RANKING EVERY 2023 AFC HEAD COACH

BY ADAM GREENE

Ranking head coaches isn’t as complicated as placing players into a similar list. There aren’t many caveats and conditions when it comes to head coaches. There’s a resume and what we all see with our eyes every weekend on the field.

But, if I do have a system, it’s this simple. If my team’s head coach retired, and every other current head coach in the NFL was available for hire, who would I want the franchise I root for to pick? That not only accounts for past success, but also our recency bias. Because just because it’s called a “bias,” doesn’t mean you shouldn’t factor it in.

1. ANDY REID, KANSAS CITY CHIEFS

Record: 247-138-1

Playoff Record: 22-16

Super Bowl Titles: 2

Conference Titles: 4

Coach of the Year Odds: +4000

Reid already solidified his Gold Jacket status when he took the Chiefs to the Super Bowl in 2019 and won it. Now, he’s just running up the score. In his 24 years as a head coach, Reid has taken two different franchises to the Super Bowl and finished with a losing regular season record only three times.

2. SEAN PAYTON, DENVER BRONCOS

Record: 152-89

Playoff Record: 9-8

Super Bowl Titles: 1

Conference Titles: 1

Coach of the Year Odds: +900

Payton was the crown jewel of the 2023 head coach hiring cycle after spending a year behind the analyst desk for NBC. While some might think this is a tad high after his year off, I’ll just say that when my team’s head coach, Sean McVay, contemplated retirement, there was only one man on the street I would have hired to replace him. And it was Payton. In his 15 seasons as a head coach, he recorded four losing seasons and all four of them were 7-9. Along the way, you had a Super Bowl title and an almost guaranteed playoff appearance. His final season in New Orleans, he went 9-8.

3. MIKE TOMLIN, PITTSBURGH STEELERS

Record: 163-93-2

Playoff Record: 8-9

Super Bowl Titles: 1

Conference Titles: 2

Coach of the Year Odds: +2000

When discussing coaching records, Mike Tomlin has everyone beaten. In his 16 years in command of the Pittsburgh Steelers, the team has never, not even one time, finished with a losing record. That didn’t matter who was starting at quarterback, how many injuries the team dealt with, or the difficulty of their schedule. Along the way, the Steelers have been a regular postseason participant and have never entered the final game of a season completely out of the playoff race.

4. JOHN HARBAUGH, BALTIMORE RAVENS

Record: 147-95

Playoff Record: 11-9

Super Bowl Titles: 1

Conference Titles: 1

Coach of the Year Odds: +4000

A few years ago there were rumors swirling that the Ravens were looking to fire John Harbaugh after a few rougher seasons. Only one of which ended with a losing record, just one of the two a Harbaugh team has posted in his 15-year head coaching career. I said at the time, firing Harbaugh would have been insane and that he wouldn’t be out of work a day. It would be the Philadelphia Eagles and Andy Reid all over again. Maybe the message got through, cooler heads prevailed and Harbaugh put the Ravens right back into contention. My only critique of the second-wave (Lamar Jackson) Harbaugh is that he hired Greg Roman to run his offense in the first place and waited too long to fire him.

5. ZAC TAYLOR, CINCINNATI BENGALS

Record: 28-36-1

Playoff Record: 5-2

Super Bowl Titles: 0

Conference Titles: 1

Coach of the Year Odds: +2500

With just four years under his head coaching belt, why is Taylor ranked so high? Because the team he built, and the things he leads them to do, are so impressive. Right now, as much as the media wants the Buffalo Bills to be the team that can compete with the Kansas City Chiefs for AFC titles, the Bengals are the franchise actually doing the job. In two years with a healthy Joe Burrow, Taylor has taken Cincinnati to consecutive AFC Championship games, won one and lost the other by a last second field goal. He was a minute and a half (and an Aaron Donald) away from being a Super Bowl Champion. If the Chiefs don’t go again this year, the Bengals probably will. And Taylor has to be the reason. Good players aren’t enough. Mike McCarthy has proven that for a decade.

6. SEAN MCDERMOTT, BUFFALO BILLS

Record: 62-35

Playoff Record: 4-5

Super Bowl Titles: 0

Conference Titles: 0

Coach of the Year Odds: +5000

McDermott can probably already claim his place as the second-best head coach in Buffalo Bills history behind Marv Levy, but his work is not yet done. McDermott has almost been too good for his own team’s good, leading them to the playoffs his first season in 2017 in spite of fielding one of the worst overall rosters in the league. They still landed their quarterback in the following draft, Josh Allen, though they did have to trade up to get him. One losing season with Allen later and the team would reel off four consecutive playoff appearances and become a consistent contender not only for the AFC, but for the Super Bowl. And that’s really the final piece of the puzzle that keeps McDermott here at No. 6. Every guy above him has been to the dance. Four of them have won it. To move up, he needs to join the club.

7. BILL BELICHICK, NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS

Record: 298-152

Playoff Record: 31-13

Super Bowl Titles: 6

Conference Titles: 9

Coach of the Year Odds: +3300

Is it controversial to have Belichick, arguably (and I’m not sure who’s arguing) the greatest head coach in NFL history so low? Again, we’re not just talking history. We’re talking what’s happened lately. And, lately, post Tom Brady, Belichick has not been especially impressive. Is it his fault? A little. He employs his two sons on his defensive staff that probably aren’t qualified to mop the men’s room at a Denny’s. And, if you do want to toss some history into it, Belichick has coached a total of 10 seasons without Brady, the greatest quarterback in history, under center and made the playoffs only twice. There’s rumors out now that he’s even on the hot seat with Patriots owner Robert Kraft. I will also tell you that it was a real internal debate with me to rank him above Doug Pederson. So take that as you will. Personally, I hope Belichick doesn’t retire or get fired after this season because nothing, and I mean NOTHING, will please me more than watching his sourpuss face scowl its way through a season of HBO’s Hard Knocks next summer.

8. DOUG PEDERSON, JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS

Record: 51-45-1

Playoff Record: 5-3

Super Bowl Titles: 1

Conference Titles: 1

Coach of the Year Odds: +2200

As a Rams fan, I was bummed when the Jaguars hired Doug Pederson. For the first few years of the Sean McVay era, Jacksonville served as a solid farm team for LA, their Triple-A affiliate if you will, consistently sending former first round talent out west for pennies on the dollar to help Los Angeles compete for Super Bowl titles. I saw a future where Matthew Stafford retires and Trevor Lawrence, fed up with losing and inept coaching with the Jags, demanded a trade and McVay all too willing to spend the picks to get the generational talent in the horns. Pederson, because he’s not only a competent head coach, but a good one, has ruined that. He not only took the Jaguars to the playoffs in his first year in charge of the team, they won their playoff game as underdogs over the over-hyped Los Angeles Chargers. Lawrence is happy now. Getting good, professional coaching from a former NFL quarterback and quarterback coach himself. A Super Bowl champion at that, who matched wits with both Bill Belichick and Tom Brady and bested them both with Nick Foles as his QB.

9. MIKE VRABEL, TENNESSEE TITANS

Record: 48-34

Playoff Record: 2-3

Super Bowl Titles: 0

Conference Titles: 0

Coach of the Year Odds: +2500

Mike Vrabel was a terrible defensive coordinator for the Houston Texans in his single season with the job, so I was shocked that the Titans were even considering him for their head coach. More surprising still, that they hired him. It turns out, while Vrabel was garbage as a coordinator, he’s a pretty great head coach and not only kept the Titans on an upward trajectory, nearly had them in the Super Bowl in his second season in command. In that AFC Championship game run in 2019, the Titans knocked off every team they faced on the road and as underdogs, coming up just one score short of the Chiefs in the AFC title game. Last year was a rough one for Vrabel and the Titans, but they still won seven games. This one might not be much better, but the man has proven he belongs in the fraternity by winning when it counts.

10. MIKE MCDANIEL, MIAMI DOLPHINS

Record: 9-8

Playoff Record: 0-1

Super Bowl Titles: 0

Conference Titles: 0

Coach of the Year Odds: +1400

Why is McDaniel so high after a single season with the Miami Dolphins? Because he coached them that well, won games with pretty much any quarterback he could shove out onto the field, and was a field goal away from upsetting the Bills on the road as heavy underdogs in the Wild Card Round with rookie Skylar Thompson at QB. Along the way, he resurrected Tua Tagovailoa’s career and there’s no reason to expect the team to take a step back this season, even with a significantly tougher AFC around them.

11. BRANDON STALEY, LOS ANGELES CHARGERS

Record: 19-15

Playoff Record: 0-1

Super Bowl Titles: 0

Conference Titles: 0

Coach of the Year Odds: +4000

Brandon Staley was tossed the keys to the Chargers after leading a Rams defense to the top of the NFL’s stat column in 2020. He’s helped the Los Angeles Stepchildren to two consecutive winning seasons and a playoff appearance last year, So why isn’t he higher? Because the Chargers blew a chance to make the postseason in 2021, largely due to his gametime (and overtime) decisions in their Week 18 loss to the Las Vegas Raiders and interim head coach Rich Bisaccia. Last season, as favorites against a 9-8 Jaguars team, they were knocked out in the Wild Card Round. Sure, you could say the same for the guy I ranked above him, Mike McDaniel, but McDaniel’s team was playing the Bills with a rookie QB who was the No. 3 guy on their depth chart. Staley had Justin Herbert.

12. KEVIN STEFANSKI, CLEVELAND BROWNS

Record: 26-24

Playoff Record: 1-1

Super Bowl Titles: 0

Conference Titles: 0

Coach of the Year Odds: +4000

Placing Stefanski, a guy that not only has won a playoff game as a head coach, but is arguably (and, again, not sure who’s arguing) the best Cleveland Browns head coach since the team returned to the league in 1999, isn’t a slight on him. It just shows the strength of the coaching staffs currently in the AFC and is emblematic of why the AFC is currently the stronger of the two NFL conferences. Stefanski’s worst season was last year, a 7-10 finish, with his starting quarterback playing Fruit Ninja for 11 games on the sideline with the tightest shoulders and hamstrings on the planet. Stefanski can rise up the ranks this upcoming season by simply making it back to the postseason and winning again. He has the team with which to do it.

13. ROBERT SALEH, NEW YORK JETS

Record: 11-23

Playoff Record: 0-0

Super Bowl Titles: 0

Conference Titles: 0

Coach of the Year Odds: +2200

Robert Saleh has been in the league two years and, usually, that second season is when you can see a team take a jump. Unfortunately for Saleh and the Jets, they were the architects of their own destruction when they selected quarterback Zach Wilson out of BYU No. 2 overall in the 2021 draft. I have no issue with Wilson being a draftable QB. I have every issue with taking him that high instead of, say, the third round where he should have gone. It’s tough to win without a competent quarterback, so, really, we have this upcoming season, and Aaron Rodgers debut in Gang Green, to really judge Saleh’s coaching. If they don’t win now, he’ll be back to a coordinator position next season.

14. DEMECO RYANS, HOUSTON TEXANS

Record: 0-0

Playoff Record: 0-0

Super Bowl Titles: 0

Conference Titles: 0

Coach of the Year Odds: +2200

If you’ve done the math, then you’ll notice that I have a new head coach ranked above a guy that’s coached in the league for a couple of seasons. Once you realize who that person is, the ranking will make sense. There’s really nothing to say about Ryans other than it was obviously his time and Houston is the perfect spot for him, as he played the bulk of his career there. It’s the job he wanted and he should solidify that position for Houston for the foreseeable future. Ryans has been handed all the tools he needs to forge a solid rebuild, including a quarterback in rookie CJ Stroud. I don’t think a huge turnaround is happening in Year 1, but the Texans will be much more fun to watch.

15. SHANE STEICHEN, INDIANAPOLIS COLTS

Record: 0-0

Playoff Record: 0-0

Super Bowl Titles: 0

Conference Titles: 0

Coach of the Year Odds: +2200

Hiring Shane Steichen almost feels like the second move the Colts made after drafting Anthony Richardson, but it obviously preceded it by months. It could be that Steichen, and the offense he created with the Philadelphia Eagles, was the reason Indianapolis felt so comfortable adding Richardson, a lottery ticket to say the least, to their roster. Either way, it’s hard to think of Richardson being in better hands to open his NFL quarterbacking career and Steichen certainly earned the opportunity as a head coach.

16. JOSH MCDANIELS, LAS VEGAS RAIDERS

Record: 17-28

Playoff Record: 0-0

Super Bowl Titles: 0

Conference Titles: 0

Coach of the Year Odds: +5000

That’s right. Not only is Josh McDaniels the worst head coach in the AFC, he and Todd Bowles of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are in a pitched battle to claim the title as worst head coach in the NFL. McDaniels has been handed two decent teams in his life, an 8-8 Denver Broncos team coached by Mike Shanahan in 2009 and a 9-8 playoff winning team in the Las Vegas Raiders in 2022 and ran both of those teams right into the ground in almost the exact same manor, starting with running off their franchise quarterbacks. Jay Cutler was the guy in Denver and Derek Carr was the dude in Vegas. Last season, McDaniels not only underperformed with the team, he owned the two most humiliating losses of the season, if not the entire decade. First, losing 25-20 to the Indianapolis Colts in Jeff Saturday’s first NFL head coaching appearance of his entire life. The second was a 17-16 loss to the Los Angeles Rams and Baker Mayfield, who had literally been with the team for four days. You could say that, after last season’s faceplant, there’s nowhere to go but up, but McDaniels is the proud owner of a golden, diamond encrusted shovel. He’ll find a way to make it worse. Don’t you worry.

Follow Adam Greene on Twitter @TheFirstMan.

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