Every offseason, the NFL reshuffles. Coaches get fired, GMs get extensions they probably don't deserve, owners hold press conferences where they talk about "culture" and "alignment" as if those words mean something when the win total is sitting at five. It's the same cycle — different names, same problems.

But some franchises aren't just going through a rough patch. They're structurally broken. The issues aren't one bad draft or one ugly season. They're deeper than that — ownership that undermines their own staff, front offices that operate with the smallest possible budget for scouting and infrastructure, coaching carousels that spin fast enough to make your head hurt. That kind of dysfunction doesn't fix itself with one good hire.

Here's a look at the five most unstable situations in the NFL right now — ranked by the root cause, starting with ownership — plus two franchises that aren't far behind.

1: Arizona Cardinals

The players told us exactly how they feel about the ownership of the team. In the 2026 NFLPA report cards, Cardinals owner Michael Bidwill was the only owner in the entire league to get an F.

And it wasn’t just one category dragging it down. The Cardinals got an F-minus for locker room conditions and a D-plus for how they treat player families. That’s the everyday stuff. That’s where players spend their time, how they’re taken care of, what it feels like to show up and do your job. When that stuff is grading out at the bottom of the league, it’s not a coincidence — it’s a reflection of what ownership is willing to prioritize.

You can hear it in how people around the situation talk about it, too. Former COO Ron Minegar called it a "deep culture problem" that "emanates from one source." Cris Carter — who had every reason to stay quiet for years because he was so close with Larry Fitzgerald, who was the face of the franchise — finally said what a lot of people around the league have thought for a long time:

"They have one of the worst ownership groups. They do not know what they're doing... They're awful. The way they do things is awful. [Fitzgerald] was lucky to survive his career there. Arizona, I think when Kurt Warner went into the Hall of Fame, they offered him the Bidwill's jet — you can take the jet to Canton and come back. That's it.”

And the results line up with all of it. One winning season in the last decade. One. At some point, that stops being about roster luck or injuries or a bad coordinator hire. It starts pointing back to the guy at the top and how the entire thing is being run.

The Bidwills have owned this team since 1933, and Michael Bidwill officially took over in 2019. Since then, it’s felt like the organization has been searching for answers without ever really settling on a direction. Kliff Kingsbury got four years and produced one playoff appearance. Then came Jonathan Gannon, who was brought in with this big-picture vision around Kyler Murray. That lasted two seasons. Gannon went 15-36, including a 3-14 collapse in 2025 where the team lost 12 of its final 13 games. Murray got hurt early and was shut down, the season spiraled, and instead of calming things down, Bidwill publicly fined his head coach for a sideline moment — which one NFL executive described as an owner cutting his coach’s legs out in front of the entire locker room.

That’s the part that really sticks. It’s not just losing. It’s how things are handled when they go wrong. And in Arizona, too often it feels like the instability starts at the very top and works its way down.

No Plan For the Future

The current quarterback situation is its own kind of mess — and honestly, it feels like a perfect snapshot of how this organization operates. Murray got five games before the foot injury, put up 962 yards, and somewhere along the way the relationship between him and the franchise just… faded out. No big public blow-up, no dramatic press conference. Just a quiet understanding by the time the combine rolled around that both sides were ready to move on. That’s not how stable franchises handle their franchise quarterback.

Then Jacoby Brissett steps in, goes 1-11, and somehow still shows you the offense can function. The ball moves. Trey McBride turns into a red-zone machine — ten touchdowns in 13 games with Brissett after just five in three-plus seasons with Murray. And that’s almost the frustrating part. It’s not like this thing was completely broken beyond repair. There were pieces that worked. There was something there. But instead of building on it, the Cardinals hit eject again and moved on from Murray entirely, eating roughly $55 million in dead cap just to hit the reset button.

Now you’re looking at the No. 3 pick, a brand new head coach in Mike LaFleur, and a roster that needs to be rebuilt from the most important position outward. And LaFleur — for as intriguing as he is coming from that Rams offensive system — is still a first-time head coach walking into one of the toughest situations in the league. This isn’t a clean slate. It’s a 3-14 team, with a locker room that doesn't seem to have any semblance of a culture, and an owner who just got an F from the people inside the building.

And yeah, there are positives if you want to squint a little. McBride is a legit top-tier tight end. The cap situation is actually really flexible — they’re projected to have around $164 million in space in 2027, which gives them real room to build this the right way if they choose to. There’s a path here.

But that’s kind of the whole point with Arizona. There’s always a path. There’s always a version of this where it works. And it almost never does, because the same issues keep showing up at the top. The new facility coming in 2028 is nice. The fresh coaching hire is interesting. The draft capital is valuable. None of that changes the one thing that has consistently set the ceiling for this franchise.

2: Cleveland Browns

The Browns' situation is complicated, because there are parts of this thing that actually look solid — and then there are parts that feel like they’ve been dragging the whole operation down for years. It’s not one issue. It’s layers of them.

Start with the draft, because that’s where a lot of this quietly began to unravel. Andrew Berry has been the GM since 2020, and outside of the 2025 class, the track record is really tough to defend. Of his first 37 picks, just six turned into players you feel good about plugging into a lineup long-term. That’s not just a couple misses. That’s a pattern.

And it’s not like these were all dart throws either. Jedrick Wills Jr. at No. 10 overall never turned into the cornerstone tackle you hoped for. Anthony Schwartz and David Bell burned third-round picks. Cade York cost a fourth-rounder for a kicker who couldn’t be trusted when the game tightened up. Siaki Ika was gone after a year. When you stack those together, it’s not bad luck — it’s bad evaluation.

What makes it more frustrating is the type of misses. You can see what Berry was going for — betting on traits, chasing upside — but it always seemed to come at the expense of polish and reliability. And when you consistently miss on positions like offensive tackle and avoid wide receiver with premium picks, you're creating more holes for yourself to try and fill down the line.

Meanwhile, the defense has been legit. Myles Garrett isn’t just good — he’s one of those guys who can wreck a game by himself, and breaking the single-season sack record just confirmed what everyone already knew. The front is real. The unit as a whole has been good enough to win with.

But the offense has never matched it, and that’s where everything starts circling back to quarterback.

During Kevin Stefanski’s six seasons, the Browns rolled out 13 different starting quarterbacks. Thirteen.

And then there’s Deshaun Watson, which still hangs over everything. Three first-round picks and a fully guaranteed five-year, $230 million deal — a move Jimmy Haslam himself later called a "big swing and miss." That’s one hell of an understatement. That’s a franchise-altering decision that stripped away the flexibility you need to fix everything else.

Watson never gave them anything close to what they paid for. He barely played, never looked like himself when he did, tore his Achilles in 2024, and then missed all of 2025. So you’re left with the worst version of it — no production, no cap flexibility, and no draft capital to dig yourself out quickly.

Stefanski Shouldn't Have Been the Scapegoat

Stefanski deserved better than how this ended. Two AP Coach of the Year awards, two playoff appearances, and he kept the whole thing afloat while the quarterback situation changed every other week. There’s only so much you can scheme around when you’re on your 10th, 11th, 12th starter. The 8-26 finish over the last two seasons looks rough on paper, but a lot of that traces back to decisions that were made above him — the Watson move, the lack of depth created by years of draft misses, and an offense that never had a stable identity to build on.

Cleveland’s response was to move on from Stefanski, keep Berry — mainly because of a 2025 class they feel good about, headlined by Defensive Rookie of the Year Carson Schwesinger — and bring in Todd Monken to fix the offense. Monken’s produced everywhere he’s been, and there’s a real track record there.

But look at what he’s walking into. The Browns head into 2026 with Dillon Gabriel, Shedeur Sanders, and a possible Watson return all in the same room. There’s no clear answer. There’s not even a clear direction. It’s a competition by default, not by design. And you’re asking a first-time head coach to figure that out while also keeping a defense afloat that’s been carrying the franchise for years.

That’s where the structure starts to matter again. The Haslams have been quick to pull the trigger on coaches — this is the 11th since they bought the team in 2012 — but noticeably more patient with the front office. Even when the results haven’t matched the expectations. Whether that’s loyalty or misaligned accountability depends on how you look at it, but it’s hard to ignore the difference.

There are real reasons to believe this could turn, at least on paper. The draft capital is back. The defense is good enough to anchor a playoff team. Monken is capable of building something functional on offense.

But until there’s a real answer at quarterback — not a rotation, not a competition, an actual answer — everything else feels temporary.

3: Tennessee Titans

If you want to understand why the Tennessee Titans are so high on this list, just look at the timeline.

In December 2022, owner Amy Adams Strunk fired GM Jon Robinson — two days after A.J. Brown went off against them in Philadelphia. And that’s the part that sticks. Not just the move, but the timing of it. It felt emotional. It felt reactive. Like a decision made in the moment instead of one that had been building over time. And when your ownership operates like that, it sets the tone for everything else that follows.

Robinson was replaced by Ran Carthon. Carthon lasted one season. Mike Vrabel — who went 56-48 in six seasons and led the team to a 12-5 season and the No. 1 seed in the AFC — was fired in January 2024. Not because the culture was broken. Not because the locker room tuned him out. Because ownership wanted something different.

So they pivoted. Brian Callahan comes in. New voice, new direction, fresh start. And before that even had time to settle, it fell apart. Callahan goes 4-19, gets fired in Week 7 of 2025 — the first in-season firing of that year — and it just so happens to come right before Vrabel is scheduled to bring his Patriots into Nashville. You can call that coincidence if you want. It didn’t feel like one.

That’s four major decision points in roughly 34 months. GM. GM again. Head coach. Head coach again. That’s not a reset. That’s a cycle.

And what gets lost in all of it is any sense of direction. Every hire feels like a reaction to the last one instead of part of a long-term plan. Every move feels like it’s trying to fix the previous mistake instead of building toward something stable.

After Callahan was let go, the Titans went 2-9 under interim Mike McCoy and finished 3-14 for the second straight year.

Now it’s Robert Saleh. Five-year deal. Another reset. Another attempt to stabilize something that hasn’t been stable in years. Saleh went 20-36 with the Jets, so it’s not like this is a can’t-miss hire walking into a perfect situation. He’s being asked to fix a franchise that hasn’t really given anyone the time or structure to do just that.

They Let A Good One Get Away

Mike Vrabel was exactly the kind of head coach most franchises spend years — sometimes decades — trying to find. Not flashy, not trying to win the press conference, just steady. Demanding. Accountable. The kind of guy players respected because they knew exactly where they stood with him. And more importantly, he won. Different rosters, different styles, didn’t matter — his teams were always tough, always competitive, always a pain to deal with.

Ownership wanted a more “collaborative” structure. Wanted a “fresh perspective.” And look, those things sound good when you say them out loud. Every team wants alignment. Every team wants new ideas. But those ideas still have to translate into wins, or at least progress.

Instead, the “fresh perspective” turned into a 3-14 season and a complete reset less than two years later.

And that’s where this really starts to sting. Because while Tennessee was starting over, Vrabel was in New England going 14-3 with a second-year quarterback and then turning that into a Super Bowl run. You don’t have to squint to see it. The stability they moved on from is the exact thing they’ve been missing ever since.

Saleh's now being asked to develop a young quarterback in an environment that hasn’t shown much patience with anyone. The defense just finished 28th in points allowed. The roster still feels thin in key spots. And the person making the big decisions is the same one who has been cycling through coaches and GMs every year or two, trying to find the answer.

4: Cincinnati Bengals

The Cincinnati Bengals have a Hall of Fame-level quarterback, a future Hall of Fame wide receiver, and a legitimate No. 2 receiver on a team-friendly deal. On paper, that’s the kind of core most franchises spend years trying to build. It should be enough to consistently contend.

But all that still isn't enough to mask the fact that you’re looking at a team with the smallest scouting department in the NFL, a de facto GM who has been running things since 2002, an owner who also acts as the top football decision-maker, and a defense that — through 11 weeks of 2025 — graded out by DVOA as the worst unit in NFL history.

That’s the disconnect. That’s the Bengals.

And it’s not new. This has been the Bengals for years now — high-end talent on one side, structural limitations on the other, and a whole lot of hype they can never live up to.

Mike Brown runs this team like a family business, because that’s exactly what it is. His daughter handles front office operations. His son-in-law is on staff. Duke Tobin has effectively been the GM for over two decades, without the title ever really changing. There’s continuity there, sure — but there's very little urgency to evolve, so they just haven't.

They finish 6-11. Third straight year missing the playoffs. And the response from ownership is to stay the course — Zac Taylor is back, Tobin is back, same structure, same approach, and somehow they think the results are going to be any different.

At some point, you have to ask what’s actually being evaluated. Because the results have been pretty consistent.

You Simply Can't Be This One-Sided

The defense isn’t just bad — it’s been bad in a very specific, very avoidable way. They’ve let pieces walk without replacing them. Sam Hubbard retires. Genard Avery leaves. Mike Hilton — one of the few steady, reliable guys in that secondary — follows Lou Anarumo out the door after the staff gets cleaned out. And instead of reloading, it just keeps getting thinner.

Then you finally get a defensive piece in Shemar Stewart through the draft, and you’re haggling over fully guaranteed money — something every other team in the league had already accepted as the standard. Brown calling it “foolishness” — and aiming that at the agents — just kind of sums it up. The only "foolishness" is his stubbornness.

And when all of that adds up, you get what they had in 2025. A defense that didn’t just struggle — it flat-out fell apart. Every stat you could think of to measure how good a defense is, they were in the bottom five. Points per game, yards per game, yards per play, EPA, against the pass, against the run — no matter how you tried to look it, it all pointed to the same thing. 

Tobin’s job security is probably as shaky as it’s been in a long time. People around the league are starting to question whether this is finally the point where something changes. But the Bengals have been here before. Brown has ridden this structure through multiple down cycles already, and every time, the response has been to stay patient and trust that it’ll work itself out.

And maybe it does, at least to a point. They’ve shown they can be competitive with Burrow. When things are clicking, they can beat anybody.

But that’s not really the standard you’re aiming for with this kind of talent. Not with a quarterback like that. Not with receivers like that.

5: Las Vegas Raiders

The Raiders are last on this list for a reason. Things are pointing in the right direction — it just hasn’t turned into anything tangible yet. It’s more potential than proof right now.

The recent history is still pretty rough. Four different head coaches in four years. That’s not just turnover — that’s a complete lack of continuity. You’re still paying Josh McDaniels, Antonio Pierce, Pete Carroll, and Chip Kelly to not coach your team. That’s a lot of money tied up in ideas that didn’t work.

Carroll was supposed to calm everything down. Veteran presence, respected voice, someone who could bring structure back into the building. And a year later, he’s gone after a 4-13 season. That’s now back-to-back one-and-done head coaches. When that keeps happening, it stops being about the coach and starts being about the environment they’re walking into.

No playoff wins since 2002. Two playoff appearances in 20 years. Different regimes, different quarterbacks, different rosters — same outcome.

Now, Tom Brady being involved isn’t nothing. He’s not just a name on the ownership sheet — he’s actually around. In the building, in meetings, helping make important decisions. From everything that’s come out, he had a real voice in the coaching search and is fully behind the Klint Kubiak hire. And Kubiak fits what this team has needed for a while — structure, discipline, and an offense that makes life easier on the quarterback instead of asking him to be perfect.

Then you layer in the resources. No. 1 overall pick. And to their credit, this is the first offseason in a while where it actually feels like they’re moving with a plan. They went out and addressed real needs instead of just chasing names — upgrading the offensive line, rebuilding the linebacker room, adding pieces in the secondary — all with a clear idea of how they want this team to play. Even the Maxx Crosby situation, which could’ve turned messy fast, was handled the right way on the back end. It’s not perfect, and some of the contracts were expensive, but for once, it looks like the Raiders are building something instead of just reacting.

Fernando Mendoza looks like the pick, and it actually feels like the Raiders might land a quarterback they can build around instead of patching the position year-to-year. The playoff run, the production, the composure — there’s something real there. And if Kubiak is what he’s been in previous stops, this is exactly the type of system Mendoza can grow into.

Still Work to Be Done

Brady being involved is a net positive in a lot of ways — the voice, the standard, the perspective — but it also introduces a different kind of question. He’s a minority owner with real influence, not a day-to-day operator. Who has final say? How does that flow to Kubiak? How consistent is the message from the top of the building down to the staff and the players? Those are the things that determine whether a structure actually holds up once the season starts.

Because we’ve seen this before with the Raiders. Good ideas. Good intentions. People you can talk yourself into. And then once things get hard, it starts to wobble.

That’s why this still feels like a “show me” situation. They’ve checked a lot of the right boxes this offseason. The direction makes sense. The pieces fit together better than they have in a long time.

But stability isn’t something you say — it’s something you prove over time. And this franchise hasn’t earned that benefit of the doubt yet.

Honorable Mentions

New York Giants

The Giants went 4-13 in 2025, fired Brian Daboll in the middle of the season, finished 2-5 under Mike Kafka, and then turned around and landed John Harbaugh. On paper, that sounds like a massive win. And it might be. Harbaugh’s a Super Bowl coach who ran one of the most buttoned-up, respected programs in the league for nearly two decades.

But the Joe Schoen situation makes this a lot harder to read.

He’s in the final year of his deal, hasn’t been extended, and since Harbaugh got there, it feels like he’s been pushed to the side a bit. Dawn Aponte comes in as senior VP of football ops and reports straight to Harbaugh, who reports straight to John Mara. Schoen’s still there, but it’s mostly on the scouting side now. He went from running the whole building to basically running the draft board. That’s a demotion, even if nobody’s calling it that. And the results under him — 22-45-1 — don’t exactly give him much leverage.

Then you add in that offseason Hard Knocks a couple years back, which didn’t do them any favors. It showed what it usually shows — how things actually operate behind closed doors — and it wasn’t exactly a clean look. Some of Schoen’s picks have hit, like Jaxson Dart and Malik Nabers. There’s talent there. But zoom out, and the roster as a whole hasn’t been built well enough to compete consistently.

Harbaugh’s good enough to steady this over time. That part’s real. But “over time” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

Miami Dolphins

The Dolphins didn’t just make a couple changes — they tore the whole thing down. Mike McDaniel is out after going 35-33 in four seasons without a playoff win. Chris Grier, who had been there forever, was gone before the season even finished. Tua Tagovailoa — fresh off a four-year, $212 million extension in 2024 — gets benched for a seventh-round rookie in Quinn Ewers, and then released not long after. Tyreek Hill's gone too.

And honestly, you can understand why they felt like they had to do it. It just happened fast. One minute you’re trying to contend, the next you’re clearing the board.

The new setup at least makes sense on paper. Jeff Hafley comes in from Green Bay’s defensive staff. Jon-Eric Sullivan comes from that same system on the front office side. There’s an actual through-line there now. That alone is more direction than Miami had at the end of the last run.

But the Tua situation is the part you really can’t ignore, because it tells you how this whole thing unraveled. You commit $212 million to a quarterback, and less than two years later you’re already walking away from it. Not because he can’t play — we’ve seen the version of Tua when it’s working. In 2023, he was right there in the MVP conversation. It just never held together long enough to build on.

And now you’re pivoting to a quarterback who’s thrown fewer passes over four seasons than Shedeur Sanders did in seven games. Malik Willis showed some flashes in Green Bay’s system, but that system stayed in Green Bay. Matt LaFleur didn’t walk through the door with Hafley. So you’re asking a new staff to recreate that magic, with a roster that’s hurting for talent.

All stats courtesy of NFL Pro.

Looking for stories that inform and engage? From breaking headlines to fresh perspectives, WaveNewsToday has more to explore. Ride the wave of what’s next.