NFL Week 9 staff picks: Bills-Chiefs is here, plus survival season for hot-seat coaches
The obvious headliner for Week 9 is Chiefs at Bills, while a number of coaches fight to keep their jobs.
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Travis Kelce and the Chiefs are looking lethal again. Now they head to Buffalo for a showdown. Jamie Squire / Getty Images
Off to a disappointing start? Team underwhelming at every turn? No signs of life in the locker room? Try Firing Your Coach
, the hottest trend this fall season, and one that might be right for you!There were earlier college firings, but Penn State really got things rolling when they paid James Franklin many millions to vanish from their sight. The Tennessee Titans were right on their heels. Brian Callahan was ousted in the same news cycle as Franklin, and while a high-profile college coach and a low-profile NFL one being axed aren’t usually correlated, the smell of pink slips is in the air, and that tends to have an effect.
One coach in a bad rebuild (Callahan) being canned might not give enough cover for other teams to ax their own underperforming figurehead, but a cluster of firings by prominent brands in the sport always seems to make the ones that follow in their wake look “decisive” rather than “hasty.” Or at least easier to sell as such.
So when LSU ungracefully fired Brian Kelly this week, it suddenly became a very bad time for coaches in tenuous spots to dump a game. A couple of them did, which means it’s time for a look at who is hanging on by their headset going into the second half of the season.
Here’s an unofficial power ranking of the hottest seats in the NFL:
Coaches on the hot seat
1. Mike McDaniel
The Dolphins just dogwalked what was the best pass defense in the NFL while their own defense held Bijan Robinson to 24 yards rushing and made Kirk Cousins look like someone discovering football for the first time. With that game top of mind, it’s easy to squint your way into an alternate reality for the Dolphins. After all, they lost by a field goal to the Panthers, a last-second field goal to the Chargers and had the bad break of having to play in a wet wind tunnel against the Browns. They’re only a couple of bad breaks from being 4-4, you’d say, maybe even 5-3 if the weather had been normal in Cleveland. But the reason McDaniel remains atop the list is that Miami has allowed 30-plus points four times. On top of that, they have looked and sounded dysfunctional and are, in fact, 2-6 in a division where such records are fatal. More on him in a moment.2. Raheem Morris
Biggest riser in the rankings, largely because his squad just got embarrassed by the trainwreck above. The Falcons are 11-13 under Morris, and Arthur Blank is no doubt fretting over the ongoing waste of Robinson’s most explosive years. Michael Penix Jr. is not blossoming as hoped, and the team has been unable to win close games the last two seasons. Add to that being shut out by the Panthers, back-to-back weeks of scoring just 10 points and Morris’ clock-management blunders, and a change in management is starting to look more warranted by the week.3. Brian Daboll
It’s not sporting to kick a guy when he’s down, but Daboll was in trouble long before losing Malik Nabers and Cam Skattebo. After a 9-7-1 debut, he’s led New York to an 11-31 record and watched former Giants Saquon Barkley and Daniel Jones become league leaders after leaving his squad. It’s entirely fair to blame some of Daboll’s struggles on ownership, but that same ownership is the one that decides who gets punished for the struggles.4. Jonathan Gannon
The Cardinals are in the middle of a five-game losing streak, which brings Gannon’s record in Arizona to a dismal 14-27. Granted, he was without Kyler Murray for half of 2023, but this is not the return that ownership was hoping for from the offensive weapons they have, and watching the broadcasts, it sure doesn’t seem like anyone in Arizona is experiencing anything like “fun” or “optimism.” The team already fined Gannon $100,000 this season for how he treated his player on national TV (an amount high enough that an owner said the team should have just fired him), and at this point, it’s unclear what another season would accomplish other than to further depress everyone involved.5. Aaron Glenn
A win against the Bengals may have been cathartic, but a one-point victory over a team without its franchise quarterback is not exactly a statement. The fact that it moved the Jets to 1-7 also takes some shine off the moment. Woody Johnson made it very clear he believes the fault lies with Justin Fields and not Glenn, but Johnson is also the current Worst Owner In The NFL belt holder and not exactly renowned for his consistency. Glenn should be afforded a little more time, but he’s on the list because these are the Jets, and if the team still has one win a month from now, Johnson (or his sons) could decide to change coaches.
What To Watch
For anyone weary of Kansas City’s success, the time has come to begin hibernating. Not only are the Chiefs more dynamic than they’ve been in several seasons, but the AFC is the weakest it has been in years. If “weak” feels too strong, perhaps you’d accept “inconsistent.”
The Bills are among the many traditional AFC powers showing warts this year, and feel far more overmatched against the Chiefs in Week 8 than their 5-2 record would suggest. A big part of that is the run defense, which ranks in the bottom half of the league. While Kansas City is not a power-run team, it does have the third-best EPA per rush and a success rate of 43.6 percent.
In short, the Chiefs are a mismatch for the Bills’ defense, and that’s before we get to what they do best. The Chiefs are humming along at +.20 EPA per pass, and have a staggering 1,203 yards after the catch so far this season. Buffalo can at least match strength for strength through the air, as their pass defense is among the league’s elite (especially against the deep ball).
For the most part, Buffalo has had little trouble scoring points in 2025, but play designs haven’t been the reason why. Allen has scrambled from the pocket 42 times without taking a sack this season, a streak that doubles the next closest quarterback. On those plays, he’s run 26 times for 250 yards and two scores, and thrown 16 times for six completions, 83 yards, two scores and a pick. But on eight designed runs, the MVP gained a total of seven yards and lost a fumble, a far cry from his career average of 4.6 yards per carry.
Bills receivers aren’t helping things either, forcing Allen to throw into tight windows more than 14 percent of the time. His 24 percent completion percentage in tight windows is the sixth-worst in the league.
Joe Brady seems hesitant to deploy James Cook as a solution despite his success. In the three games where Cook got 19 or more carries, he’s posted 100-plus yards and at least one touchdown. The Bills won all three. In the games where he had fewer caries, he did neither, and the Bills lost. Cook has been stuffed at the fifth-lowest rate in the league this season, but Buffalo vacillates between using him as their primary weapon and making him a background player.
Kansas City is vulnerable to the run and doesn’t pressure the quarterback particularly well, so Brady and the Bills will need Cook to make hay and pull defenders into the box if Allen is going to see cleaner passing lanes. Otherwise, it’ll be Allen’s godly improvisational skills against KC’s relentlessly efficient scheme.