Tom E. Curran • E-mail

It’s bloodletting Monday in the NFL. The Jets, Lions and Browns dismissed Eric Mangini, Rod Marinelli and Romeo Crennel, respectively, the day after the end of the regular season.

Those three join the three head coaches jettisoned during the season — San Francisco’s Mike Nolan, St. Louis’ Scott Linehan and Lane Kiffin of the Raiders. Also, add in Seattle’s Mike Holmgren, who’s voluntarily stepping down and will be replaced by Jim Mora.

And the heads may well keep rolling. Buffalo’s Dick Jauron is twisting in the wind this week awaiting word of his fate. Meanwhile, in Kansas City, Cincinnati, Oakland, St. Louis, Tampa Bay, Dallas, Jacksonville, Chicago, Washington and Green Bay there are likely concerns about the direction those teams are going under (deep breath) Herm Edwards, Marvin Lewis, Tom Cable, Jim Haslett, Jon Gruden, Wade Phillips, Jack Del Rio, Lovie Smith, Jim Zorn and Mike McCarthy. Respectively.

Consider this. Since the end of the 2005 season, a total of 28 coaches have been fired or walked away from their posts. There were 10 after 2005, seven in 2006, four after 2007 and now seven (so far) in 2008.

Remember, there are 32 teams (some teams have flipped coaches more than once).

In any event, that’s an outrageous number and — while we in the media often feed the feeding frenzy on these coaches — it’s worth wondering how much damage all this turnover is doing to the game.

The amount of time necessary to purge a roster, set a course, suffer through fits and starts and find success is, quite often, longer than some owners are willing to wait.

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Especially when those owners see teams that make a change and go through a quick turnaround like the Ravens, Dolphins and Falcons did this year. Those situations are more the exception than the rule, however.

And when owners or general managers opt to pull the plug quickly and start over with a new guy, the cycle of hope and often unrealistic expectations starts again.

And those hopes are going to be pinned on guys who, let’s face it, may not be ready to assume the very difficult job of head coach.

Really, how many truly suitable candidates are there? Guys with the ability to lead maturely, manage a roster, hire a staff, implement a program, understand the personnel and business end of things and deal with the media? Apparently, not enough.

But, with five (and counting, especially if the Raiders and Rams don’t re-up interim coaches Cable and Haslett) vacancies after the 49ers gave Mike Singletary a four-year contract Sunday, more men are going to be put in a position to fail.

It’s bad for business. And, for a league with a lot more problems than anyone really is noticing (it’s spiraling toward a labor stoppage, remember) somebody’s got to take the situation by the throat and fix it.

Who? How? Those are questions to be answered by someone above my pay scale and job description.

This is not to argue that Marinelli’s 0-16 season didn’t deserve to end like this. But maybe, just maybe, if the snowball of firing expectations didn’t start rolling down the hill in Cleveland and New York, would those situations have turned out differently?

It’s worth considering.

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