Vegas win totals are about 0.83 correlated with your record from last year. I think the correlation is even higher with your 5 year average win total.
You look at a Vegas win total, you should interpret it as nothing more than a mathematical construct reflecting 1) your average win totals over the last 5 years, and 2) your win total a year ago. That's basically it.
Coach hot seat odds are derived off almost exclusively off the win total projections and your previous win total.
You take the teams with the worst win totals, scrub out the ones that have a head coach in their first or second year, maybe scrub out a few special situations, and there you have it.
So let's run through all these scub-outs and special situations.
Todd Bowles (5-11) just signed a new contract in New York to specifically get him off the hot seat. The Colts (4-12) have a new head coach Frank Reich. The Raiders (6-10) have a new head coach Jon Gruden. The Giants (3-13) have a new head coach Pat Shurmur. The Bears (5-11) have a new head coach Matt Nagy.
The 49ers (6-10) have a 2nd year head coach who got "his" franchise quarterback, and finished the year winning 6 out of 7 games. He's not going anywhere NEAR the top of these futures lists.
The Texans (4-11) have a coach Bill O'Brian who went 9-7 with the Texans three years in a row and got them into the playoffs twice, and he went 3-3 with their hot young rookie QB before he got hurt. This is not the type of coach that is going to go high on the hot seat futures.
Basically just leaves you with the MOST obvious one (and Vegas communicated that he's the most obvious one) Hue Jackson...followed by a group that basically just includes Adam Gase, Dirk Koetter, Vance Joseph, Jay Gruden, and Marvin Lewis.
Why aren't those other guys up above Gase? I'm not sure it matters first off, because the odds are all pretty long anyway. But this is where some subjectivity really comes into it.
The Bengals are notoriously cheap, and notoriously stubborn. They don't operate like the rest of the NFL, in a lot of ways, including firing the head coach. Lewis has been on the hot seat list for ages and he's never fired. This is like the opposite of the New England Patriots. History has shown that even though you may think Marvin Lewis should be atop the hot seat charts, there's no use bothering to do that because the Bengals just won't fire him.
Vance Joseph should be above Gase but ultimately he's only in his 2nd year and I think last year he had even worse quarterbacks than Miami did. The market believes Case Keenum is far better than what they had. He's so close to Gase in the odds I'm not sure the separation matters much anyhow.
The one that is baffling is Dirk Koetter. I just don't even know what that's all about. He should clearly be on top of some of these hot seat futures lists. But it could be a situation where unbeknownst to me since I'm not a Tampa Bay fan or follower, the owners are known to love Koetter or be unusually committed to him.
