The Seattle Seahawks' success is beginning to change the landscape of the rest of the NFL. After winning the Super Bowl last season, former offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak, after being with the team for just one year, became the head coach for the Las Vegas Raiders. Which coach might be the next to leave?
To be sure, none of the coaches leaving recently has to do with anything negative. Other teams want to hire the personnel Seattle has because they hope that will lead to their own high-end success. That is why the next coach to go could be special teams coordinator Jay Harbaugh.
Most teams would rather hire someone with head coaching experience or a rising offensive or defensive coordinator. Promoting a special teams coordinator can be a brilliant move, however, and Harbaugh is the perfect example of that.
Seattle Seahawks special teams coordinator Jay Harbaugh could be the next coach to get a promotion out of the PNW
For one, he has shown he can develop one of the best units in the league, if not the best. While Seattle won the Super Bowl last season partly because of an elite defense, the third phase of the game was also elite, and not just because of the brilliance of kicker Jason Myers and punter Michael Dickson. The coverage units were also excellent.
Seattle allowed the fourth-fewest yards per kick return at 24.0, and while they allowed a not-good 15.5 yards per punt return, the team only allowed 19 returns on punts, second-best in the league. This means Dickson was angling the ball well, but that the coverage team was also being exactly where they needed to be to make punt returners think twice about doing their job.
Harbaugh also has another important advantage. Both his father, Jim, and his uncle, John, have been successful head coaches in the league. Moreover, John Harbaugh was a special teams coordinator himself before becoming the Baltimore Ravens head coach in 2008 (he coached defensive backs alone for one season before joining Baltimore).
John won a Super Bowl, of course, and led his team to the playoffs 12 times in 18 years as the head man with the Ravens. That level of success would indicate to other teams that hiring someone from the same family with the same kind of coaching history might translate to great things.
Jay Harbaugh would have learned football at the knee of his father and uncle, and both have been in the NFL long enough and with mostly positive situations that teams would give the current Seattle Seahawks special teams coordinator a closer look for head coach than others who hold the same job.
Should the Seahawks reach the playoffs again in 2026 and special teams be a huge reason why, fans shouldn't be surprised if Jay Harbaugh is being looked at as a possible head coach. Eventually, many teams could feature acolytes of Mike Macdonald.
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