From Urban Meyer to Lou Holtz, Panthers’ firing puts Frank Reich in notable company

Urban Meyer. Lou Holtz. Pete Carroll.

And now Frank Reich.

These are just four of the 32 head coaches who have been fired during or after their first season with an NFL team since the AFC and NFC merged in 1970, according to a compilation by Pro Football Network.

Reich is the latest coach to be added to the list Monday after the veteran play-caller saw his team fall to 1-10 after a lifeless performance against the Titans on Sunday.

Here’s a look at the company Reich now finds himself in.

Urban Meyer, Jacksonville Jaguars

NFL fans remember this fallout well. Meyer became the sixth head coach in Jacksonville franchise history on January 14, 2021, with no NFL coaching experience and two years after leaving Ohio State.

Well before his first doomed season began, Meyer was making the worst kind of headlines. He hired Chris Doyle, who had left his position as Iowa’s strength and conditioning coach amid allegations of racism and bullying, as director of sport performance. Doyle resigned less than 48 hours later. Meyer then signed Tim Tebow as a tight end in May, was fined for violating his contract in July, lost his season opener badly, was caught in a viral video dancing with a woman who wasn’t his wife after a Thursday Night Football loss, called his assistant coaches “losers” ... and so on ... before being fired in March 2022.

Lou Holtz, New York Jets

Before Lou Holtz won a national championship at Notre Dame and ended his career with the South Carolina Gamecocks, he got his shot to lead a team in the NFL. It didn’t go very well. Holtz was hired to be the head guy for the New York Jets in 1976 and then resigned 10 months later with the Jets at 3-10 and with one game remaining in the season.

Pete Carroll, New York Jets

After the Holtz one-season stint in 1976, another came to the Jets nearly 20 years later — this time with another recognizable name.

Pete Carroll, now the head coach of the Seattle Seahawks with a Super Bowl ring and a national championship trophy to his name, was hired and fired by the Jets in 1994 after a 6-10 season. Per an ESPN story about the wild season that was in New York: “Carroll was the New York Jets’ coach in 1994, and he never made it to 1995 because of a perfect storm that some people still can’t explain. He was undermined by a Hall of Fame quarterback’s sleight of hand, by sports-talk radio, by a friend’s cancer diagnosis, by a firing in Philadelphia and by a reticent owner who, overnight, became George Steinbrenner with a suntan.”

Steve Wilks, Arizona Cardinals

Many Panthers fans know this story well. Wilks, a Charlotte native and Carolina’s interim coach who salvaged what at one point seemed like an ugly 2022, never got his shot as the head coach at Carolina.

But he technically did in Arizona.

“Technically,” of course, is the operative word. Wilks was hired as the coach in January 2018, replacing Bruce Arians, who entered retirement in the 2017 season. The team finished 3-13 and with the worst scoring offense in the league, but the firing was perceived across the league as unfair considering the Cardinals were in such a rebuilding mode.

Wilks is now defensive coordinator of the San Francisco 49ers, who are Super Bowl contenders again.

Lovie Smith, Houston Texans

An early departure like the one Reich is going through occurred twice in 2022 — with Nathaniel Hackett in Denver and Lovie Smith in Houston.

The firing of Smith, in many ways, is worth looking at again because of how consequential it turned out being. The Texans finished the season 3-13, which included a win in the final game that ultimately prevented them from getting the top pick in the 2022 draft.

It was a big story at the time — one that prompted a lot of “the Texans can’t get out of their own way” head-shaking — that has turned out OK, Texans fans would say: Houston used its second pick in the draft to get CJ Stroud, a rookie who’s having an MVP-caliber season, and also had the third pick in the draft and used it on the outside linebacker out of Alabama, Will Anderson Jr.

Full list of coaches with short stints

1. Bill Austin, Washington, 1970
2. Harvey Johnson, Buffalo Bills, 1971
3. Ed Hughes, Houston Oilers, 1971
4. Don McCafferty, Detroit Lions, 1973
5. Monte Clark, San Francisco 49ers, 1976
6. Lou Holtz, New York Jets, 1976
7. Ken Meyer, San Francisco 49ers, 1977
8. Peter McCulley, San Francisco 49ers, 1978
9. Les Steckel, Minnesota Vikings, 1984
10. Rod Rust, New England Patriots, 1990
11. Richie Petitbon, Washington, 1993
12. Pete Carroll, New York Jets, 1994
13. Joe Bugel, Las Vegas Raiders, 1997
14. Ray Rhodes, Green Bay Packers, 1999
15. Al Groh, New York Jets, 2000
16. Marty Schottenheimer, Washington, 2001
17. Art Shell, Las Vegas Raiders, 2006
18. Cam Cameron, Miami Dolphins, 2007
19. Bobby Petrino, Atlanta Falcons, 2007
20. Jim Mora Jr., Seattle Seahawks, 2009
21. Hue Jackson, Las Vegas Raiders, 2011
22. Mike Mularkey, Jacksonville Jaguars, 2012
23. Rob Chudzinkski, Cleveland Browns, 2013
24. Jim Tomsula, San Francisco 49ers, 2015
25. Chip Kelly, San Francisco 49ers, 2016
26. Steve Wilks, Arizona Cardinals, 2018
27. Freddie Kitchens, Cleveland Browns, 2019
28. Urban Meyer, Jacksonville Jaguars, 2021
29. David Culley, Houston Texans, 2021
30. Nathaniel Hackett, Denver Broncos, 2022
31. Lovie Smith, Houston Texans, 2022
32. Frank Reich, Carolina Panthers, 2023

This story was originally published November 28, 2023 at 5:30 AM.

Alex Zietlow

The Charlotte Observer

Alex Zietlow writes about the Carolina Panthers and the ways in which sports intersect with life for The Charlotte Observer, where he has been a reporter since August 2022. Zietlow’s work has been honored by the Pro Football Writers Association, the N.C. and S.C. Press Associations, as well as the Associated Press Sports Editors (APSE) group. He’s earned six APSE Top 10 distinctions for his coverage on a variety of topics, from billion-dollar stadium renovations to the small moments of triumph that helped a Panthers kicker defy the steepest odds in sports. Zietlow previously wrote for The Herald in Rock Hill (S.C.) from 2019-22. Support my work with a digital subscription