Each year, a handful of candidates emerge as the names to watch as somewhere around half a dozen teams enter the offseason with head coaching vacancies that will eventually be filled. These top-tier football minds often boast either a head coaching resume that serves as proof of concept, or a resume as a coordinator that indicates the best is yet to come.
Houston Texans defensive coordinator Matt Burke falls into the latter category, as he's been the architect of a defense that has steadily improved over the last three years and emerged as the best unit in the NFL during the 2025 NFL season. Accordingly, you can expect that the name Matt Burke will continue to be mentioned whenever a conversation about the coaching carousel pops up over the next month or so.
But for as long as the Houston Texans are in the NFL Playoffs, don't expect Matt Burke to spend too much time thinking about what's to come for the 2026 season. Right now, the 49-year-old defensive coordinator is only thinking about what's next for the Texans.
"I don’t [think about it]." Burke said this week regarding the rumors of his interest in a head coaching job. "It has nothing to do with anything. I'm trying to win a ball game here. My only focus is on that and that alone... I don't read anything. I don't listen to anything, I don't listen to anything. I'm focused on trying to go to Pittsburgh and get a win.”
Whether you believe this is the truth, or simply the stock answer for any coordinator waiting to shift his focus away from his current team toward whatever the next chapter may be, it's worth noting that as things stand right now, Matt Burke has yet to be tied to or rumored to be interested in any of the eight franchises that have a head coaching job available at the moment, and for the Texans, that certainly has to be considered a good sign.
If Burke were to accept the job with any one of the eight teams without a head coach, he'd become only the second Texans coordinator to go directly from coaching in Houston to serving as the head coach elsewhere, joining Mike Vrabel, who went from DC in Houston to head coach in Tennessee between the 2017 and 2018 seasons. Interesting, the Titans are one of the eight teams that will be searching for their next head coach this offseason after moving on from Brian Callahan after less than two full seasons.
In addition to the Titans, the remaining seven teams that will be in business for a new head coach in the upcoming weeks are the New York Giants, Miami Dolphins, Arizona Cardinals, Atlanta Falcons, Baltimore Ravens, Cleveland Browns, and Las Vegas Raiders.