Rivera says he still wants to coach, even as a DC

Former Commanders coach Ron Rivera said he’s not done with coaching — even if he’d no longer be the person in charge.

Rivera, who was fired by new owner Josh Harris on Jan. 8, said he has had “conversations with some people and some teams” and is waiting to see what happens over the next week or so with coaching vacancies. Six teams, including Washington, still need head coaches, which would lead to further openings on those respective staffs.

Rivera has been a head coach for the past 13 years, compiling a 102-103-2 record. He was 26-40-1 in Washington, including 4-13 this past season. Washington won the NFC East in his first season but did not finish with a winning record during his four years.

“I have several opportunities right now,” Rivera told ESPN in his first public comments since being fired. “I just want to make sure it’s the right one.”

Rivera said it would not be difficult to return to being a defensive coordinator again. He last served as a coordinator with the Chargers from 2008 to ’10 before taking over as the Panthers‘ head coach.

He also was the Chargers’ linebackers coach in 2007 — after serving as the Bears‘ defensive coordinator the previous three seasons.

“Sometimes you do have to take a step back,” Rivera said. “You take a step back you learn and grow from it. It’s like I told other players, if you look at this year as a lost year, you’re [hurting] yourself. You should look at it as a year to learn and understand why things happen. This was probably the greatest learning experience I’ve had in a while this year. I mean, a lot of things came to light at certain times this past season that I think going forward will really help me.”

He mentioned delegating authority and wanting to be given information that he needed to know, not just what someone thought he wanted to know.

Rivera fired defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio on Nov. 24 and took over the defensive playcalling duties for the final five games. Two days before the season finale, Rivera said handling the defense again showed how much he had missed that aspect of coaching.

“I enjoyed the heck of it,” Rivera told ESPN. “I got away from it for 3½ seasons and really felt like I was more of a manager.”

Rivera said at times “stupid stuff” would be brought to him and it “made no sense” that those things would be brought to his attention.

Rivera declined to say what those were, but added, “It was just stuff that shouldn’t have been put on the head coach’s plate. But at the time when I was dealing with it, I wasn’t necessarily the head coach as much as I was the manager.”

That’s partly why he said he would not favor the coach-centric model that he was part of in Washington. Rivera said that was the deal presented to him by previous owner Dan Snyder. But Rivera said it was a difficult model, especially during a turbulent period that included multiple investigations of Snyder and the culture he created before Rivera arrived in January 2020.

“I would’ve loved a different model just because, in hindsight, now you really see how much more time you spend on personnel and as a coach, that’s not necessarily what you want to do,” he said. “What I really enjoyed more than anything else the last five weeks was just being right in the middle of everything. Now your only focus is just that one thing. That’s what you do; you want to teach.”

Rivera said he still believes Sam Howell can be a starting quarterback in the NFL, but he regrets how he handled the situation. Rivera announced last offseason that Howell would enter the team’s workouts as the No. 1 quarterback. Howell ended up starting all 17 games, throwing for 21 touchdowns and 21 interceptions.

“I took a big gamble,” Rivera said. “I put a lot on Sam, and I probably shouldn’t have put as much pressure on him, and I think that was probably one of the mistakes I made this year. He didn’t deserve to have that put on him. He’s a good young quarterback, has some talent and some ability, and I think that’s something I should have backed off on.

“I should have kept emphasizing he was going to be the guy that got the first opportunity. … Just phrasing it that way would’ve taken a lot of pressure off of him, just kind of that he hadn’t been anointed.”

But, Rivera said, even though Harris fired him, he likes what he has seen from this ownership group.

“The organization is a very good position,” he said. “If there’s one thing that we can say over the four years, it’s that I think the culture is headed in the direction it needs to be headed.

“I think what Mr. Harris and his group want to do and the way they’re going to approach things, I think it’s going to be very efficient. I think the focus is now on the football team.”