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NFL coach rankings: Belichick stands pat, but shakeup down the line The Sporting NewsBy David Steele @david_c_steele RSS June 10, 2014 12:06am EDT There are no simple criteria for ranking the NFL’s head coaches, 1 through 32. Wins and losses aren’t enough, nor are Super Bowl wins, playoff appearances, longevity or the eyeball test. It’s also quite a challenge to figure it all out in June, while teams are in OTAs, with a lot of draft picks still unsigned or unavailable, injuries already playing havoc with a coach’s chances to prove himself (hello, Jason Garrett; sorry about Sean Lee) and with seven new head coaches. Four of them have never been NFL head coaches before, period. What fun to rank them now! All that being said, there is one fairly reliable rule of thumb: Start with Bill Belichick and work your way down.
1 Bill Belichick (AP Photo) It’s going to be a long time before any coach is able to dislodge him from the top, even if he never wins another Super Bowl. What makes him special, heading into Year 15 in New England: You can hardly remember the last time the Patriots began a season without being one of the favorites to win it all. Tom Brady or not, that’s indescribably hard to do. 2 Pete Carroll (AP Photo) On the surface, it’s an overemphasis on the immediate, because his Seahawks just won the Super Bowl. But in taking over the franchise and turning it into a champion in four years, Carroll answered the final question about whether he was anything more than a rah-rah, fist-pumping college coach who had stumbled in previous NFL gigs and needed to stay in his lane. He’s in the right lane now — Seattle is here to stay, and so is he. 3 Tom Coughlin (AP Photo) Coughlin, who turns 68 in August, won’t be around forever, and one only hopes he’ll be more appreciated when he’s gone from the NFL. In turning the Giants (and the Jaguars before that) into winners, he mastered one of the great challenges any coach has: tweaking his style to mesh with players, while getting players to adopt and adapt to his. If nothing else, who else, outside of his own family, really thought Eli Manning had two Super Bowl wins in him? Thank Coughlin largely for that. 4 Sean Payton (AP Photo) It would be a shock if Payton exits with only one Super Bowl win. But getting that one with the Saints, with that history and under those circumstances, is a career pinnacle anyone can brag about. Few coaches rally their players around them the way Payton has, as evidenced by their return to prominence last year when he came back from his suspension. Puts his ego aside (no easy task for him) to surround himself with coaches who make his team better, like Rob Ryan last year. 5 Mike Tomlin (AP Photo) He’s still only 42, making his two Super Bowls and one win all the more remarkable. Further proof that the Rooneys know what they’re doing, grabbing a hot assistant before the rest of the NFL believed he was ready. Now facing more of a challenge than he ever has in his brief career, but most franchises will gladly take back-to-back .500 seasons as a low point in seven years. 6 Andy Reid (AP Photo) You’d think that a coach with Reid’s track record in Philadelphia over 14 years wouldn’t need to jump-start his rep. But Reid did, and he pulled it off in Year 1 in Kansas City last year. After all the near-misses with the Eagles, a Lombardi Trophy is hardly inevitable, but if and when Reid wins one, he jumps up several notches on this list. 7 John Harbaugh (AP Photo) His success is almost taken for granted in Baltimore, but not anywhere else. One of the more inspired and unconventional coaching hires in recent years, Harbaugh proved the franchise’s wisdom with playoff trips in his first five seasons, three AFC title games and a Super Bowl win. The unknown Harbaugh brother will never be anonymous again. 8 John Fox (AP Photo) When you take two different franchises to Super Bowls in just over a decade, it doesn’t matter if either of them had Peyton Manning. One of them didn’t, of course, the 2003 Panthers, so he can do far more than steer a Hall of Fame quarterback toward the huddle. He has the respect of his players and his colleagues — and this season, he may be loaded enough to get that last piece of hardware left. 9 Jim Harbaugh (AP Photo) The 49ers’ brass had better be smart enough to hold onto him, because the transformation he’s engineered there is borderline miraculous. Not every front office, roster or fan base can handle his style, and he willingly takes on a ton of heat — but he has yet to prove he can’t handle it, nor has his team. Even if he overstays his welcome, some other team would snatch him up before the door closes behind him. 10 Mike McCarthy (AP Photo) Coaching in Green Bay is a cauldron, and it only gets hotter when you win, or have an all-timer at quarterback, or both. McCarthy is just low-key, firm and accessible enough to flourish in it. You can’t argue with the results so far, especially considering he wasn’t fast-tracked for a head-coaching position the way others often are. He’s a smart hire that’s paying off. 11 Chuck Pagano (AP Photo) He’s a couple of playoff wins, maybe a conference title-game appearance, away from cracking the top 10. Pagano has instantly made owner Jim Irsay’s wholesale shakeup from two years ago pay off. Before and after his cancer fight in his rookie year and in the full season afterward, Pagano has pulled together the threads of a rebuilt roster, gotten the full support of his players, and steered Andrew Luck deftly through his introduction to the NFL. 12 Mike Smith (AP Photo) Truly cursed by a lack of playoff success, which is overshadowing his regular-season accomplishments. Throw out last season’s buckling under the weight of injuries, and you have 56 wins in five years … and one playoff win. Smith’s division is loaded right now. You hope his team’s window hasn’t closed this early, not with Matt Ryan still just 29 years old. 13 Jeff Fisher (AP Photo) It’s hard to find anyone to knock Fisher’s coaching ability, some of the great teams he put together in Tennessee, the identity they forged, or even the early results of the current reclamation project in St. Louis. It’s harder to explain how he only made the playoffs six times, and had six winning seasons, in 17 years with the Oilers/Titans. The record needs to catch up with the reputation at some point. He’s in a tough division for that right now, the NFC West. 14 Lovie Smith (AP Photo) On the other end of the scale from Fisher, it’s hard to knock what Smith did in Chicago for nine years, getting to a Super Bowl, making the NFC title game, three losing seasons in nine years — yet only NFL insiders seem to respect his coaching chops. He’s now being handed the reins in Tampa, where things have been a mess since the end of the Jon Gruden era. The Bucs will get better, but Smith also faces a beast of a division. For the rest of the league......link -
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