The theme for NFL Bloody Monday and its aftermath for head coaches involves control and productivity.

Dick LeBeau (Cincinnati), Dave Campo (Dallas) and Tom Coughlin (Jacksonville) lost their jobs because they strung together too many non-playoff seasons. Campo was 15-33. LeBeau was 12-33 with 21 losses in the last 25 games. Losing creates empty seats, and empty seats cost coaches their jobs.

The Coughlin firing signals an interesting change in the future dynamics of NFL front offices. The days of giving complete organizational control to one person -- the coach -- might be over. Coughlin's strong hand was the reason the Jaguars were one of the most successful expansion franchises in all of sports. They made a championship game within two seasons and were budding Super Bowl contenders until the start of the new century.

	Tom Coughlin did a lot more yelling than winning in his final three years with the Jags.

But, when one man is the coach, general manager and personnel boss, there is an obvious scapegoat when things go wrong. The Jaguars, under Coughlin, had three non-playoff seasons after paying for their salary-cap extravagance in trying to stay a Super Bowl contender. They were 7-9, 6-10 and 6-10, and fans weren't buying it.

Jaguars owner Wayne Weaver said that the decision to fire Coughlin wasn't just a matter of placing a value on winning and losing. There was more to it. He said that it came down to getting new, innovative ideas and finding a different approach. In other words, the perception is that the organization grew stale under Coughlin.

So Weaver plans to go back to a more conventional approach by looking at hiring a general manager and letting the general manager hire the coach. For that reason, Weaver didn't seem to be interested in hiring Bill Parcells, who will coach the Cowboys.

Weaver isn't the only owner wresting general manager control from the job title of the head coach. The Seahawks essentially forced Mike Holmgren to relinquish his general manager duties in order to remain in Seattle as head coach.

"We wanted to free up Mike to do more coaching. There's only so many hours in the day,'' Seattle president Bob Whitsitt said. "Clearly, we need Mike on the field as much as possible.''

The NFL is at a crossroads as far as figuring out the proper structure for a winning organization. It's interesting that Parcells accepts a job from Jones, who wants to dabble in personnel decisions. No coach has as much negotiating leverage as Parcells, who can say yes or no to coming back in any given year.

Parcells won't be a coach-general manager in Dallas, and that's a significant turnaround. For several years, coaches had all the leverage. Entering the season, almost half of the teams had a coach as the main decision-maker in personnel.

But all the power can't shift over to general managers. There aren't enough good candidates. Whitsitt is sure to offer the general manager position to Randy Mueller, the former Saints GM. Mueller is expected to be high on Weaver's list in Jacksonville

But outside of Mueller, who else has a proven track record as general manager? Certainly, Scott Pioli of the Patriots. Rick Spielman of the Dolphins and A.J. Smith of the Chargers are proven winners ready to be fulltime general managers.

Still, there aren't 32 general managers to run 32 teams. That's a problem. But the shifting is going back to the personnel office. If I had told you three years ago that Bill Parcells, Dennis Green, Mike Holmgren and possibly Steve Mariucci could be on the open market at the same time, you would have figured that four teams would scrap existing organizational plans and offer them every title in their buildings.

Not this year. None of those name coaches can reverse the changing trend.

Here's how the musical chairs will play out over the next couple of weeks now that Parcells has taken the Cowboys job: Green has a good chance to end up in Jacksonville unless Weaver pulls Mueller out of being the Seahawks general manager.

That leaves the Bengals, who aren't going to hire a general manager, making an offer to Coughlin first and then settling on Mark Duffner, their defensive coordinator, if Coughlin isn't interested.

With Holmgren's decision made and Parcells set to coach the Cowboys, the coaching market will be quiet while the 49ers are alive in the playoffs. Some believe Mariucci needs a big playoff season to earn a respectable contract extension offer from the 49ers. A quick exit could mean an extension offer of less than $3 million a year, and that could spark a move.

With an average of seven coaching changes a year, there is still some room for surprises, but don't count on them. Still, it was a bloody Monday for coaches not just in the sense of firings, but in the sense that head coaches have lost power in the eyes of owners looking for new ways to revamp struggling programs.

To keep power, coaches have to keep winning or suffer the consequences.

John Clayton is a senior NFL writer for ESPN.com.