Most Hated NFL Coaches of All Time — See Who Tops the List

Meet The NFL's Most Hated Coaches of All Time
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Meet The NFL’s Most Hated Coaches of All Time
Corey Moylan | More | 27 Apr 2026
Coaching in the NFL isn't easy. Plenty of amazing college coaches and NFL coordinators have tried their hand at the big gig and come up well short. Bad or good, there's one thing about the job that is inescapable: the public ire. When you suck at coaching and the team is losing your own fan base hates you. When you're good and you win all the time, like Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots, the entire league can't stand you. With hatred being so pervasive in football, it takes a special kind of person to be loathed more than the rest.
Bill Belichick
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Yes, Bill Belichick. The New England Patriots head coach is no doubt beloved by all who support the franchise, but to everyone else, he's Darth Belichick, leader of the Evil Empire. It's hard to deny his brilliance given the fact that he's won five Super Bowls already, but he's easy to hate.
Every great story needs a villain and with all the scandals the Patriots have dealt with over the years, and Belichick plays the part perfectly. Let's not forget that hoodie. No one looks good in a hoodie vest.
If you're a Michigan fan, you probably don't hate the guy coming up as much as the rest of us do.
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Nick Saban
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No one likes Nick Saban. He's the Bill Belichick of college football — a hardliner who wins a lot. Under Saban, the Alabama Crimson Tide have won four National Titles and have an all-time record of 101-19. People forget that before he built this legacy in Alabama, Saban was a head coach for the NFL's Miami Dolphins, and a horrible one at that. Coming from a college system where the head coach's word was the law, Saban struggled to adjust.
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NFL players with inflated contracts routinely talked back to him, sometimes refusing to follow orders. Players used to call him Nick just to piss him off because they knew he preferred to be called "coach", or "coach Saban." By the end of his second season in Miami, Saban accepted a job with Alabama and resigned as head coach of the Dolphins.
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Jim Harbaugh
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The fiery Jim Harbaugh is unabashedly critical of everyone and anyone. Calling him an oddball wouldn't do him justice. He gives entertaining quotes, sometimes evenat the expense of his own players. The majority of head coaches are deadpan on the sidelines so as to not give anything away. Not Harbaugh.
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The former 49ers head coach jumps around like a jackrabbit, throws at least one temper tantrum a game and barks constantly at the referees. Oh and let's not forget the time he started a fight with Detroit Lions head coach Jim Schwartz. Wolverine fans seem to love him though, so there's that.
Chargers fans, prepare to cringe.
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Bobby Petrino
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It's fair to say, Bobby Petrino didn't have it easy when he landed his job with the Atlanta Falcons. His franchise quarterback Mike Vick was sidelined due to a dogfighting scandal and the team got off to a brutal 3-10 start. That would make any new coach lose his nerve, but Bobby did things differently.
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With three games left in the season, Petrino resigned by leaving a short, handwritten note attached to the lockers of all his players. In the fallout, Petrino was criticized and labeled a coward. Now, he's coaching Missouri State and will hopefully find the success he was clearly missing in the pros.
You'll be surprised how many teams gave Rex Ryan a chance!
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Rod Marinelli
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Whether you like Marinelli as a person or not, you probably hate him as a coach because of the part he played in the Lions winless season. Marinelli was the head coach of the worst team in NFL history. The 2008 Lions finished 0-16, making them the only team to ever reach that historical mark.
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Marinelli's head coaching was nothing short of a disaster, but he found plenty of success coaching defense over the years. He won a Super Bowl as the defensive line coach for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, a team that boasted one of the greatest defensive fronts in NFL history.
From winless to winning, the GOAT had to make an appearance.
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Lane Kiffin
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Lane Kiffin was hired by Al Davis in the heart of the Raiders losing years at the age of 31, which made him the youngest head coach in the modern football era at the time. For some reason, Davis was displeased with how Kiffin was running the team and apparently, tried to force him to resign. When Kiffin refused, Davis fired Kiffin and named Tom Cable the interim head coach... TOM CABLE!
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Things didn't improve after Kiffin returned to college football. In 2012, he led a USC team with National Title aspirations to a 7-6 record. Sports Illustrated named him one of the five worst coaches in college football for turning the USC Trojans into the "biggest underachievers in the country."
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Sean Payton
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The head coach of the New Orleans Saints has enjoyed a great head coaching career. He was instrumental in his teams 2009 Super Bowl victory. His surprise onside kick call to open up the second half shifted the momentum and helped the Saints defeat the favored Indianapolis Colts.
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His involvement in the Bountygate scandal has become a major blemish on his legacy. In 2012, Payton was suspended for an entire season after it was proven that he was aware the bounty program implemented by defensive coaches, which incentivized players to intentionally injure opponents.
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Jim Schwartz
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I could probably make a list dedicated exclusively to terrible Detroit Lions coaches and I still think I'd have to leave a few worthy candidates off the list. Jim Schwartz was no Rod Marinelli, but he had his fair share of lowlights. In addition to being brutal with the challenge flag, Schwartz also made an illegal challenge — for those who don't know, throwing the challenge flag at the wrong time is an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty — that cost him a win against the Houston Texans back in 2012.
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It's also worth mentioning the brawl Schwartz started with then San Francisco 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh. Harbaugh shook his hand too hard after the game so Schwartz chased him down. It was quite the spectacle.
Coming up: he turned his team into one of the worst in the league.
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Dennis Erickson
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Dennis Erickson's first stint in the NFL didn't go as planned. In three of his four seasons with the Seattle Seahawks, Erickson finished with the wildly mediocre 8-8 record. He was fired after failing to make the playoffs and returned to the college football ranks, before taking another job in the NFL, this time with San Francisco 49ers.
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Things only got worse for Erickson. His 49ers never finished with a winning record and in 2004, after going 2-14, he was fired with three years remaining on his contract. You really have to hate someone a lot to be willing to pay them for three years not to coach your team.
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Butch Davis
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When the Browns scooped up Butch Davis he was tabbed as the potential savior of a reeling franchise (how many times have we heard that), mostly due to the reputation he built during his time as coach at the University of…

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