive name.

That makes it clear coming in the door. So that's a little tricky. So if you're like, you have to think about who's putting the pieces together. And it's Eric DeCosta is leading the way with the owner, Steve Bishotti. But I think DeCosta probably looks at this and says, man, if we strike out on this head coaching higher, I might not get another one. Now, he might.

He's been there for a long time, but I'm sure he's feeling that a little bit. So is there some kind of partnership between, hey, he has an affinity for Cliff Kingsbury. Let's bring in Jesse Minter as the head coach. And now we got a good sort of new foundation, fresh ideas here that makes sense. Brian Flores, you know,

I would have to know, like what did he kind of learn from that experience in Miami, just in terms of culture and relationships with players. But just on paper, I can just picture him coaching that Ravens defense and we're just like, man, they are tough to deal with for the next however long. It almost reminds me like identity.

Like identity fit? I mean one for one. Organization, absolutely. Yeah, it almost reminds me like buddy Ryan, Randall Cunningham, the Eagles. The defense is going to be sick. Quarterback's great. Hey, we'll figure it out and we'll be good enough

to get to the playoffs. Right, but he would have to answer the same question about offensive coordinator. And then Kevin Stefanski's interesting. I could see that being a fit in terms of just, all right, let's give this guy a second chance or more stable organization. He's going to be a good voice for us. He's going to work with us. He's analytically minded.

All those things. I could see that one making sense as well, even though, as I like to point out, Deonte, the Browns did go eight and 26 the last two years and they had the worst offense in the NFL and back to back seats. I know it's not a great situation, but I feel like I have to bring that up every time Stefanski's name gets back. mentioned here. So I think those are some good names to keep an eye on. It's going to be a coveted job, to your point, any head coaching candidate who's getting interviews is going to be like, get me an interview there because I think it's a more attractive job than all the other ones out there. All right. Go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. The last thing I was going to say, because I kind of have, I mean, this is one of those things the longer I stare at it, the more I like it for Brian

Flores. I will say on top of everything that we've listed as a potential sticking point with him, I think maybe the biggest when you talk about offensive philosophy, offensive approach, is that you're coming from Minnesota where you know the show is Kevin O'Connell's, right? And so much of the McVeigh tree has been plucked over the years that now you probably do have some legitimate concerns. Like, there is no next guy coming up through Minnesota right now that is clearly going to be, you know, he might be the quarterback's coach or maybe he's the run game coordinator. And you just know the same way it was on Mike McDaniel and San Francisco, like this is going to be the next guy. and you can go get a jumpstart on bringing him in by promoting him to OC

instead of him staying in his current role with the team that he's at. So that to me, now, here's one thing I will throw at you. If you get a guy like Brian Flores, and I think maybe we'll get to this in the second half of the conversation, maybe you start taking a peek over at Miami and wondering if that head coach comes available, if he can run your offense. And now you've got those two guys maybe as your combo.

That to me is something that would be a big draw, not just for Brian Flores, but for any defensive-minded coach. I think Robert Salah will probably be a good fit for that because they come from the same staff in San Francisco, right? Like, I think that there are some ways you should look at this where the door is open for you to bring in a defensive-minded guy. But like you said, you have to have perfect clarity on exactly what this offensive identity is going to be if your head coach is not the one who was in the meeting room with the quarterback, helping him get up to speed or whatever the new scheme would be. Yeah, such a big question is, does this reporting about Munkin and K. Does DeCosta, does he want to pick the guy who runs the offense for the most important player in the organization?

Or is that just, all right, he would prefer. But, hey, if you come in and you tell me you've got someone else, that's good too. I mean, that's going to be a very important storyline to follow with this Ravens head coaching hire. All right. Last thing. Now what for John Harbaugh? Because this is a bad group of head coaching candidates. I've been saying it for weeks.

We talked about it with Pat Dardy on the week. on the show this week. I mean, I saw before we came on, I'll do respect to him, but Jason Garrett's getting an interview with the Tennessee Titans, which might tell you all you need to know about what kind of...

By the way, back in the day, Deont, I don't know if people remember this. I was working in Baltimore at the time. The Ravens were trying to hire Jason Garrett instead of John Harbaugh, and Jerry Jones gave him the back and said, stick around as our OC, and you'll be the head coach eventually,

and then they settled on John Harbaugh over Jason Garrett. a twist I can break out here. 18 years later that, you know, younger Shield Capadia remembers from his early days in sports journalism. But now what for John Harbaugh? Because you got six openings that are not the Ravens.

So seven total, six others. You got the Browns, the Titans, the Raiders, the Giants, the Falcons, and the Cardinals. I personally think every one of those teams should be calling John Harbaugh and say, we want you to interview for this job. And I could see him being a good hire

for any of those. But there were two that really stood out to me when I was looking at this. One is the Giants. The Giants have failed over and over and over and over again with absurd head coaching hires ever since Tom Coughlin's been gone. And now you have a guy who's going to bring stability, professionalism, who's going to raise the floor of your organization. And by the way, if you want to move on from Joe Shane in a year, you can do that because they're holding on to him now. So I thought the Giants really made sense to me. me here as a possible destination for John Harbaugh. If you're Harbaugh, that's like, all right, this is an organization that I can go to

if I bring them to the playoffs. I'm a hero. So that's one. And then the second one, Deonté, that I thought about, was the Atlanta Falcons, which might not strike everyone as the perfect fit, but there's only one spot among these six where there's no head coach and there's no GM. And so if you're John Harbaugh and you say, hey, I've got a guy, I got a guy somewhere that I want to pair with me as the GM.

Maybe you want more personnel control and you say, hey, I want to run the show. If this is going to be my second stop and my last stop, I want to pick the players. I want to make decisions on the draft. Do you have that kind of leverage? Maybe you do with the place like Atlanta. You say, I'm going to bring someone in to run the scouting department. But in the contract, final say, John Harbaugh on all these decisions. So that's the other one that made sense to me.

What do you think about Harbaugh's next stop? Because I think he's coaching in the NFL next year somewhere. I do too. I think it would be wise for him to get right back into it, right? He's one of those names to me where you take too much time away, especially if Baltimore are successful. He's in his 60s. He looks young, but yeah, he's in his 60s.

You don't have forever. And what you don't want to do is wait for the perfect opening. And then Baltimore makes a higher, they go make a deep playoff run. And then it looks like confirmation of whatever the narrative is that's out there about you and not being able to get over the hump. So if I'm ranking those three, which are also my top three for him,

I would say number one is Atlanta because of the power vacuum, right? It's the same reason why we were talking about Bill Belichick a few years ago, really trying to angle for Atlanta because there was a power vacuum there at the time as well. And that was with Terry Fonten though, who obviously Bill Belichick would have tried to supersede in terms of, you know, making decisions. But to me, if you're John Harbaugh, you can go to a place like Atlanta and you know that the talent is already set there. Obviously, there are some issues to work out with your quarterback situation.

Michael Pennix coming back from another knee injury, another knee surgery, you know, so you don't know exactly what the status of him, what his status is going to be. And then you have Kurt Cousins, who I'm not sure what we're going to see at nearing 40, you know, getting even closer to 40 if he does stick around in Atlanta, if the plan is to keep him because Michael Pennix has hurt. So that part's not perfect, but everything else there is kind of headed in the right direction, right? Like Rahim Moore's getting fired.

Ultimately, I think, was a Terry Fontenow's got to go in this roster, is maybe not as far along as we wanted it to be under that regime. So, you know, Rahim Mors just kind of get swept up in the change that's happening there. If John Harbaugh is there, you can take a Bejan Robinson, a Drake London, you can take an AJ Terrell, you can take your Jesse Bates and all these young pass ratchers and feel like in the NFC South, I can go 10 and 7, and we will probably be, and we will be hosting a playoff game, probably, right? And you should feel really good about that.

I think that after that you would probably look at New York, again, from a personality and identity to what the organization is looking for perspective, I think there's pretty good alignment there, right? Like, they have been chasing the ghost of Bill Parcells, really, for a while. And that's what brought in a Tom Coughlin type. And then obviously they went and got Joe, you know, they got Joe Judge after that, kind of chasing in that image. And they've been doing that for decades now, right?

If it hasn't been Tomlin, it hasn't worked. Or Coughlin, excuse me, haven't been Tom Coughlin. it hasn't really worked for them. So to me, I think you can go there as Harbaugh, and I think that you're going to find a good match between your personality and ultimately what this team wants to be. You have a young quarterback, which is going to open up some opportunities

from a team-building perspective, which I think you'd be really comfortable with. And then for me, and I kind of wanted to throw this at you with Tennessee, my hang-up with the Titans isn't Cam Ward at all, right? Like, I think Cam Ward's going to end up being a star. My hang-up is that ownership has changed their front office structure every single year since they fired John Robinson.

It's been either a new guy or a change in roles. And to me, that is like the number one signal that the people in the building don't feel confident in what they're doing or don't know what they're doing altogether. So if I'm Harbaugh, low expectations, young quarterback, I think from a strictly on-field perspective, you'd probably feel good about that because you don't have to come in guns blazing and feel like you have to prove anything. The issue, though, is that it feels like, Amy Adams Strunk every year is making some wild overreaction to whatever went wrong the year prior.

And if you're an older coach, that's probably not stepping into an immediate winning organization. That probably puts you on the chopping block first, right? Because it seems like everybody there is trying to politic for their job on a yearly basis. So that's kind of where I'm at with those landing spots. And then the fourth one comes back to what I said in the last segment. I think if you're Miami, you might have legitimately waited to see if you could trade Mike McDaniel to another spot. I think now if a guy like John Harbaugh is available,

wouldn't you just give your current head coach's walking papers and bring in a guy? There's been some reporting that, yeah, he, Stephen Ross, thinks highly of John Harbaugh, so that is interesting. If I were Stephen Ross, I mean, that's the kind of head coach you can hire, and now I can turn my back on the on-field operation. And I know John Harbaugh is a professional and a winner. He's probably what the organization thought they were getting in Nick Sabin

two decades ago, honestly, right? You get this guy, go get the GM that he asked, for you start building this team in that light. That's kind of the way that I would look at it. He's going to have to kind of shovel through the shovel up shit's creep a bit, right, to get to get to the other side of this thing because of their roster issues and what the cap implications are going to be after you end up waving Tyreek Hill and I know the reporting has been out there that the same might happen with Tua Tuaahang of Aloha.

But to me if you're John Harbaugh, again, low expectations. It's going to be your operation 100% of the way. I think that that's the best landing spot for a guy like Harbaugh. It doesn't have to be someplace where you have to go prove that you can win a Super Bowl because everybody knows that you're capable. I just think you want to be someplace where the pressure is not going to be near as high as it was in Baltimore. And I will say near as high as it's going to be in Baltimore for whoever the next guy is going forward. Yeah, it's always so interesting just to like take a step back and be like 60 entering. He's going to be 64 years old next year.

He's won a Super Bowl. His resume is his resume. He doesn't have like a lot to prove. So does your thinking, is your thinking different than say, hey, if Kyle, you know, if Kyle Shanahan were to take a different job right now, I'm sure he'd be like, where can I win a Super Bowl? Yeah. And that's it.

But yeah, you talk to coaches around the NFL. It's always ownership, ownership, ownership. What is ownership like? Is that going to be a place where I can succeed? Cardinals don't have great ownership. You mentioned it with the Titans. It's just like back and forth. All right, fire the coach.

All right, this year, fire the GM next year. And they've got the GM in place now. And so it's like even if you like Kim, he might be like, yeah, let's go to Tennessee. Let's go to Nashville. It'll be a much more chill atmosphere. Got the fun quarterback. Maybe we win nine, ten games. That is a good way to spend my 60s here and maybe my final chapter of coaching.

You know, the Raiders, it's like, do you want to, that's just going to be, take such a long time that I don't know that that's going to be really appealing. Especially after what just happened with Pete, no way. To me, a place like Tennessee, honestly, might end up be in the best spot because you can go beat Jeff. Fisher there. They were perfectly happy with Jeff Fisher there. They just ended up after you make that deep playoff run, you're obviously now judging everything in that light after afterwards with Jeff Fisher. But to me, you go there, you basically tell the organization, look, I'm going to retire before I'm 70. So my job is to usher Cam Ward to his next deal and get him as ready as possible to be an MVP and franchise changer. After that, your call from there. I just want to have a great time in Nashville

with this team coaching and doing what I love to do best. It's not that far of a flight from Baltimore now, so I don't have to do all the moving with the family and all that. Yeah, just go enjoy it, man. Low stakes, coach ball, hang it up before you're 70. You're going to end up being in the ring I honor with Baltimore. You're going to have an argument, right, to be a Hall of Fame head coach, I think ultimately by the end of your career.

Go get your 200 career wins, man, and right off into the sunset. I think everybody will be just fine with that. All right. If we got to call our shots here. Deonti, I'm going to say John Harbaugh is the next coach of the New York Giants

and Jesse Minter is the next coach of the Baltimore Ravens. What do you got? I think I'm with you with Harbaugh because I think the Giants are most desperate to go get the kind of head coach that John Harbaugh is and they will give whatever I think they need to

to bring them in. So I say, John Harbaugh, Giants head coach. I think Brian Flores should be the Ravens head coach. I really like that idea. Okay, let's see, let's see what happens in the weeks ahead. Maybe there will be more surprises. Maybe there will be more emergency pods. Maybe one of these teams that loses in the wildcard round all of a sudden next week.

We say, oh, didn't think that team was going to fire their head coach. But here we are. All right, thank you to Deonté Lee for jumping on the emergency pod. Thank you to Christopher Sutton for producing Stefano Sanchez on video editing, Kiera Givens on social and additional production supervision by Connor and Evans and Arjuna Ram Gopal. I'm Shil Kapati. We'll talk to you next time on the Ringer NFL show. Must be 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and present in D.C., Kentucky or Wyoming.

Gambling problem? Call 1-800 gambler or visit RG-Help.com. Call 1-888-7-8-9-77 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut or visit MDGamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gambling helpline-ma.m.m.m.m. Or call 800-327-50-50 for 24-7 support in Massachusetts or call 1-8-77-8-Hope-N-Y or text Hope NY in New York.