There were eight head coaching hires made this offseason and none of the new coaches squared off against one another in Week One, which meant there was a chance that the new coaches could go 8-0 to open the season.
That possibility remained alive after Matt LaFleur’s Packers beat the Bears 10-3 in the first game of the season. The notion went up in smoke from there, however.
New coaches went 0-5-1 on Sunday before Vic Fangio lost his Broncos debut to cap the week and LaFleur stands alone as the only new coach to begin his tenure as a winner.
The non-winners came in different forms. Zac Taylor’s Bengals were nipped by the Seahawks 21-20 on the road, while the Jets’ one-point loss was far less encouraging for Adam Gase. The Cardinals came roaring back to force a tie that felt closer to a win than many ties in Kliff Kingsbury’s debut, but Brian Flores’s Dolphins and Freddie Kitchens’s Browns were on the wrong end of blowouts.
Buccaneers coach Bruce Arians didn’t take quite as bad a beating, but the 31-17 loss to the 49ers showed he has plenty of work to do to clean up what’s been a mistake-prone club for quite some time.
The Browns and Jets play on Monday night in Week Two, so chances are good that at least one other head coach in this group will get a win this time around.