While the NFL will always be a league where the Jimmys and Joes matter more than Xs and Os, having an elite coach can elevate a good team into a true Super Bowl contender.
Meanwhile, having a bad coach with a good roster can easily sink the hopes of an organization.
These days, the NFL is littered with head coaches with impressive resumes, as well as young coaches who are making names for themselves in quick fashion.
But who are the 10 best head coaches in the NFL today?
The Best Head Coaches In The NFL
If you ask 10 different people this question, there’s a good chance you get 10 different lists. After all, there is no objective measure of what makes a great head coach.
Plenty of “lesser” coaches have won more due to the personnel at their disposal. Meanwhile, a great coach can only take a bad team so far.
Still, there is, generally speaking, a shared understanding of which coaches in the NFL are among the best. So without further ado, here is our list of the 10 best coaches in the league today.
Honorable Mention: Matt LaFleur, Sean McDermott, Todd Bowles, Pete Carroll
Each of these four coaches has an extremely solid argument to make the top 10 list. But all fall short for various reasons.
Many believe LaFleur could lead Green Bay to a Super Bowl this season, but he hasn’t reached those heights yet. McDermott has had immense success in Buffalo, but questionable late-game decisions and clock management have left fans wondering why the Bills haven’t won even more.
Bowles is still trying to shake the image of a rough run with the New York Jets and has largely benefitted from coaching in the NFL’s worst division, while Carroll’s best days may well be behind him.
That being said, all are generally considered solid-to-good NFL head coaches, and most teams would be happy to have them.
10) Mike Tomlin
Mike Tomlin is in year 19 as the head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers. He has still yet to finish a season below .500.
While many will point to the fact that Tomlin and the Steelers haven’t been genuine title contenders for several years, that is an absolutely insane run of consistency.
Tomlin is the standard for a good NFL head coach, which makes him the perfect candidate to slot in at No. 10 in our list. If he could simply find a good quarterback and maybe stop hiring bad offensive coordinators, Tomlin could easily move up this list in the future. But those shortcomings mean that, at least for now, he lands on the back end of the top 10.
9) Kevin O’Connell
Saving Sam Darnold’s career is, thus far, the most impressive feat of Kevin O’Connell’s four-year run as the head coach of the Minnesota Vikings.
But the 40-year-old Sean McVay disciple is a combined 27-7 in the two full seasons in which he had a healthy quarterback at his disposal, and it’s clear that he’s one of the best offensive minds in the league.
O’Connell’s success, however, has shown the limitations that good head coaches have, as those seasons both fell apart when Kirk Cousins and Sam Darnold turned back into pumpkins when the playoffs came around, limiting how high O’Connell could go on this list.
8) Dan Campbell
A number of folks might argue that Campbell needs to show more sustained success in order to earn a spot on this list. After all, his two most successful seasons came with coordinators Ben Johnson and Aaron Glenn at the helm, both of whom have since left for head coaching roles.
But the Lions were an abject disaster for years and years before Campbell came around and now, even without Johnson and Glenn, they’re among the best teams in the league.
Campbell has instilled a clear winning culture in an organization where that was previously unheard of, and he showed the ability to identify coaching talent when he hired both Johnson and Glenn to begin with.
7) Nick Sirianni
Nick Sirianni might just be the most polarizing coach in the NFL. After all, he’s led the Philadelphia Eagles to the Super Bowl twice in four full seasons in charge, winning his first a year ago. He also has an astonishing .718 win percentage through his first four-plus seasons.
Detractors will tell you that Sirianni is simply the beneficiary of the remarkable roster constructed by Howie Roseman, who is the best general manager in the league today. And, to some extent, there are elements of truth in that.
But somebody still has to steer the ship, and Sirianni has done that extremely well to this point. The 44-year-old seemingly takes a more college-style approach to coaching, where he acts as a CEO and lets his coordinators handle a lot of the X and O elements. But it’s hard to argue with the numbers, or the Lombardi Trophy in his office.
6) Kyle Shanahan
Like Sirianni, Shanahan is a coach that people seem to either love or hate. If you’re a fan, you say that he dramatically raises the floor of his team year after year, regardless of the capabilities of his quarterback.
Detractors, however, will say that he has routinely failed to get over the hump in the playoffs and that his coaching in big games often leaves much to be desired.
Both tend to be true, which is why he comes in at No. 7 on this list. What Shanahan has done with Jimmy Garoppolo and Brock Purdy at quarterback is nothing short of a minor miracle. But in a league defined by playoff success, at some point, the expectation for Shanahan will be that he brings the Lombardi Trophy back to San Francisco.
5) Sean Payton
When Sean Payton returned from exile to coach the Denver Broncos in 2023, there were plenty of question marks.
Sure, Payton had immense success in New Orleans. But much of that success came with Drew Brees, one of the greatest quarterbacks in league history, at his disposal. Could he have that same level of success without Brees, especially in a league that had begun to adapt to his schemes?
Well, Payton has proved the doubters wrong for the most part, turning around a putrid Broncos team in short order. He helped lead rookie QB Bo Nix to an impressive debut season in 2024, highlighted by a 10-7 record.
This year, the Broncos have their sights on even bigger goals and will need Nix to take the next step to accomplish them. It’ll be on Payton, largely, to ensure that he gets there.
4) John Harbaugh
Baltimore Ravens fans with Harbaugh fatigue will point to late-game decision-making and playoff stumbles as reasons why John Harbaugh shouldn’t be so high on this list. But the proof is in the pudding.
Since taking over in 2008, Harbaugh has just two under-.500 seasons in Baltimore, four AFC Championship Game appearances, and a Super Bowl victory in 2012.
Harbaugh’s teams are the picture of consistency. The defense is always good. They can always run the ball well, and since drafting Lamar Jackson in 2018, they’ve had one of the league’s most dynamic offenses almost every season.
Not only is Harbaugh a well-above-average gameday coach, but he’s also a great identifier of talent and a fantastic culture builder, making him easily one of the best coaches in the NFL today.
3) Sean McVay
As if the Lombardi Trophy 2022 doesn’t speak for itself, McVay’s coaching tree is somehow already among the best in the NFL. Disciples Matt LaFleur, Kevin O’Connell, and Zac Taylor have both had significant success as NFL head coaches.
The Rams made McVay the youngest head coach in NFL history when they hired him at just 30 years old in 2017, and he hasn’t let them down.
In nine seasons in LA, McVay has a .612 winning percentage, he’s reached the Super Bowl twice, and won it all in 2022 against the Taylor-coached Bengals. His offense helped revolutionize the league, and the Rams are yet again Super Bowl contenders in 2025.
2) Jim Harbaugh
Jim Harbaugh is undeniably a strange character, but he’s also one heck of a football coach. The younger Harbaugh brother was highly successful in his first stint in the NFL when he went 44-19-1 in four seasons with the San Francisco 49ers and reached the Super Bowl in 2013.
He then returned to his alma mater and led the Michigan Wolverines to their first national championship in over a quarter century, albeit under dubious circumstances.
After being more or less bounced out of the college ranks, Harbaugh returned to the NFL with the Los Angeles Chargers in 2024 and immediately hit the ground running, leading the team to an 11-6 record and a playoff appearance.
In year two in LA, the Chargers already look like legitimate Super Bowl contenders, and Harbaugh is more than capable of leading them to the promised land.
1) Andy Reid
Do the Kansas City Chiefs look a bit shaky to start the 2025 season? Sure. But is Andy Reid still a Hall of Fame-caliber coach? Absolutely.
After an impressive 14-year run in Philadelphia, Reid took over as the Kansas City head coach in 2013 and has turned the Chiefs, with the held of Patrick Mahomes, into the league’s model organization.
Reid has an almost unfathomable .724 win percentage in 13 seasons with Kansas City, including three Super Bowl victories and two more Super Bowl appearances.
In fact, he’s led the Chiefs to seven consecutive appearances in the AFC title game. Reid has been among the best coaches in the league for over two decades now, and his remarkable run in Kansas City has solidified his legacy as one of the greatest coaches in NFL history.
The post Ranking The 10 Best Coaches In The NFL Today appeared first on BroBible.
Ranking The 10 Best Coaches In The NFL Today
Pinoy Human Rights
0 Comments