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Ben Solak, ESPN
I thought this was a good idea. It was not.
Ranking all 32 NFL coaching staffs is an impossible exercise. At least when we rank players, we have exact metrics by which to grade them. With coaches, we have win-loss record, and that’s not even a good barometer for coaching talent.
At its core, coaching is an exercise in maximization. The best coaches get great play out of their great players and their good ones, while hiding and minimizing the impact of those who might struggle. It’s about optimization on any given Sunday, while keeping a long view on development. While the best coaching jobs in recent years have been done at teams that have (spoiler alert) won a lot of games, similarly impressive work has been done by those making the most out of the bad hands they were dealt.
I tried to not just rank teams on win-loss record or on reputation but consider with which staff I would start my franchise, if given the opportunity to draft any group in the league.
Before we begin, some considerations:
Past performance is a helpful guide, but only to a degree — and in big samples: We can use defensive coaches to explain this phenomenon. Mike Zimmer and Dan Quinn have coached great defenses over several years — Quinn a little more recently, but Zimmer certainly had his day. I’m confident both are good defensive coaches because we have a large body of evidence.
But we also know Quinn’s defense has struggled with key NFC offenses (see 49ers, San Francisco) in recent history. He is one of the league’s longest-tenured and most successful active defensive coaches, but I’m not going to ignore the current state of the NFL and his place in it. Zimmer hasn’t coached an NFL defense since 2021, but his scheme matches the current wave in the NFL — custom blitz packages, simulated pressures, two-deep zone coverages — a bit better than Quinn’s. That gives Zimmer a bump.