RANKING EVERY 2022 NFL HEAD COACH 1-10

BY ADAM GREENE

I’ve often said that if you don’t have a coach and a quarterback then you don’t really have a team. The league proves it time and again. An elite head coach can only do so much without an elite QB and absent a good head coach, great quarterbacks even less.

A few weeks ago we ranked every NFL starting quarterback heading in to the 2022 NFL season. It’s time we turn our attention to the guy screaming and scowling on the sidelines.

Now, this isn’t a best of all time list. If so, then a certain six-time Super Bowl Champion head coach would be No. 1. No, it’s all about today’s NFL, the one we’re heading into for the 2022 season. I’m factoring in the past, but what’s most important is the recent present. Frankly, if you go back more than five seasons a huge swath of these guys weren’t head coaches at all.

My criteria for putting the list together was as simple as it was impossible. If a team lost its head coach via retirement or firing, who would they most want to hire to replace him if all the other head coaches in the league were available?

And the answer was clear and I used that same criteria all the way down the line. If that guy was gone, who would then be next up on the list?

With all that settled, here is the first part of ranking all 32 NFL head coaches in order. We begin with 1-10.

1. SEAN MCVAY, LOS ANGELES RAMS

Last season: 16-5, NFC Champion, Super Bowl Champion

Career record and accomplishments: 62-29, 2-time NFC Champion, Super Bowl LVII Champion, 2017 NFL Coach of the Year

No coach in the modern NFL has put more of a stamp on the league than Sean McVay since he took over the Rams in 2017. He’s taken the team to the Super Bowl twice, won it once and, maybe more importantly for this list, populated other NFL teams with his former assistant coaches. In his five short years, McVay has lost four assistant coaches to head coaching positions and, so far, they’ve all been successful. One of them, Zac Taylor, faced off against McVay in the Super Bowl last year.

The only other head coach that can match that kind of influence outside his own franchise sits at No. 2.

As I wrote earlier, this isn’t a lifetime achievement award. This isn’t a Pro Football Hall of Fame induction. McVay has coached just half a decade and completely altered the league’s landscape and, with his influence in personnel decisions with general manager Les Snead and owner Stan Kreonke, he’s helped alter the way franchises do business. When the story of this NFL era is written, McVay’s accomplishments and impact will dominate the conversation. And he’s just now entering his sixth year on the job.

2. ANDY REID, KANSAS CITY CHIEFS

Last season: 14-5

Career record and accomplishments: 252-151-1, 1 NFC Championship, 2-time AFC Champion, Super Bowl LIV Champion, 2002 NFL Coach of the Year

Andy Reid has been one of the best offensive minds in the NFL since he first took over the Philadelphia Eagles back in 1999. His eye for talent and the way he uses that talent on the field always adapts with the times. You could watch a Reid coached team in 2002 and not recognize the strategies unleashed in 2022.

Like McVay, Reid’s coaching tree is spread throughout the league. Five current head coaches in the NFL all worked for Reid at some point and two of them, John Harbaugh and Doug Pederson, have Super Bowl trophies of their own.

Pederson is developing his own solid tree (which should count on Reid’s) with Frank Reich through to Matt Eberflus.  

3. KYLE SHANAHAN, SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS

Last season: 12-7

Career record and accomplishments: 43-44, 1 NFC Championship

This might seem high to some, but the impact Shanahan has made in his short time at the helm of the 49ers rivals McVay and Reid. Like both the men ranked above him, he took a team with a middle rung quarterback to the Super Bowl (Reid with Donavan McNabb in Philadelphia and McVay with Jared Goff) as a head coach. His playcalling and design not only got another team, the 2016 Atlanta Falcons to a Super Bowl, it landed their quarterback (Matt Ryan, who was not a middle rung talent) an NFL Most Valuable Player nod.

He and McVay became head coaches at the exact same time and the league reflects the changes they’ve made. Shanahan now has a coaching tree of his own, with Robert Saleh with the New York Jets and Mike McDaniel with the Miami Dolphins both coming from his offices.

While McVay and Reid have focused on altering the NFL’s passing attack landscape, Shanahan has keyed in on the run game, building an offense that doesn’t need elite QB play to win and that doesn’t need a high priced super star running back to be successful. San Francisco has had a different leading rushers in each of Shanahan’s five seasons.

4. BILL BELICHICK, NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS

Last season: 10-8

Career record and accomplishments: 312-156, 9-time AFC Champion, 6-time Super Bowl Champion, 3-time NFL Coach of the Year

As I wrote in the preamble, this is not an all time list because in any iteration of that, Bill Belichick is No. 1. Only two coaches in the history of the league have more coaching wins than Belichick and no one is even close to his 31 playoff victories total. The next best mark is Tom Landry with 20. Needless to say, his six Super Bowl victories and nine Super Bowl appearances by a head coach are both records. Of his actual peers, Belichick is the only current head coach to win more than one championship.

So what makes Belichick No. 4 instead of No. 1? Because all of that, all the accolades, the Super Bowl victories, the AFC Championships came with Tom Brady at quarterback. With Brady under center, Belichick never posted a losing record. Without Brady, he’s put up losing records six times out of nine tries, including all but one year in his stint with the Cleveland Browns.

Now, to be fair, he has put up three winning records without Brady. One with the Browns, one when Brady was hurt and Matt Cassel was his starting QB in 2008 and last season with Mac Jones.

What also hurts Belichick in this, the 2022 list, is his assistant coaches and how they consistently flame out when landing their own head coaching opportunity. Of his former assistants, only Josh McDaniels is an NFL head coach about to start his first season with the Las Vegas Raiders after faceplaninting with the Denver Broncos more than a decade ago.

Whether it’s Joe Judge, Matt Patricia, Eric Mangini, Al Groh, Romeo Crennel or Bill O’Brien (and I could have kept listing losers), Belichick has unleashed a backed up toilet’s worth of assistants onto an unsuspecting NFL that have all set franchises back, sometimes by a decade.

Belichick’s legacy and coaching acumen is all tied to Brady and until he can accomplish something significant without the greatest quarterback to ever play the position, he’ll probably continue to drop on lists like this.

5. MIKE TOMLIN, PITTSBURGH STEELERS

Last season: 9-8-1

Career record and accomplishments: 162-94-2, 2-time AFC Champion, Super Bowl XLIII Champion

A good gauge on how successful you were in hiring your head coach is how quickly he’d be picked up by another team if you fired him. The ink would not be dry on Mike Tomlin’s pink slip before he received a multimillion dollar offer from another team. Of course, that would mean the Steelers would have to fire him and that’s just not going to happen.

Tomlin has coached some great teams, but it’s been his recent job with a Pittsburgh franchise dying from old age and the weight of its own old contracts that really shows how great a job he’s done. Tomlin kept the Steelers competitive when Ben Roethlisberger was out for the season in 2019. He got them to the playoffs with the desiccated husk of Roethlisberger at QB last year.

In 15 years as the head coach of the Steelers, Tomlin has never coached them to a losing record. He has three 8-8 seasons and that’s as bad as it ever got. There has never been a season in that decade and a half where Pittsburgh wasn’t alive for a playoff berth heading into the final month of the season.

6. MATT LAFLEUR, GREEN BAY PACKERS

Last season: 13-5

Career record and accomplishments: 41-13

In his three seasons as head coach of the Green Bay Packers, Matt LaFleur has put together one of the best coaching stretches in NFL history. His current 75.93 winning percentage is good enough for the second best mark in all of NFL history. If you’re thinking, “of course, the guy has Aaron Rodgers,” understand that, when he took over for a fired Mike McCarthy (who will show up considerably lower on the list), the Pack had experienced two consecutive losing seasons with Aaron Rodgers.

LaFleur has never won fewer than 13 games in a regular season since being handed the reigns. He took the team to the NFC Championship in his first and second seasons and secured home field advantage in his third before falling to the 49ers in the NFC Divisional Round.

And that’s what keeps LaFleur from breaking into the Top Five in spite of his incredible three-year win total. With a team he put together, especially on defense, and one of the most prolific offenses in the league, he’s not managed to develop the gameplan to get them to the Super Bowl. Green Bay has ended all three of LaFleur’s years with a home playoff loss, twice to Kyle Shanahan and the Niners led by Jimmy Garoppolo. Two seasons ago, they lost to the Wild Card Tampa Bay Buccaneers (who went on to win the Super Bowl). In all three games they were home favorites.

7. JOHN HARBAUGH, BALTIMORE RAVENS

Last season: 8-9

Career record and accomplishments: 148-96, 1 AFC Championship, Super Bowl XLVII Champion, 2019 NFL Coach of the Year

A few years ago there were rumblings that the Ravens were going to move on from John Harbaugh in the final years of the Joe Flacco era. Saner heads prevailed and Baltimore is back in the mix with a coach that, if they had let him go, would not have been unemployed a full 24 hours later.

Harbaugh’s Super Bowl run was marked by making the hard decisions, firing then offensive coordinator Cam Cameron 14 weeks into the season and replacing him with Jim Caldwell. It would be the key move that brought Baltimore a title.

So why he hasn’t done the same thing with offensive coordinator Greg Roman is a mystery to me. In fact, the only bigger mystery is why he hired Roman, who crapped the bed at every stop previous, in the first place. Yes, the Ravens with All-Universe talent Lamar Jackson and absolutely nothing to do with Roman’s Pop Warner play design and calls can put up yardage and points. But Jackson can’t stay healthy that way and Baltimore will not ever win a championship with Roman calling the plays.

Harbaugh is unquestionably one of the best head coaches in football and deserves his spot in the list, but keeping Roman almost seemingly to spite Jackson’s longevity, is an ongoing choice that’s tough to understand. Know this, while Harbaugh would be hired before the cock crowed if he was fired, no other NFL team would hire Greg Roman if the Ravens fired him for any offensive job on the staff. Not a one.

8. SEAN MCDERMOTT, BUFFALO BILLS

Last season: 12-7

Career record and accomplishments: 52-36

Sean McDermott began his career with the Bills being too good a head coach for his own good. The idea, when fielding a team with Tyrod Taylor as his starting QB, was to be competitive and play hard, but ultimately post a losing record and get some solid draft capital to build on. Instead, the team went 9-7 and made the playoffs.

It turns out McDermott and the Bills didn’t let that stop them and making a couple of draft day trades, ended up taking Josh Allen and handing him the keys. They promptly went 6-10, which would turn out to be the only losing season of McDermott’s five year career.

Since then, it’s been pretty good and Allen has developed into one of the best quarterbacks in the league. McDermott continues to build the team up around his All-Universe quarterback and now enters the 2022 season as the odds-on favorite to not only win the AFC, but win the Super Bowl. Before McDermott, Buffalo had one single wining season since 1999 (2014 with Doug Marrone). Now, not only are the Bills consistent winners, they’re one of the league’s premier franchises and television draws.

9. DOUG PEDERSON, JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS

Last season: Did not coach

Career record and accomplishments: 49-31-1, 1 NFC Championship, Super Bowl XXXI Champion

After being fired (which was more like a break up after disagreements with ownership) by the Philadelphia Eagles, Doug Pederson sat out a season and watched the bottom half of the NFL burn. The biggest dumpster fire in the garbage pile belonged to the Jacksonville Jaguars, but since they had a potentially “generational” quarterback in Trevor Lawrence, Pederson decided that was the spot to make his triumphant return.

Pederson all but single handedly put Carson Wentz on the map and had him in NFL MVP contention before the QB went down with a knee injury in 2017. With Wentz out, Pederson went on to win a Super Bowl with Nick Foles at quarterback, besting Bill Belichick and Tom Brady for their only non Eli Manning related loss.

Even as his time with the Eagles came to an end, he still kept the team in contention with whatever Wentz brought to the field and introduced the league to Philly’s next starting quarterback Jalen Hurts.

10. ZAC TAYLOR, CINCINNATI BENGALS

Last season: 13-8

Career record and accomplishments: 19-33-1

All Zac Taylor needed was some actual football players to be successful with the Bengals. For the first time in his three seasons, he got them with a healthy Joe Burrow with newly arrived Ja’Marr Chase and one of the best wide receiver corps in the NFL. All he did was use that team to knock off the No. 1 seed in the AFC playoff bracket (the Tennessee Titans) and then do something only Tom Brady had managed before, beat Patrick Mahomes, Andy Reid and the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC Championship at Arrowhead.

While you can point to Rams injuries keeping the Super Bowl close, the Bengals had the ball with a chance to win or tie in the final minutes.

Taylor showed his mettle last season, but this is where the real challenge begins. Not only must he guide his team through a possible Super Bowl hangover, he’ll have to do it against a significantly tougher regular season schedule than he faced a year ago. Still, this is the coach that steered his team through what might be the greatest (and toughest) playoff bracket in NFL history and was a minute and a half away from hoisting a Vince Lombardi Trophy.    

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