People tend to judge NFL head coaches by one facet: wins. This is just as flawed as judging a pitcher, quarterback or goaltender by the same metric.
Coaches– in football especially — exert an incredible amount of influence over the outcome of a game. Between calling plays, time management, and essentially deciding the stylistic of identity of their team, coaches are easily the most influential people not under center in a given football game.
But that doesn’t mean they decide the outcome themselves.
A good team can hide the flaws of a bad coach just as a good coach can hide the flaws of a bad team. But when we look at wins as the sole metric by which to rate a coach, we fail to see that. Instead, we should be judging coaches by how their teams perform relative to the talent on a roster.
Obviously there’s no perfect way to project how many games the Green Bay Packers should win just by looking at the roster and some stats, no matter how advanced a model you have. But it’s not hard to know that a team with Aaron Rodgers as its quarterback should be contending for a Super Bowl every year.
Likewise, coaches should also be judged for the side of the ball they specialize in. Bill O’Brien, who we’ll get to shortly, was hired by the Houston Texans because of his reputation as a quarterback guru. With that in mind, let’s not judge him positively because the Texans had one of the best defenses in football last season.
Coaches should be held to a that type of standard rather than the baseless standard of wins. This list holds them to that standard.
These are the most overrated NFL head coaches entering the 2017 season.