NFL Black Monday roundup: A look at the coaches who have been fired

NFL Black Monday is here, the traditional day when teams fire their head coach. The ax has fallen multiple times already today. Here’s a look at who is gone:

Lions fire Jim Schwartz

Jim Schwartz is out in Detroit.

The Lions fired their coach Monday, according to multiple reports, after the team finished 7-9 and failed to make the playoffs.

Schwartz, who took over a team that was coming off a winless season in 2008, was 29-51 in five seasons with one playoff appearance, a loss.

At one point this season, the Lions were 6-3 with a two-game lead in the NFC North. They were the only team in the division to have one quarterback start all 16 games.

The Lions went 1-6 down the stretch, however, blowing fourth-quarter leads in all six of those defeats.

“Obviously, we didn’t win enough games this year,” Schwartz said after Sunday’s loss to Minnesota. “And there’s no standard really to judge other than that. And I understand that, in this business.”

Buccaneers fire Greg Schiano

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers cleaned house Monday, firing coach Greg Schiano and General Manager Mark Dominik.

Schiano, the former Rutgers coach, went 11-21 in two seasons with the Buccaneers, who finished this season 4-12.

“The results over the past two years have not lived up to our standards and we believe the time has come to find a new direction,” Buccaneers Co-Chairman Bryan Glazer said in a written statement.

Dominik joined the Buccaneers as a pro personnel assistant in 1995, working his way up to pro personnel director — the position he held when Tampa Bay won the Super Bowl in 2002 — and, in 2009, to GM.

“Mark has been a valued member of our organization for two decades and we respect the passion he showed for the Buccaneers during his time here,” Glazer said. “We thank Greg for his hard work and effort the past two seasons, but we feel these moves are necessary in order to achieve our goals.”

Browns fire Rob Chudzinski

Black Monday arrived early for Browns coach Rob Chudzinski, who was fired Sunday evening at the end of his first season after a 20-7 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers.

The loss was the seventh in a row for Cleveland, which had started the season 4-5.

Usually there is a wave of firings the day after the end of the NFL‘s regular season. Earlier Sunday, though, the New York Jets said Coach Rex Ryan would be back.

No such luck for Chudzinski, a native of Ohio who was hired in January to coach the team for which he rooted as a youth.

The team released the following statement:

“We appreciate [Chudzinski’s] passion for the Browns, and we have great respect for him both personally and professionally. We needed to see progress with this football team. We needed to see development and improvement as the season evolved and, unfortunately, we took a concerning step backward in the second half of the year.

“Our fans deserve to see a consistently competitive team. We have high standards, and there’s an urgency for success. When we believed we were not positioned to achieve significant progress in 2014, we knew we had to admit that a change was needed, and move forward.

“Browns fans are the most loyal and passionate supporters in the NFL. We’re fully committed to bringing them the winning football team they deserve.”

Browns General Manager Michael Lombardi is reportedly interested in Penn State Coach Bill O’Brien and New England Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels. All three have close ties to Patriots Coach Bill Belichick.

Redskins fire Mike Shanahan

As expected, the Washington Redskins have fired Mike Shanahan.

Shanahan, whose teams were 24-40 in his four seasons, had fallen out of favor this season with Redskins owner Dan Snyder and star quarterback Robert Griffin III. The team finished 3-13 this season, losing its final eight games.

“Redskins fans deserve a better result,” Snyder said in a written statement released Monday by the team. “We thank Mike for his efforts on behalf of the Redskins. We will focus on what it takes to build a winning team, and my pledge to this organization and to this community is to continue to commit the resources and talent necessary to put this team back in the playoffs.”

Shanahan had a season remaining on his contract, which paid him about $7 million per year.

The Redskins plan to hold a news conference later Monday.

Vikings fire Leslie Frazier

Leslie Frazier became the first official casualty of NFL‘s so-called Black Monday, losing his job as Minnesota’s head coach after the leading the Vikings to a 5-10-1 record in his third full season at the helm.

He is the league’s third head coach to be fired this season, following the Houston Texans’ Gary Kubiak earlier this month and Cleveland Brown’s Rob Chudzinski on Sunday.

Frazier took over for the fired Brad Childress in Week 12 of the 2010 season and led the Vikings to a 3-3 record down the stretch.

He kept his job even after going 3-13 the following year and rewarded the organization with a 10-6 record and a playoff berth in 2012, largely riding workhorse running back Adrian Peterson.

But the Vikings came back to earth this year, thanks in large part to instability at the quarterback position with Christian Ponder, Matt Cassel and Josh Freeman (in a disastrous “Monday Night Football” appearance in October just 10 days after signing with the team) all making starts at some point.

Frazier finishes his Vikings run at 21-33-1.

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