Best Head Coaches Currently In The NFL

He's never really had a powerhouse team during his tenure in NY. He averages 9 regular season wins a year, had 12 wins once, and has been to the playoffs once in the last 4 years. Whats weird is his football teams in NY have been consistently very average during the regular season and extremely streaky during the post season; he has never won a playoff game in NY without also winning the Super Bowl.

I think Coughlin winning the Super Bowl in 2011 was more of a "any given Sunday" type thing.

I guess you CAN argue with success then. Sheesh

I guess you CAN argue with success then. Sheesh

lol

I can only imagine if Shanahan had won 2 SB's in recent years here. People would be crowning him the greatest of all time.

But with Coughlin it's like eh, who cares.

What's that, Harbaugh wins a SB? Eh, what does he even do?

Doesn't Roman call the plays in San Fran?

Not sure who calls the plays there. But that offense is designed exactly like Stanford's. Now they put it the read option w/ Kap. But he has to get credit for turning around Alex Smith. No one could get the guy to play, he looked mentally shot. Harbaugh comes in there and just works majic w/ the kid. Simply a great coaching job.

My list:

1. Bill Belichick

2. Mike McCarthy

3. Sean Payton

4. John Fox

5. Mike Smith


Im surprised so many people have Tom Coughlin high in their list. I think hes good and all but i don't know about being a consensus top 5.

I also don't know about Jim Harbaugh being a top 5 right now. I like him a lot and would want him as my coach, but his most recent stint in the NFL is only 2 years young. Hes also in the NFC West. He'd be in my next great coaches section, speaking of:

Jim Harbaugh
Greg Shiano
Pete Carroll

I would completly disagree there. Gotta give the guy credit. To me he's simply a great head coach.

I would have considered Rex Ryan a good coach until these past two years. Him and Tannenbaum ruined a good, talented team. I think a fresh start where a GM has total control over player personell would be good for him. A place where Rex Ryan might end up being a good coach is Detroit. But right now he is mediocre at best, and has become a clown.

But we're talking coaching here, not personel moves. I think the team got old and Sanchez simply isn't any good.

I support a lot of the pro-Coughlin sentiments. I do think there are better coaches in the NFL, but it's hard to argue with his accomplishments, and it's always tough to separate a good coach from a strong organization considering it's hard to be a top organization with a weak coaching staff and vice versa.

Coaches improve and decline much like players do, but the tricky thing with evaluating coaching careers is that age is not the number one indicator of where a guy is in his career. A thirty year old defensive end tells me something about the player's profile even knowing nothing else. Telling me a coach is fifty years old doesn't really tell me much of anything.

I do think age matters for coaches and there is certainly some evidence to back that up, but in the case of someone like Sean Payton, I can't tell you he's not going to be a better coach in his late 40's than he was in his late 30's. I wouldn't expect Payton to be as strong a coaching figure the next four years as he was the four prior to the suspension (sometimes guys just burnout), but that has little to do with his age and more to do with his accomplishments.

Jim Harbaugh
Mike Tomlin
Sean Payton
Tom Coughlin
Mike McCarthy
Pete Carrol

Mike McCoy

http://http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/page/greatestcoach19/greatest-coaches-nfl-history-mike-shanahan

panel at ESPN put Mike as the 19th greatest coach all time. Kinda cool video with it.

Mike will move up in the list once he wins another SB, well, make that few :)