Best Head Coaches

When it comes to examining head coaches, there is no exact science. It’s hard to find stats that apply to head coaches, so you’re limited to using their record to do most of the work. The NFL is a “what have you done for me lately” league, so there is added emphasis on last years performance. I prefer to avoid recency bias, and examine a larger body of work.

To do this, I created a dashboard looking at the head coaches for the upcoming 2023 season. I pulled data from the last 10 years, and used this to look at win percentage by season for each current head coach. I also added 2 charts looking at Playoff Win % and Career Win %. I think looking at the playoffs is a big impact on who is a good head coach, getting to the playoffs isn’t good enough, you need to win the championship. I also think it’s good to compare career win % as an overall view. You would think this might benefit new head coaches, but they usually inherit mediocre or rebuilding teams, and it takes a few years to get things straightened out.

The dashboard is available for use on my Tableau Public page, but I’ve also included screenshots in the rankings, and embedded it at the bottom of this post. The nice thing about the dashboard is that you can select a coach in 1 chart, and he is highlighted in the other charts. This helps you isolate the information about a coach and use all 3 charts together to make a decision. With that said, here are my top 5 head coaches for the 2023 pro football season.

5. Pete Carroll

Pete Carroll is a safe place to start the best 5 head coaches for the 2023 season. He is what most would classify as a players coach, but I think he’s just great at providing support to his players. Pete has made that team an extension of his family, and all the players there are part of that family. I think that is why you see so many players go back to Seattle after leaving. The most recent examples are Bruce Irvin and Bobby Wagner. Pete knows how to take care of players, and make them feel like they are important and needed. That goes a long way in getting these players to believe in you and follow you, even during down years.

Pete Carroll has a career record of 161-112-1 for a 58.8% win rate. That’s pretty fantastic. If you look at his year over year performance, over the last 10 years, Pete has the Seahawks in contention just about every year. The 2022 season is a prime example of what makes Pete a great head coach. When everyone lined up, myself included, to doubt them, he pulled the team together to go 9-8. While he has coached in 22 playoff games, and won 1 Super Bowl, he only has a 50% win rate in the playoffs.

4. Mike Tomlin

Tomlin has a career record of 163-93-2 for a win rate of 63.2%. That is simply amazing. However, his teams have struggled a bit when they get to the playoffs. For as many playoff runs the Steelers have made under Tomlins guidance, they have many more with early exits. How else could a head coach that has been to 3 AFC Championships and 2 Super Bowls (winning 1) have an 8-9 (47.1%) playoff record?

The effort gave in the final 2 years of Big Ben’s career, and the 2022 season with MVP Mitch or rookie Pickett at QB was phenomenal. The 2020 season of 12-4 seems like a bit of a glitch amongst the last 5 years, and the first round loss to Cleveland in the playoffs seems to prove it true. Either way, Tomlin is a true leader of men, and get’s the best out of his teams each year.

3. Kyle Shanahan

Kyle is my personal favorite head coach. I believe he is extremely innovative in his offensive play calling, and that he stays one step ahead of the competition. In today’s football, defenses match up based on personnel groupings (3 WR, 1 RB, 1 TE; 2 WR, 2 TE, 1 RB; etc.), so Kyle has adjusted his offense to make sure defenses can’t do that. The addition of Run CMC from Carolina in mid-season 2022 allows him to take this to another level. The versatility of Christian McCaffrey and Deebo Samuel allows Kyle the ability to use the same personnel, but line up players in different spots. This makes it hard for defenses to adjust to the personnel on the field. If the defense goes big, the 49ers just throw it. If the defense goes small, SF will run it down their throats.

I heard a story about Kyle on a podcast, how he used to just sit in the back of the defense meetings in Washington and listen to how they prepare each week. According to the story, Kyle felt if he understood the way the defense thought and approached, then it would give him more insights into how to attack those defenses. Based on his offensive adjustments the last few years, I’d have to say he was paying attention in those meetings, and he was right, new insights indeed.

Kyle inherited a mess in SF that arose between Jim Harbaugh leaving and Shanahans arrival. San Francisco didn’t rush to get a QB though, they waited and built through offense and defensive lines, creating the foundation for a team. Once the pieces were in place, they made the move to get the QB, 3rd overall pick Trey Lance, who unfortunately has been too hurt to play. That hasn’t stopped SF though, as Kyle has done a great job of building a team and offense that can support whichever QB is in there.

2. Andy Reid

Who doesn’t love Andy Reid? The only knock I have on Andy is that he doesn’t prepare his coordinators to become head coaches. Or maybe that is more of an indication of how much Andy does in Kansas City. I believe you can tell a coordinators contributions to a team based on how well his unit does after he leaves. Lets use Matt Nagy as an example. When he left for Chicago, nothing really changed with KC offense performance. What didn’t work was any offense in Chicago under Nagy. We’ll see what happens this year since Bieniemy has moved to Washington, but I don’t expect much fall off.

Over his career, Andy Reid has amassed a 247-138-1 overall record for a win rate of 64%. That is absolutely outstanding. The consistency in which his team wins year over year is amazing. In the last 10 years Andy Reid has 8 seasons with a win rate of 68.8% or better, and 5 seasons of 75% or better. He gets his teams to the playoffs regularly, and unlike his time in Philadelphia, the Chiefs are making Super Bowl appearances on a regular. The Chiefs are an annual title contender, and that all starts with the man leading the way, Andy Reid.

1. Bill Belichick

I agree that Belichick made a mistake by putting a defensive coordinator and a special teams coach in charge of the offense last year, but he admitted that himself. He also learned his lesson quickly and moved on from both in the offseason, bringing back O’Brien to run the offense. That’s the sign of a true leader. Making a decision, seeing it through, realizing something went wrong, and fixing the mistakes. A lot of time in sports you’ll see a coach double down, to prove that he was right the first time, and that never works, it just compounds the issue.

Bill Belichick’s career record is 298-152 for 66.2% win percentage. To better that, he has a career playoff record of 31-13 for 70.5% win rate. Not only does Belichick lead teams win, they win when they matter most, winning 6 Super Bowls coaching the Patriots. So maybe the Patriots need a few years to figure out the QB after Brady and the offense after Daniels, but who would you rather have leading that rebuild? Coach Belichick, or an unproven coordinator?

var divElement = document.getElementById(‘viz1683139626990’); var vizElement = divElement.getElementsByTagName(‘object’)[0]; if ( divElement.offsetWidth > 800 ) { vizElement.style.width=’1366px’;vizElement.style.height=’1027px’;} else if ( divElement.offsetWidth > 500 ) { vizElement.style.width=’1366px’;vizElement.style.height=’1027px’;} else { vizElement.style.width=’100%’;vizElement.style.height=’1427px’;} var scriptElement = document.createElement(‘script’); scriptElement.src = ‘https://public.tableau.com/javascripts/api/viz_v1.js’; vizElement.parentNode.insertBefore(scriptElement, vizElement);