Steve Davis: Harbaugh Ranked 9th Best Coach
ESPN ranked all 32 NFL coaches. They sampled 30 NFL types, GM's, execs, personnel directors and coordinators and had them rank all the NFL coaches. 1 for best, 5 for worst.
John Harbaugh was 9th, with an average of 1.87, so most think very highly of him.
Here who is ahead of him from #1 down:
1. Belichick
2. Carroll
3. Payton
3. Reid
4. Coughlin
5. McCarthy
6. Tomlin
7. Jim, his brother
This is plenty debatable.
He is 2-0 against Jim and has a Super Bowl, so is he behind?
He has a higher winning % than Tomlin and Tomlin missed the playoffs 3 of the last 5 years and Harbaugh went 5 of the last 6.
My take on this is that the thing that hurts John in the eyes of his peers in the business is that he has never run a side of the ball. He isn't known as an offensive, defensive guru. In fact, every coach in the top 15 is known as one or the other, and many of them still run the offense or defense as the head coach. John is respected as a leader and motivator, but doesn't get credit for being a "guru." As one person in the survey pointed to, Ozzie gets a lot of the credit for the ravens success, taking some away from the head coach.
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