NFL First Coach Fired Odds - Bowles Emerges as Clear Favorite

The first NFL coach fired market finally looks like a real market and less like a collection of random numbers. Todd Bowles leads the way on Kalshi at 70%, followed by Matt LaFleur at 17% and Jim Harbaugh at 6%.

Trading volume has increased to $21,858, which is a considerable improvement over where we started. That doesn’t mean we should suddenly treat every percentage as gospel, but the board is at least giving us a more coherent picture.

There’s also an intriguing, convenient Week 4 subplot: Bowles and LaFleur face each other on Sunday. Do we have a Loser Leaves Town match on our hands? 

Let's dig into the latest first coach fired odds.

Source: Kalshi, September 28, 2026 | Volume: $21,864 | Settles By: Feb. 15, 2027

We warned two weeks ago that a home loss to Cleveland could push Todd Bowles to the front of this conversation. Tampa Bay went ahead and lost that game, then followed it with a 23-16 home defeat against Minnesota. The Bucs are now 0-3, and Bowles is comfortably the market’s favorite.

Sunday wasn’t exactly a convincing argument for giving him more time. Tampa Bay managed just 243 yards of offense, surrendered an 86-yard punt-return touchdown and kept having promising plays wiped out by penalties. The team has failed to execute in all phases of the game, and looked sloppy while doing so.

Remember, Bowles survived last season’s disappointing finish while cleaning house of the assistants around him. The whole point of that shakeup was to fix the problems without replacing the head coach. So far, the results have been less than encouraging.

QB Baker Mayfield also dislocated the thumb on his throwing hand late against Minnesota, leaving his availability uncertain and opening the possibility of undrafted rookie Jalon Daniels starting against Green Bay. 

That could actually end up buying Bowles a couple of extra weeks, but starting 0-4 or worse still doesn't bode well.

A win over the Packers would finally give him something positive to point to, especially if Mayfield misses the game. An 0-4 start, with three straight losses at home, would make it pretty difficult to argue that anyone else belongs at the top of this list.

Just when it looked like Green Bay may have righted the ship, the Packers were hammered 35-14 at Lambeau Field by a previously winless Atlanta team on Thursday night.

They allowed 498 yards of offense, including 194 rushing yards from Bijan Robinson, as the Falcons scored 27 unanswered points after Green Bay took an early lead.

Another lead, another collapse. At some point, that stops looking like a few unfortunate Sundays and starts looking like something the coaching staff hasn’t figured out how to fix.

There are legitimate personnel issues. The defense is missing Micah Parsons badly and the offensive line has been a disaster, currently ranked as the worst unit in football by PFF. Still, getting embarrassed in your home opener by an 0-2 team isn’t exactly the sort of performance that buys patience.

We’d still be surprised if LaFleur is the first coach fired. Midseason changes are unusual in Green Bay, and the Packers only signed him to a multiyear extension in January. That suggests considerably more organizational patience than his place on this list might imply.

Sunday will offer a pretty revealing test. The Packers visit a winless Tampa Bay team that could be without its starting quarterback. Beat the Bucs, and LaFleur gets some breathing room while Bowles takes another step toward the exit. Lose, and he’ll have managed to make the coach with the hottest seat in football look like the guy with fewer problems.

Green Bay is starting to look like a season-from-hell candidate, and it's tough to imagine LaFleur surviving that even if he's not the first coach fired.

Jim Harbaugh is the new name worth mentioning, although we’re not ready to put him in the same category as Bowles.

The Chargers dropped to 0-3 with a 24-16 loss in Buffalo. Losing on the road to the Bills isn’t necessarily a disaster by itself, but the way Los Angeles managed it deserves some scrutiny. The defense forced five turnovers, and the Chargers still couldn’t find a way to win.

Five takeaways should give an offense with Justin Herbert more than enough opportunities. Instead, the Chargers walked away with another loss and another conversation about the improvements they’re supposedly making. The much-hyped Mike McDaniel offense has looked like an absolute mess so far this season.

Still, Harbaugh has considerably more recent success to fall back on than the average winless coach. He led the Chargers to consecutive 11-win seasons and playoff appearances in his first two years. We’d expect that to buy him more than three bad weeks before ownership starts seriously considering a change.

Unfortunately, the schedule isn’t giving him much of a chance to ease his way out of this. Los Angeles travels to Seattle in Week 4, with another road loss threatening to turn a bad September into an 0-4 start.

Harbaugh isn't very likely to be fired midseason, in our opinion, and a Bobby Petrino-style escape back to college comes with a fairly significant problem. Harbaugh is still facing NCAA penalties running through 2038, stemming from the Connor Stalions scandal at Michigan. Going back to school isn't quite as simple as deciding he's had enough of the Chargers.

For now, we still see him as a distant outsider. But Los Angeles needs to start winning games, not just finding new ways to explain why it isn't.