Todd Bowles' Smoldering Seat and Other NFL Coaches in Trouble

Welcome to the NFL Underground Mailbag. Ask Chris Harris your question about the NFL, general sports or cultural minutiae at HeyHarris@HarrisFootball.com. Follow him @HarrisFootball.

Rachel H.: My boyfriend says Todd Bowles is on the hottest seat of any NFL coach this year. I say no way because how can the seat be hot when everybody expects you to go 0-16. Who's right? Which coach has the hottest seat this year?

At the risk of alienating one of the few women who've asked a question for this column—come on! I know you're out there!—I have to agree that Bowles' seat qualifies as "hot." There's a difference between Hue Jackson with the Browns (one terrible season into a rebuild) and Bowles with the Jets (two seasons in, with the rebuild just starting). Jackson doesn't have the stink of a big decline on him, so his front office probably can't use him as a scapegoat without exposing their own necks. Come December, when Jets GM Mike Maccagnan is staring at 1-11, he can (a) tie himself to Bowles and get fired right along with him, or (b) sacrifice Bowles and buy himself an extra season or two.

That said, I agree with Rachel: it feels intellectually dishonest to say Bowles' seat is hottest. It'd be like giving Matt Damon a Razzie for Great Wall. I mean, what else did you expect?

My ascending list of the NFL coaches in the deepest doo-doo for 2017 goes like this:

5. Marvin Lewis, Bengals. Last season, after five consecutive playoff appearances, the Bengals went 6-9-1. And remember: Marv has never won a playoff game. That's not why his seat is hot, though. The main reason owner/GM/concessionaire/laundryman Mike Brown never axed Lewis in the past was $$$—the Bengals are the league's most notoriously skinflint organization—but now Lewis is entering the final year of his contract.

4. Bowles. Poor Todd Bowles.

3. Doug Marrone, Jaguars. "Of course Doug Marrone was our first choice!" said nobody ever. The Jags have defensive talent and just drafted Bo Jackson, er, Leonard Fournette, so if they suck, Marrone will get the Chip Kelly treatment. Then cue new organizational czar Tom Coughlin's glorious return to the sidelines, which I will resist cheering because Jacksonville doesn't produce cold enough weather to freeze Coughlin's face.

2. Chuck Pagano, Colts. Former GM Ryan Grigson rightly gets eviscerated for bumbling through Andrew Luck's first five seasons, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't Grigson who called this play.

1. John Fox, Bears. Nice of GM Ryan Pace to fill Fox in on his trade up to get Mitch Trubisky a full two hours before the draft! Not exactly in the loop there, Foxy! Fox is a lifer whose facial expression perpetually reads, "I wish I could get these guys to tackle more and listen to the hippety-hop music less." Like Maccagnan, Pace will need a fall guy after a Year 2 Hindenburg.

Taylor H.: How long until Jeff Fisher gets another job and ruins another franchise?

Speaking of lifers! Did you know that 2017 will be just the second season in 37 years that Fisher won't be affiliated with an NFL franchise? (He took 2011 off after the Titans axed him.) He's the panacea of clubby, quotable mediocrity, avoiding the harsh media glare for years by being friendly with reporters and ensconcing himself deep in the halls of power. He's the NFL equivalent of Mitch McConnell.

Which means of course he'll be back soon! You don't have to squint to see Marvin Lewis going 6-10 this year, Mike Brown finally pulling the plug, and the Bengals' excited interest in Josh McDaniels and Jim Harbaugh slowly transmogrifying into nauseated acceptance of Jeff Fisher's team-friendly new contract. Just imagine that mustache soaked in Skyline chili.

Tore B.: Soccer players act hurt. Football players pretend they're not hurt. Does winning justify faking?

When it comes to soccer, I bemoan the immolation acts of Euroweenies, yet if I inspect my psyche for a reason, I have to admit it comes down to complicated feelings about masculinity and a fascistic fetish for rules. I dare you to come up with a more quintessentially American combo! Somewhere deep in my Neanderthal brain, "being tough" and "playing fair" gets all crisscrossed with "being a man"—plus, look at those soccer hairdos—and before I know it, Ronaldo is flopping all over the place and I'm sashaying across my living room emitting high-pitched "ooh-la-las!"

Of course, soccer players are just gaming their system. They're lying to win. How is that different than Tom Brady telling falsehoods about his concussions? Or Richard Sherman mysteriously being left off injury reports? Or Matt Moore staggering back out under center after Bud Dupree used his jaw for target practice? Sure, these might appeal to my Neanderthal brain's ideas about what a "real man" is, but they're the same: lying in effort to win. (Well, and also let's be honest: there's tons of faking in the NFL, too!)

At base, if the question is "Does winning justify faking?" then the answer is hell, yeah! Two words: Manu. Ginobili.

Larry W.: You're known not to be a LeGarrette Blount fan. Other than Blount, what truly "bad" running back had the best career?

I should preface my remarks by saying: any running back who ever played a single down in the NFL is a good athlete. Yes, yes, hate-tweeters, I'm aware that Player X is a better athlete than I! And no, I don't live in my parents' basement (anymore)!

I'm not giving you some revisionist take like, "Emmitt Smith was secretly terrible!" That said, let's slag some guys!

My criteria for "badness" comes down to: (1) you actually sucked; (2) I saw you suck during a time when I was paying pretty close attention, i.e., not when I was 7; (3) other people tried to tell me you were good, primarily because of stats, but I still knew you sucked. My criteria for "best career" comes down to: you somehow stayed in the league a long time without them putting your sucky self in the toilet. I've got three candidates. Here we go:

Bronze: T.J. Duckett (7 seasons, 717 rush attempts). He was Blount before Blount was Blount: just a big lumbering doof who had four seasons of eight TDs or more, so fantasy football players were convinced of his awesomeness. But all he could do was mash forward. He had the lateral quickness of yarn.

Silver: Darren McFadden (9 seasons, 1,301 rush attempts). We live in a world where Darren McFadden has made $48 million, also known as $1.45 million per touchdown. He was a No. 4 overall draft pick, he was feted year after year in Oakland as the next big thing, and he's somehow still on an NFL roster despite leveraging Marshall Faulk's skill set into Julius Jones's productivity.

Gold: Marion Barber (7 seasons, 1,156 rush attempts). I had to endure many rebukes when I told people Marion the Barbarian was the walking-around embodiment of "Just Another Guy." He scored 14 TDs in his second season—on just 135 carries!—and the world became convinced that Barber was Eddie George.

He wasn't.

Give the dude credit for 59 career scrimmage touchdowns, which puts him in the top 25 of all RBs since the turn of the century. And then remember the game he handed to the Broncos by mysteriously stopping the clock in regulation then fumbling in overtime.

Alex O.: Do you expect someone to rise up from the pool of RBs in Baltimore, or should Ravens fans just wait and covfefe?

Covfefe. Always covfefe.

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