There are nice coaches all around the NFL. Tremendous Bowl champions. Coach of the 12 months winners. Future Corridor of Famers.
However in terms of head coaches, throughout the board, no division can match the AFC West.
Andy Reid, Sean Payton, Pete Carroll and Jim Harbaugh.
It’s Mount Rushmore — or perhaps Mount Passmore.
That’s 10 convention championships and 5 Tremendous Bowl rings, probably essentially the most completed quartet of coaches because the league went to eight four-team divisions in 2002. There aren’t any weak hyperlinks.
“I really appreciate the competition,” stated Carroll, coach of the Las Vegas Raiders. “I think it’s amazing that we all have a chance to be in the same spot. It’s good.”
Most adorned on this group is Kansas Metropolis’s Reid, whose Chiefs have received three of the previous six Tremendous Bowls. His groups have received six convention titles — one by Philadelphia and 5 by Kansas Metropolis.
In 2004, Reid was the teen in an NFC East teaching foursome that included Invoice Parcells (Dallas), Joe Gibbs (Washington) and Tom Coughlin (New York Giants). At that time, neither Reid nor Coughlin had led groups to Tremendous Bowl victories.
“I was the low man on that totem pole,” Reid stated. “That was a great group to go against, tremendous coaches. I remember that well, being a young guy trying to compete against them.”
Carroll, 73, and Reid, 67, are the NFL’s two oldest energetic coaches. Harbaugh and Payton, born six days aside and each 61, rank fourth and fifth. Every is on a minimum of his second staff as an NFL head coach, and Carroll is on his fourth.
AFC West coaches (clockwise from high left) Jim Harbaugh (Chargers), Sean Payton (Broncos), Pete Carroll (Raiders) and Andy Reid (Chiefs) share a mutual respect for each other. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Occasions; Reed Hoffmann / Related Press; Justin Tafoya, Candice Ward / Getty Photographs)
“We’re in this because of the competition,” Reid stated. “You love that part of it.”
The Chargers’ Harbaugh is the one one on this group who hasn’t received a Tremendous Bowl as a head coach. His San Francisco 49ers got here up 5 yards wanting a Lombardi Trophy within the 2012 season, shedding to brother John Harbaugh’s Baltimore Ravens on the league’s greatest stage.
“Don’t put me on that dance floor,” Jim Harbaugh stated in reference to measuring as much as the opposite three AFC West coaches. “I haven’t won the Super Bowl. I’ve still got some work to do before I get put in that category with them. Let me earn that one.”
He received’t have to attend lengthy for a measuring stick. In a notable scheduling twist, the Chargers face all three division opponents within the first three weeks. They play host to the Chiefs in Brazil, then are at Las Vegas on Monday evening of Week 2 earlier than dealing with the Broncos at residence in Week 3.
Not since 1988 have the Chargers opened the season with three division opponents in a row.
“You look at Andy Reid, Sean Payton, Pete Carroll, I’d say the same about all three of them,” Harbaugh stated. “They’re that iron wall that negativity crashes against and crumbles. They’re rebounders. They might have a bad year, but it’s not two in a row. Not those three guys. They always find a way.”
Harbaugh has attention-grabbing connections to every of them. He was teaching Stanford when Carroll was teaching USC, and in 2009 the Cardinal have been on the successful finish of a 55-21 blowout on the Coliseum. That’s when microphones caught a deflated Carroll asking, “What’s your deal?”
Their rivalry continued within the NFC West, when Carroll was teaching the Seattle Seahawks and Harbaugh was with the 49ers. Publicly, a minimum of, they weren’t buddies.
However the best way Harbaugh describes it, they’re reduce from the identical win-at-all-costs fabric.
“Pete’s somebody I’ve always looked up to,” the Chargers coach stated. “We’ve just always been competitors. Had I played for Pete Carroll or been on his staff as an assistant, we’d have been like brothers. We’d have been breathing the same air. Nothing but respect.
“If it weren’t for being on opposite sidelines, we’d be like brothers. That’s the kind of guy you’d send a Christmas card to, but you don’t because you’re too busy trying to scratch each other’s eyeballs out. Nature of the business. Dog eat dog.”
Stated Carroll: “There’s always been some media stuff about Jim and I. I’ve never thought that was the case. I just have great respect for his ball coaching and who he is and how tough he is, and John as well.”
Seahawks coach Pete Carroll, left, shakes palms with 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh after a recreation in December 2014.
(Otto Greule Jr / Getty Photographs)
As for Reid, he’s revered within the Harbaugh family. Ray Rhodes employed John Harbaugh in his closing season with the Eagles, however Reid stored the younger coach on employees as particular groups coordinator. Harbaugh stayed for eight extra seasons beneath Reid earlier than leaving to develop into head coach of the Ravens.
“The way John talks about Andy, and the way Andy treated our family, we were always welcome around the team, in the meal room, the meetings,” Jim Harbaugh stated. “Couldn’t have been more amazing. A class act all the way. Just first class.”
Really, it was the patriarch of the teaching household, Jack Harbaugh, who first met Reid. It was 1989, when Jackie Harbaugh was main the American Soccer Coaches Wives Assn. She wanted somebody to place teddy bears into present baggage for a charity go to, so she roped in her husband. One different coach confirmed up, a younger offensive line coach for the College of Missouri. Andy one thing…
Years later, when Jack was visiting his son in Philadelphia, he and Reid related the dots.
“Andy Reid holds a special place in the heart of our family,” Jack Harbaugh stated.
The connection between Jim Harbaugh and Payton dates to 1987 when Harbaugh was a first-round choose of the Chicago Bears, and — after NFL gamers went on strike that season — Payton, undrafted out of Japanese Illinois, was quarterback of Chicago’s alternative staff.
These fill-ins, nicknamed the Spare Bears, went 2-1 of their three video games.
“I didn’t want to be a spectator,” Harbaugh recalled. “It was killing me, watching him out there getting those reps. I wanted to be out there bad. But Sean did really good. He put us in a good position. We won the division that year and those wins he got were a big part of it.”
As soon as throughout Harbaugh’s rookie season when he was struggling, some loudmouthed Chicago followers have been expressing their displeasure with him. Harbaugh’s mother and father have been sitting inside earshot, as was Payton — on the time again to watching video games from the stands.
Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh shakes palms with Broncos coach Sean Payton following a Chargers win in October.
(Dustin Bradford / Getty Photographs)
Payton walked over to the boo birds and informed them to pipe down and to be respectful across the younger quarterback’s household.
John Harbaugh and Payton have been on employees collectively on the Eagles for a 12 months, and Jim Harbaugh’s 49ers beat Payton’s New Orleans Saints in a 2011 playoff recreation.
“I remember shaking Jim’s hand afterward and telling him, ‘I hated losing that, but that was a historic game,’” Payton stated.
Between teaching the Saints and Broncos, Payton labored as an analyst for Fox. That gave him an opportunity to survey the NFL horizon from a special perspective.
“That year I worked at Fox, I wanted to get back in it,” he stated. “I had a chance to interview with a few teams. It’s not like you were wanting to jump into a division with Andy and [Patrick] Mahomes, but it was ownership-driven and what we had in Denver.”
The subsequent season, Harbaugh was employed by the Chargers. Now, it’s Carroll and the Raiders.
“I love Andy, I love Jim, I love Pete,” Payton stated.
“It’s like you’re a horse with blinders on, but you know the other three horses are running. You can’t see them, but you can hear them breathing and you know they’re right there next to you. And that’s just good coaching.”
