AFC West might have the greatest coaching roster in NFL history

There are large coaches all over NFL. Super bowl champions. Winners of the year’s coach. Future temple of fame.

But with regard to head coaches, at all levels, no division can match AFC West.

Andy Reid, Sean Payton, Pete Carroll and Jim Harbaugh.

It’s Mont Rushmore – or maybe Mont Passmore.

It’s 10 conference championships and five Super Bowl rings, perhaps the most accomplished coache quartet since the league went to eight four teams in 2002. There are no weak links.

“I really appreciate competition,” said Carroll, coach of Las Vegas raiders. “I think it’s incredible that we all have a chance to be in the same place. It’s good.”

The most decorated in this group is Reid by Kansas City, whose chefs have won three of the last six Super Bowls. His teams won six conference titles – one by Philadelphia and five by Kansas City.

In 2004, Reid was the young person in a quartet of coach of the NFC East which included Bill Parcel (Dallas), Joe Gibbs (Washington) and Tom Cochlin (New York Giants). At this stage, neither Reid nor Cuchlin had led teams to victories of the Super Bowl.

“I was the low man on this totem pole,” said Reid. “It was a big group against the tide, huge coaches. I remember that, being a young guy who tries to compete with them.”

Carroll, 73, and Reid, 67, are the two oldest active coaches in the NFL. Harbaugh and Payton, born six days apart and 61, rank fourth and fifth. Everyone is at least their second team as a head coach of the NFL, and Carroll is at their fourth.

AFC West coaches (clockwise at the top left) Jim Harbaugh (Chargers), Sean Payton (Broncos), Pete Carroll (Raiders) and Andy Reid (Chiefs) share mutual respect. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times; Reed Hoffmann / Associated Press; Justin Tafoya, Candice Ward / Getty Images)

“We are here because of the competition,” said Reid. “You like this part.”

The Harbaugh of Loads is the only one in this group not to have won Super Bowl as a chief coach. His 49ers from San Francisco reached five meters from a Lombardi trophy in the 2012 season, losing against Baltimore Ravens by Brother John Harbaugh on the biggest stage in the League.

“Do not put me on this dance floor,” said Jim Harbaugh in reference to the measure of the other three coaches of the West AFC. “I didn’t win the Super Bowl. I still have work to do before I put myself in this category with them. Let me win this one. “

He will not have to wait long for a measurement stick. In a notable schedule torsion, the charges face the three division opponents during the first three weeks. They welcome the Chiefs of Brazil, then are in Las Vegas Monday evening of week 2 before facing the Broncos at home during week 3.

Since 1988, the charges have opened the season with three consecutive division opponents.

“You watch Andy Reid, Sean Payton, Pete Carroll, I would say the same thing on the three,” said Harbaugh. “They are this iron wall against which negativity blocks and collapses. They are rebounders. They could have a bad year, but these are not two in a row. Not these three guys. They always find a means.”

Harbaugh has interesting links with each of them. He coached Stanford when Carroll led the USC, and in 2009, the cardinal was at the end of an eruption of 55-21 at the Colosseum. This is when the microphones caught a deflated carroll asking: “What is your agreement?”

Their rivalry continued in the NFC West, when Carroll led the Seattle and Harbaugh Seahawks with the 49ers. At least they were not friends.

But the way Harbaugh describes it, they are cut off from the same Win-At-All-Costs fabric.

“Pete is someone I have always admired,” said the charge coach. “We have always been competitors. If I had played for Pete Carroll or if we were in his staff as an assistant, we would have been like brothers. We would have breathed the same air. Nothing but respect.

“If it was not to be on opposite touch lines, we would be like brothers. It is the kind of guy to whom you send a Christmas card, but you do not do it because you are too busy trying to scratch the eye globes. Business nature. Dog Dog.”

Carroll said: “There have always been media things on Jim and I.

Seahawks coach Pete Carroll, on the left, shakes hands with 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh after a match in December 2014.

(Otto Greule Jr / Getty Images)

As for Reid, he is revered in Harbaugh’s house. Ray Rhodes hired John Harbaugh in his last season with the Eagles, but Reid kept the young staff coach as a special team coordinator. Harbaugh remained eight more seasons under Reid before leaving to become a head coach of the Ravens.

“The way John talks about Andy and how Andy has treated our family, we have always been welcome in the team, in the dining room, meetings,” said Jim Harbaugh. “Could not have been more incredible. A classification in class all along. Just first class.”

In fact, it was the patriarch of the coache family, Jack Harbaugh, who met Reid for the first time. It was in 1989, when Jackie Harbaugh led the American football coaches Wives Assn. She needed someone to put teddy bears in gift bags for a charitable visit, so she rolled up her husband. Another coach showed up, a young coach of the University of Missouri’s university line. Andy something …

Years later, when Jack visited his son in Philadelphia, he and Reid connected the points.

“Andy Reid occupies a special place in the heart of our family,” said Jack Harbaugh.

The link between Jim Harbaugh and Payton dates back to 1987 when Harbaugh was a choice of first round of the Bears in Chicago, and – after the NFL players went on strike this season – Payton, not drafted in eastern Illinois, was a quarter of the Chicago replacement team.

These fillings, nicknamed the spare bears, went 2-1 in their three games.

“I didn’t want to be a spectator,” recalls Harbaugh. “It killed me, looking at him there to get these representatives. I wanted to be bad. But Sean really did good. He put us in a good position. We won the division that year and these victories he obtained partially. ”

Once during the recruit season of Harbaugh when he is struggling, some high -mouth chicago fans expressed their dissatisfaction with him. Harbaugh’s parents were sitting at a voice, just like Payton – at the time to watch matches.

The load coach, Jim Harbaugh, shakes his hand with the Broncos coach, Sean Payton, after a victory of the charges in October.

(Images Dustin Bradford / Getty)

Payton headed for the Boo Birds and told them to go and be respectful in the family of the young quarter.

John Harbaugh and Payton were together for Eagles staff for a year, and the 49ers of Jim Harbaugh beat the New Orleans of Payton in a 2011 eliminatory match.

“I remember shaking Jim’s hand after and said to him:” I hated losing that, but it was a historic game “,” said Payton.

Between the training of saints and broncos, Payton worked as an analyst for Fox. This gave him a chance to resort to the horizon of the NFL under a different perspective.

“That year, I worked at Fox, I wanted to go back,” he said. “I had the opportunity to interview with a few teams. It’s not like you want to jump into a division with Andy and [Patrick] Mahomes, but it was focused on the property and what we had in Denver. »»

The following season, Harbaugh was hired by the loads. Now it’s Carroll and raiders.

“I love Andy, I like Jim, I like Pete,” said Payton.

“It’s as if you were a horse with stalls, but you know that the other three horses run. You can’t see them, but you can hear them breathe and you know they are there. And it’s just a good training.”