Mike Macdonald receives surprisingly high rank among NFL head coaches

Rankings can be weird. They are mostly guesswork and opinion, of course. Unless there is a "standings" somewhere in the name then likely someone has just watched a bunch of whatever they are ranking and then assigned a number. In the case of Seattle Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald, though, a recent ranking including him is...odd.

An NFL head coaching ranking should probably leave out those people who have never been head coaches before. Macdonald is one of them. He has been a terrific defensive coach for a number of years, especially the last two when he was the defensive coordinator for the Baltimore Ravens, but no one can be quite sure how he will lead an entire team.

Touchdown Wire apparently has an idea. Jarrett Bailey at TW wrote an article - it is definitely worth the read even with the strange rankings because Bailey has a witty sense of self-awareness - ranking the 32 NFL head coaches. Atop the list is Kansas City Chiefs coach Andy Reid. No surprise there as the Chiefs have won three of the last five Super Bowls, including in the last two seasons.

Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald gets decent ranking among NFL head coaches

After that, things get weird. The Detroit Lions coach, Dan Campbell, doesn't appear until number eight, for instance. Shane Steichen of the Indianapolis Colts is somehow number 12. Steichen might be a good coach, but has he done enough as a head coach to warrant being near the top third of the league in a head coach ranking?

This is why Macdonald's ranking of 23 is so strange. He should probably fall into some kind of TBD category. Hopefully, he is great and the best head coach ever, but he has been his team's on-field leader for one real game. Bailey thinks Macdonald will do a good job, but should he rank higher than nine other coaches, some of whom have been head coaches in the league for a bit?

Bailey has an apparent personal hatred of Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Todd Bowles (the Bucs made the playoffs under Bowles last season, but Bailey writes, "I said last season that Todd Bowles was the worst coach in the NFL." Bowles is 26 in 2024 so making the playoffs means something, one supposes.

Two names lower than Macdonald truly jump out. For instance, would Macdonald make the New York Jets and New York Giants better? Bailey believes so because he has Jets coach Robert Saleh at number 28, and Giants coach Brian Daboll at 29. Maybe Bailey just hates the city of New York.

At least Macdonald is not last. He could show himself quite quickly to be a top-ten head coach in the NFL and lead the Seahawks to the playoffs in 2024. For now, however, we just have no idea how things will turn out.

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