6 NFL Coaches Who Lost The Locker Room In Week 1

by Jeremy Block - 7/30/2026

NFL coaches who lost the locker room in Week 1 Greg Schiano

Every NFL coach walks into a new locker room with a window of opportunity. The veterans are watching, the younger players are taking notes, and the first impression sets the tone for everything that follows. Some coaches nail it. The six on this list did the opposite so well that the damage was done before the season even had a chance to play out.

Some of these situations unraveled in training camp. Some imploded in the first team meeting. Here are six NFL coaches who lost the locker room before most fans had a chance to figure out their starters.

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Matt Patricia, Detroit Lions (2018)

Coming off multiple Super Bowl rings as Bill Belichick's defensive coordinator in New England, Patricia walked into Detroit acting like the hardware followed him through the door. In a one-on-one meeting before the season started, he told All-Pro cornerback Darius Slay—who had just led the NFL with eight interceptions—that he was not as good as his stats say.

A few weeks later, during a team meeting, Patricia pulled up a social media photo Slay had posted with a receiver from another team and publicly humiliated him in front of the entire roster with a profane analogy that Slay said on record was the moment all respect walked out the door.

Former teammate Quandre Diggs confirmed it on social media years later: "Once he did that to Slay, he lost the team." Patricia coached Detroit for three seasons, never winning more than six games per season, and never recovered a single ounce of the credibility he burned in that first camp.

Urban Meyer, Jacksonville Jaguars (2021)

Reports emerged before the first regular season game had even been played that Urban Meyer “never had the locker room.” One Jaguars player told NFL insider Michael Silver that Meyer had “zero credibility in that stadium” and “he had very little to begin with.”

Hired in 2021, Meyer's tenure got off to a disastrous start: he hired a strength coach who had been ousted from Iowa over allegations of racial misconduct, incurred league fines for illegal contact drills in training camp, and alienated veterans with a college coaching approach that landed flat with grown professionals. Sounds like a great start, right?

The situation hit a breaking point in Week 4, when Meyer opted to stay in Ohio after a road loss to the Bengals rather than fly home with the team. Video of him at a bar with a woman who was not his wife went viral overnight. Shortly after, Meyer canceled a full team meeting, apologized to position groups individually, and, according to multiple sources, had players laughing at him behind his back.

Just 13 games into his first season, Jaguars ownership pulled the plug on something that crashed and burned before it ever got off the ground, leaving Jacksonville at 2-11 when Meyer was shown the door.

Cam Cameron, Miami Dolphins (2007)

Cameron arrived in Miami after Nick Saban's decision to pack his bags for Alabama, inheriting a roster that was already on the rocks and a fanbase that was already frustrated. What followed was one of the most complete locker room collapses in NFL history.

Cameron immediately went head-to-head with defensive stars Jason Taylor and Zach Thomas, was publicly dressed down by veteran defensive tackle Vonnie Holliday during a tense December locker room confrontation, and by the end of the season had lost the trust of essentially everyone in the building.

The Dolphins started 0-13 before closing the season with a 1-15 record—the worst record in franchise history. Multiple players who remained on the roster the following season took turns publicly criticizing Cameron's leadership, and none of them held back.

Cameron later said he took “full responsibility” for what happened, but by then it didn't matter. New executive Bill Parcells fired him after just one season and turned over more than half the roster in a single offseason.

Lou Holtz, New York Jets (1976)

Look, there are a few hires in NFL history that actually show the massive gap between college football and the pros like how Lou Holtz's 10 months with the 1976 New York Jets did. Holtz was a great motivator in college, but he walked into New York thinking the same things that worked on 19-year-olds at NC State would work on grown men playing for a paycheck. It didn't work at all.

His most famous move was writing a team fight song called “New York Jets Go Rolling Along” and forcing veteran players to sing it after wins. It was so bad that Monday Night Football commentators even sang it live on national TV, making the Jets a complete laughingstock.

Holtz didn't even finish his first year. He quit with one game left in the season at 3-10, took the Arkansas job days later, and summed it up best on his way out: "God did not put Lou Holtz on this earth to coach in the pros.

Greg Schiano, Tampa Bay Buccaneers (2012)

Most coaches spend their first weeks on the job trying to build credibility with their own players. Schiano managed to alienate the entire league before the month of September was over. In just his second game as an NFL head coach, Schiano ordered his defense to crash the line of scrimmage and dive at Eli Manning's knees during a clock-killing victory formation kneel-down at the end of a Giants win.

Head coach of the Giants at the time, Tom Coughlin, one of the most respected figures in the sport, confronted Schiano on the field immediately after the game in a heated exchange that was captured on national television.

Coaches, players, and executives around the league made clear this was not how the NFL operated, and Coughlin's words--”You don't do that in this league”--which became the defining quote of the entire controversy.

Inside the Tampa Bay locker room, the reaction was complicated. Some players backed their coach publicly. Others questioned whether a first-year NFL head coach treating a professional game like a college scrimmage was someone they could trust to make sound decisions when it actually mattered. After going just 11-21 in two seasons, Schiano was fired.

Les Steckel, Minnesota Vikings (1984)

Replacing Bud Grant was a nightmare assignment, but Les Steckel made it 10 times worse by treating an NFL locker room like Marine Corps boot camp.

From his very first camp with the Minnesota Vikings, Steckel ran brutal daily padded drills that wore down the team before Week 1 even arrived. Then came the psychological stuff—like publicly ripping into veterans Sammy White and Ted Brown in front of the entire roster just because they went to the locker room for injury treatment at halftime instead of standing on the sideline.

From there, the Vikings collapsed to a 3-13 finish, posting the worst record in franchise history at the time. Steckel was fired the day after the season ended, with one player telling reporters the locker room was “sort of happy about the whole thing.” Bud Grant coming straight out of retirement to clean up his mess is still one of the most embarrassing solutions to a single coaching tenure in NFL history.

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Start:	July 30, 2026 @ 11:59 PM
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6 NFL Coaches Who Lost The Locker Room In Week 1

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