Black Monday is upon us.
It has already started.
It started months when the Jets fired Robert Saleh during the season, followed by the Saints letting go of Dennis Allen.
The Bears were next, giving Matt Eberflus the axe.
And the New England Patriots season wasn’t even cold yet, before they fired Jerod Mayo hours after their season ended.
Those are the four teams that are officially looking for a new head coach, with more surely to follow tomorrow and in the next coming days, potential weeks.
The Jacksonville Jaguars are surely going to be letting Doug Pederson go, while Jerry Jones has an interesting decision to make on Mike McCarthy.
As always, there are a couple surprises that no one sees coming.
Could it be the Cincinnati Bengals deciding that missing the playoffs with historic seasons by Joe Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase is enough to give Zac Taylor the pink slip?
What if Nick Sirianni and Mike Tomlin are one and done in the postseason?
The bottom line is that there will be a handful of head coaching vacancies that will need to be filled.
Luckily for those in need of filling such a hole, look no further than the last regular season game of the year between the Minnesota Vikings and the Detroit Lions.
The two coaching staffs combined have arguably the three hottest names to become head coaches in the next cycle.
Detroit’s offensive coordinator Ben Johnson, Detroit’s defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn, and Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator, Brian Flores are primed to be at the helm and leading their own team next season.
In an exclusive interview with talkSPORT, former NFL player and current analyst, Jason Bell, believes these three are the biggest names on the market.
And it’s how they have carried themselves that makes them all such hot commodities.
“They’ve all achieved and evolved,” Bell said.
“Brian Flores is back in that conversation when he was almost incinerated. It was almost done, but you see what he’s done and what great coaching does, it rises a team to the top.
“When you look at what Aaron Glenn has done this, this is my friend, he taught me how to play corner.
“I learned the game of corner through his eyes and his lenses, and that’s what he’s doing for the rest of the players.
“He prepares you, you’re playing well, he was a great player and you rally behind him.
“And then you look at Ben Johnson doing the same thing.
“We talk about it every week, the way this guy scripts and puts plays together.
It’s like I say, play calling is like a good book, it’s easy to read and that’s what it feels like when you’re watching them on offense, so the pressure’s on them, but it’s all about week to week.
“They can handle it. That’s the beauty.”
Dan Campbell of the Lions and Kevin O’Connell of the Vikings have both put together staffs that have coached their tails off this season.
And now, it looks like a couple of them are going to be rewarded for their efforts.
It’s bad news for the Lion and Vikings if they lose these guys, but great news for the organizations that hire them.