Do you believe in curses? I’m not fully sure that I do unless that “curse” really shows itself a lot. This one seems to be doing that.
The NFL held their annual award show on Thursday night and for the third year in a row, Detroit Lions head coach Dan Campbell was up for Coach of the Year, and for the third time in a row, he did not win the award. Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell did.
Lions fans are going to be upset about this, but there’s a silver lining: The Lions may be avoiding one of their curses.
Cleveland Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski won the award last February. The Browns went 3-14 and are now on the verge of a full-on rebuild. They could soon be shipping Myles Garrett away and looking for a new quarterback.
New York Giants head coach Brian Daboll won the award in 2022. He won that award for getting the Giants to the playoffs. Then the next year the team went 6-11 and missed out the next year and went 3-14 this year.
Is there a curse on the Coach of the Year award? There just might be. Let’s take a look at some more winners and see what happened to them.
| Coach | Record when winning award | Record the following year | Still with team? |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Mike Vrabel |
12-5 |
7-10 |
Fired |
|
Kevin Stefanski |
11-5 |
8-9 |
Still with |
|
John Harbaugh |
14-2 |
11-5 |
Still with |
|
Matt Nagy |
12-4 |
8-8 |
Fired |
|
Sean McVay |
11-5 |
13-3 |
Still with |
|
Jason Garrett |
13-3 |
9-7 |
Fired |
|
Ron Rivera |
15-1 |
6-10 |
Fired |
|
Bruce Arians |
11-15 |
13-3 |
Fired |
|
Ron Rivera |
12-4 |
7-8-1 |
Fired |
With the exception of two guys, everyone’s team got worse in some way and the guys got fired. A couple of guys experienced the curse twice. So maybe this is an award you just don’t want to win. Maybe there really is a curse or maybe it’s something different.
Maybe it’s good old-fashioned pressure. The eyes go directly on you at this point and you’re expected to go out and prove the voters right. Some guys can do that. Harbaugh and McVay proved that people were right. They kept on winning. A lot of the other guys didn’t do that.
So does that relieve some pressure for Dan Campbell and the Lions next year? Maybe a little bit I suppose, but they’ll still have all the eyes on them again. Let’s see if they can keep winning.