Who were the best -- and worst -- coaching hires since 2021? And how do the Super Bowl coaches stack up? We ranked all 37 moves.
Ravens defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald and made it to the Super Bowl in the 38-year-old's second season at the helm. The Patriots did them one better, as Mike Vrabel has taken his old team to the Super Bowl in his Macdonald and Vrabel are two of the 37 full-time head coaches hired over the past five years, not including the eight hired so far this month and the handful of interim coaches who didn't earn full-time jobs.
I want to sort through those hires. Which coaching hires worked out best? Which ones were disasters? Was it better to hire offensive wizards, as many teams prefer, or go against the grain to hire defensive-minded coaches? Vrabel and Macdonald both come from that side of the football, but are they the exceptions to the rule? So I'm going one through 37 and ranking those coaching hires. Performance and playoff success obviously matter most, but I'm also trying to look for evidence of the impact these guys have had as coaches. Do they do a good job of managing fourth downs and late-game situations? Have players who were already on the roster improved after their arrival? Have free agents added from other teams excelled after joining the lineup? And do their draft picks routinely exceed expectations?Where the team succeeds also matters. For coaches with an offensive background, I'm going to give more credit if the team is thriving by virtue of that side of the ball, as opposed to being carried by the defense . And, of course, being great onSome of these coaches also have only one season under their belts, and we've seen coaches such as Nagy and Adam Gase put together playoff campaigns in their debut seasons before quickly falling off. I tried to use some context to get a sense of how sustainable their early success might be moving forward. I also leaned toward rewarding coaches who have proven they're up to the task for an extended period of time, which might be why my top two hires are the only two coaches left from the class of 2021.It's worth noting just how low the Lions were before Campbell arrived. Detroit had gone 14-33-1 under Matt Patricia and interim coach Darrell Bevell. It hadn't won a playoff game since 1991. One of the first things new general manager Brad Holmes did was, who was essentially a salary dump from an organization that had completely lost faith in the 2016 first overall pick. The only significant player from the roster Campbell inherited who is still on the team in 2025 is offensive tackleIt took a year and a half of frustrating losses, but Campbell turned the Lions into one of the league's model organizations. Yes, 2025 was a frustrating year, as the Lions missed departed offensive coordinator Ben Johnson, dealt with injuries and ran into some tough luck in one-score games, but they have one of the best rosters in football. Campbell's aggressive decision-making on fourth down has been a huge plus, even if the Lions haven't succeeded 100% of the time in those situations. They came within a drop or two of making it to the Super Bowl in 2023, and they overachieved in 2024 by winning 15 games despite being down to third-stringers on defense. Put it this way: If you had to predict a single hire from the past five years to still be in their current job 15 years from now, who would you pick? My choice would be Campbell, who has become the face of the franchise in Detroit.Sirianni is by far the most difficult coach to rank on this list. His résumé is comfortably the best of any coach over the past five years. He took over a 4-11-1 team and immediately coached it to the playoffs, where it has been each of the past five seasons. The Bills are the only other team to make it to the playoffs every year over that span. Sirianni has made two Super Bowls andAnd yet, it's also simultaneously true that there are Eagles fans who don't believe Sirianni is even a good coach, let alone a great one. I wrote aboutearlier this season: It's easy to assign credit for what Sirianni has done to the players, general manager Howie Roseman or the various assistant coaches who have made their name in Philadelphia while Sirianni has been in the job, including several future head coaches who show up much later on this list. All of that has some truth to it. There's no arguing that the highs under Sirianni have been spectacular. But the lows have been wildly frustrating, including a defense that forgot how to play football in 2023 and an offense that hopelessly banged its head against the wall for most of the 2025 season. Sirianni has to own both. But his floor is nine wins and a playoff appearance, and his ceiling has been the Lombardi Trophy.Seahawks fans who spent years seeing their defenses tormented by Kyle Shanahan's offenses must be so happy to watch Macdonald's unit do its thing. Just as he did as a coordinator in Baltimore, Macdonald has built one of the league's best defenses in two years in Seattle. It's not hard to make star cornerbackIt's impossible to know how much Macdonald figured into the decision to hire offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak and essentially swapat quarterbackthis offseason. But after deploying a frustrating offense in Year 1 of Macdonald, the Seahawks have gotten enough on that side of the ball to make the Super Bowl this season. The only hole I can poke in Macdonald's coaching is his habit of being too conservative on fourth down. But given the defense he wields, you can understand why he trusts it. The Ravens got the next best thing byfellow former Michigan assistant Jesse Minter as their head coach, but Baltimore general manager Eric DeCosta & Co. have to wish that they found a way to keep Macdonald in the building two years ago.Vrabel has unquestionably benefited from a massive offseason of free agent additions and one of the easiest schedules in modern football history, but he has been able to quickly stamp his imprint on a Patriots team that lacked an identity before his arrival. Players on both sides of the ball who were on the team a year ago or signed in free agency have played better in New England this season, a testament to both Vrabel and offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels, who has done excellent work molding quarterback Vrabel's game management and ability to stretch the rulebook in New England's favor have also helped the Patriots hold on to their many leads this season. And while the defense didn't rate out well by advanced metrics during the regular season, it has been absolutely dominant so far in the playoffs.Ryans took over a Texans team that had won three or four games in each of the three seasons before his arrival. It has won 10 or more games in each of his first three years at the helm, adding a playoff victory in each of those campaigns for good measure. Ryans has been one of the league's most conservative coaches on fourth down, which has been a liability at times, but you can understand why given the struggles the Texans have had running the football..to its roster after Ryans' arrival, which helped quite a bit. But Ryans has also built the league's best defense. As much as that's constructed around stars such Anderson and cornerback, there's no doubting that the Broncos have made major strides since trading a first-round pick to hire Payton in 2023. The longtime Saints coach has improved Denver's record by an average of three wins each season, leading to a division title in 2025. Payton wasn't able to turnI could see a case for putting Payton even higher, but I'd refer back to the factors in the introduction. The Broncos are 15th in EPA per play on offense over the past two years, which is very reasonable given their personnel. They're second over that same timeframe on defense, which is coordinator Vance Joseph's purview. Payton hired Joseph, and the head coach obviously has some say on that side of the ball, but if we're going to credit coaches for how their focuses influence their teams' success, it shifts Payton down just a tiny bit.There's no doubting that O'Connell is a good coach, having put together 13- and 14-win seasons over his first four years in Minnesota, but we can poke a few holes in that record. One is the Vikings' performance in close games. They are 25-12 in one-score games over that span, and while O'Connell does a solid job of managing late-game scenarios, the wild fluctuations in their record in those games from year to year suggest their record in close games is more randomness than a sustainable skill., some perspective might matter here, and it's similar to what I mentioned with Payton. The Vikings are 18th in EPA per play on offense over O'Connell's four years in charge, behind the likes of the Jaguars and Falcons, who haven't been offensive juggernauts for most of that time. The driving force for the Vikings over the past three years has instead been their defense. If this were a list of best coordinator hires over the past five seasons, Minnesota's Brian Flores might be at the very top.The prodigy. Bears fans treated Johnson like a superstar addition when they landed the Lions' offensive coordinator as their next head coach, and so far, he has generally lived up to the hype. There have been game management issues, especially early in the season, but Johnson quickly built one of the league's best run games and helped refine quarterback The Bears benefited from excellent timing and good fortune late in games in 2025, which might not stick around, but I'm not sure you can find a single Bears fan on the planet who is upset with the decision to hire Johnson after one season.Hire Jim Harbaugh ... win football games. The former NFL quarterback has won everywhere he has coached, and he instantly turned around a Chargers team that had collapsed to 5-12 the season before his arrival, with Los Angeles jumping to 11-6 in each of Harbaugh's first two seasons. His ability to sustain the offense and keep the team afloat without starting tacklesfor most of the 2025 season was quietly valuable; there aren't many teams that could have survived with replacement-level tackle play for most of a season. At the same time, Harbaugh and offensive coordinator Greg Roman arrived to town with the espoused plan of getting quarterbacka run game, and the Chargers rank 27th in success rate on designed runs over the past two seasons. They've suffered through a pair of ugly wild-card round defeats, something that wasn't the case for Harbaugh's teams in San Francisco, which made three consecutive trips to the NFC Championship Game in his first three seasons. Harbaugh has made major strides, but both he and Chargers fans will expect more in 2026., having won as many playoff games in his first season with the Commanders as the franchise had claimed over the prior 30 years.' fantastic rookie campaign played a significant role, but Quinn nailed his fourth-down decision-making to help the offense blossom, and the former Falcons coach got the most out of the many veterans added to his roster by GM Adam Peters. Things have changed. Daniels struggled through an injury-hit 2025, but Quinn's defense completely collapsed in Year 2. The Commanders ranked 30th in EPA per play and points allowed per drive, as they were easily stretched by any offense with a pulse. Quinn wasn't able to fix the problems during the season, and the Commanders shook things up by moving on from offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury and defensive coordinator Joe Whitt. Quinn deserves more time to prove that 2025 was an anomaly, but Falcons fans will point out that their former coach peaked early in his Atlanta tenure and never reached those heights again.It was a successful first season for Coen with the Jaguars, but it was also a strange one. The Jaguars repeatedly struggled with unnecessary pre-snap penalties. QuarterbackCoen deserves credit for getting more out of players he inherited from the prior regime, including Lawrence, Washington and running back.The Jags built an improved run game as the season wore on, although Coen simply didn't run the ball enough in their. Jaguars fans should be excited about Coen and what he might do in Year 2, but a fair amount of the credit for Jacksonville's turnaround should go to defensive coordinator Anthony Campanile.Taking over for the retired Bruce Arians after winning a Super Bowl as Tampa Bay's defensive coordinator, Bowles has kept the Bucs atop the NFC South for most of his tenure. He was able to transition the Buccaneers from the end of the Tom Brady era to the start ofAfter the Bucs blew a 6-2 start to this season and missed the postseason, though, Bowles has understandably faced some criticism. Tampa Bayoffensive coordinator Josh Grizzard after one season, meaning Mayfield will have his fourth coordinator in four years with the Bucs. Bowles' defenses have also struggled to live up to what they were doing while he was focusing exclusively on that side of the ball, as Tampa Bay has ranked 11th, 16th, 18th and most recently 16th in EPA per snap. I still think Bowles is a good coach, and he has improved his late-game decision-making after being too conservative earlier in his tenure, but 2026 seems like a make-or-break year for his future in Tampa.We can't fault what McDaniel did with the Dolphins' offense. Hired to get the most out of quarterbackand spark scoring in Miami, McDaniel transformed the Dolphins upon his arrival. They were second in scoring offense in 2023, Tagovailoa's lone healthy season as a pro. McDaniel got more out of receiverhad on the Chiefs, and the highly regarded offensive architect delivered a run game that was capable of taking the ball to the house from anywhere on the field. The results just weren't where they needed to be, sometimes as a product of bad timing. Tagovailoa missed the end of the 2022 season because of an. In 2023, a late-season collapse cost the Dolphins the AFC East and sent them to frigid conditions in Kansas City in theVic Fangio after one year in town, leaving the veteran assistant to go to Philadelphia and win a Super Bowl. McDaniel did enough to eventually earn a second head-coaching opportunity elsewhere, though he'll take 2026 to recharge his batteries as theThere's no doubting what Saleh did for the Jets' defense. Taking over one of the league's worst units before his arrival in 2021, Saleh turned the Jets into an elite defense in two years. Defendersplaying at an All-Pro level after he was selected with the fourth pick in 2022. The defense notably collapsed after Saleh'smidway through the 2024 campaign, and it hasn't recovered with the arrival of former Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn as Saleh's replacement. And yet, it's tough to really put Saleh higher given the quarterback fiascoes in New York. Saleh likely stuck withbusiness was likely above Saleh's pay grade, but the coach wasn't able to talk the Jets out of the decision or minimize Rodgers' impact on the rest of the roster and the coaching staff. Saleh never posted a winning record in New York, but he was much better than the guy before him , and interim coach Jeff Ulbrich and Glenn haven't been anywhere near as effective as Saleh since the latter's departure.Pederson was already beloved in Jacksonville solely by virtue of not being Urban Meyer, so when he helped lead the Jaguars to a playoff berth and a comeback victory over the Chargers in theafter the 2022 season, he might have been, at that moment, the most popular coach in franchise history. Through November 2023, Pederson was 17-11 as the Jags coach. But with Trevor Lawrence injured and ineffective for most of Pederson's remaining tenure, the coach went 5-18 over the rest of his time in Jacksonville, as a stagnant offense led to his departure after three years..at quarterback, Steichen was able to turn the Colts into the "Greatest Show on Turf" Rams for half a season withsank the Colts, who fell all the way out of the playoffs and didn't even finish with a winning record. Steichen has built fun, logical offenses for Jones and Richardson over the past few seasons, and the run game has revitalized's career after the star back battled ankle issues. Still, the former Eagles assistant has gone either 8-9 or 9-8 in each of his first three campaigns as a head coach, and that sort of consistent averageness makes him a perfect fit in the middle of this list. He has essentially been a league-average hire.Was Daboll a victim of his own early success? The former Bills coordinator unexpectedly took the Giants to the playoffs and even won aover an average Vikings team in Year 1 of his tenure, with Daniel Jones having what was to that point his best season as a pro. You know what happened next: The Giants signed Jones to anand saw both excel after leaving New York. Daboll went 11-33 after his great season, but nobody else below him on this list won a playoff game.Taking over what had been a disaster in Carolina, Canales has gotten a lot of things right. He made the unpopular decision totwo games into the 2024 season, a move that turned out to be the best thing for the QB. Young was better after returning to the lineup. The Panthers' offense has improved over the past two years, and Canales oversaw upset victories over the, helping the team to a division title this season. the league's catch rule, it was going to be tough to retain the needed level of credibility. The Titans also fielded some of the worst special teams I've ever seen in 2024.A former Jets cornerback, Glenn was hired to restore a defense that fell off after Robert Saleh was fired. The front office promptlyand Sauce Gardner, the team's two best players, at the trade deadline . Glenn's defense completely collapsed afterward, sleepwalking through the final few games of the season, while his handling ofand the quarterback situation left much to be desired. I'm giving Glenn some grace, given that the Jets essentially waved the white flag at the deadline, but the early returns aren't promising for the first-time head coach.Promoted to the interim head coach role in the middle of the 2023 season, Pierce was able to restore some element of swagger in the Las Vegas locker room and delivered a surprising run of victories, including aover the eventual Super Bowl champion Chiefs. That was enough to earn the former Giants linebacker the full-time role, but Pierce's game management wasn't up to modern NFL standards. And with Patrick Graham running the defense, Pierce wasn't really bringing much to the table.I was optimistic that Carroll's experience would make him an upgrade over Pierce. I was wrong. Despite beating the eventual AFC champion Patriots in theCarroll has earned his status as a legend for his work elsewhere, but he wasn't able to build the program in Las Vegas.Three straight Raiders coaches! McDaniels finished with a better winning percentage than Carroll or Pierce, but we should keep in mind that he took over a Raiders team that was coming off a playoff berth in the AFC. McDaniels and general manager Dave Ziegler decided to make a series of aggressive moves, The moves ranged from ill-advised to disastrous. McDaniels endured a series of embarrassing losses, most notably when Baker Mayfield joined the Rams in the middle of December andmidway through his second season, which was also how his brief tenure in Denver came to an end. I'm not sure there's another coach who was fired before completing two seasons in two different head coaching roles.An experienced coach with the Bears and Buccaneers, it looked like Smith's time as an NFL head coach had come to an end after he was. Smith joined the Texans as a defensive coordinator, and the following year, he was promoted to head coach. The Texans were in the middle of a rebuild, having justSmith was one-and-done in his third opportunity, but he's best remembered for what happened in his final game. Amid rumors that the Texans were about to fire their coach, Smith led the team to a, converting a 2-pointer with 50 seconds left to win. The move cost the Texans the first pick, but given that they used the second selection to take C.J. Stroud, Smith's folly turned out to be the best possible thing for the organization.Smith took over in Houston from Culley, who might have been the most out-of-nowhere hire on this list. At 65, Culley was the oldest first-time coach hired by a team since 1970, and while the veteran assistant had worked under head coaches such as Andy Reid and Sean McDermott, his only experience as awas in 1990 at UTEP. It's incredibly rare for veteran coaches toward the end of their careers and coaches without coordinating experience to jump into head coaching roles, but Culley did both. With Watson holding out and the organization rebooting the roster, this wasn't a very desirable job for candidates with many other options, which was realistically why the Texans ended up hiring a coach who wasn't on anybody's radar.The 2022 season might as well be an eternity ago. The Broncos decided to take a major swing during the offseason byfor Russell Wilson and hiring Hackett to take over for Vic Fangio as their head coach. Things fell apart quickly, as Hackett butchered a late-game scenario to help cost the Broncos a win in theagainst Wilson's former employers, the Seahawks. Hackett couldn't handle the game management element of the job, and given that the Wilson-led offense finished last in points scored, it probably wasn't a surprise that the BroncosA respected coach for most of his tenure in Indianapolis before the bottom fell out in his final season, Reich was seen as a reliable, experienced pair of hands for first pick Bryce Young when the Panthers hired him in 2023. Instead of getting the Reich who had gone 37-28 with four starting quarterbacks over his first four years in Indianapolis, though, the Panthers got the one who oversaw a desperate, flailing offense the prior year., as the Panthers struggled to find an offensive identity. By the end of the year, Young's footwork and confidence were shot., which puts Meyer in a world of his own. Truly mismatched with the NFL universe, Meyer was completely disconnected from reality, including reports that hewith Rams star Aaron Donald. His offensive goal was to run for 250 yards and throw for 250 yards, something that happens aboutWinter warmup to bring 80‑degree temps to SoCal this week
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