Pete Carroll and John Harbaugh: Hall of Famers?

Bill Belichick and Andy Reid are the greatest NFL coaches of the 21st century. Tony Dungy was great, too, and he's in the Hall of Fame. But Dungy retired following the 2008 season, when the most recent generation of great coaches — Pete Carroll, John Harbaugh, Sean Payton, and Mike Tomlin — was just getting started.

Payton's Denver Broncos and Tomlin's Pittsburgh Steelers are both division champions, headed to the playoffs, but the Las Vegas Raiders recently fired Carroll, and the Baltimore Ravens are moving on from Harbaugh. I doubt that Carroll, who is 74, will coach in the NFL again, but Harbaugh is still a hot commodity. So this probably isn't the end of the story, but it seems like an appropriate time to assess the legacies — as they stand now — of Carroll and Harbaugh.

First, some context. There are 19 Super Bowl-era coaches in the Pro Football Hall of Fame: Weeb Ewbank (1954-73), Vince Lombardi (1959-69), Hank Stram (1960-77), Tom Landry (1960-88), Don Shula (1963-95), George Allen (1966-77), Bud Grant (1967-85), John Madden (1969-78), Chuck Noll (1969-91), Don Coryell (1973-86), Dick Vermeil (1976-82, 1997-05),
Marv Levy (1978-97), Bill Walsh (1979-88), Tom Flores (1979-94), Joe Gibbs (1981-92, 2004-07), Bill Parcells (1983-06), Jimmy Johnson (1989-99), Bill Cowher (1992-06), and Tony Dungy (1996-08). There are a couple others who coached into the Super Bowl era, but who clearly established the bulk of their legacies before that. I'm being inclusive by counting Ewbank and Lombardi, both of whom won Super Bowls but did the majority of their coaching before the Super Bowl existed.

Those 19 HOF coaches had an average record of 145-95-3 (.604, counting all ties as ½-win and ½-loss). They combined to win 33 NFL championships, an average of 1.7 each, and 15 of the 19 won at least one Super Bowl as a head coach.

If you add Belichick (1991-2023) and Reid (1999-present), the average record is 159-101-3 (.611) with 2.0 championships and 17 out of 21 winning a Super Bowl.

However, the standard for HOF coaches is much, much lower than it used to be. Prior to the Hall of Fame's Centennial Class in 2020, there were only 14 Super Bowl-era coaches in Canton. Parcells was the only head coach enshrined from 2007-19. Then the Centennial Panel elected Cowher and Johnson, followed by the regular voters inducting Flores in 2021, Vermeil in '22, and Coryell in '23.

So while the old (pre-2020) standard was 147 wins, .616 winning percentage, and 1.8 championships, the last five coaches averaged only 111 wins, with a .563 win percentage and 1.2 Super Bowls. If that's the standard to which Carroll and Harbaugh are held, they'll be much stronger HOF candidates.

Pete Carroll

Essential History

Pete Carroll was a defensive coach for the Vikings in the late '80s and the New York Jets in the early '90s. The Jets gave him his first head coaching job, in 1994, going 6-10 in his only season. After a brief stint as George Seifert's defensive coordinator in San Francisco, Carroll coached the New England Patriots from 1997-99, where he was 27-21 with two playoff appearances and no losing seasons, but was replaced by Belichick. Then he coached at USC for a decade, winning multiple national championships, before returning to the NFL as head coach of the Seattle Seahawks.

In Seattle, Carroll went 137-89-1 (.606) with a victory in Super Bowl XLVIII — roughly the average résumé for a Hall of Famer. Carroll's Seahawks won a playoff game for five straight seasons (2012-16) and had winning records for nine years in a row (2012-20). They went 9-8 in both of his last two seasons but are 24-10 under his successor Mike Macdonald. Carroll, meanwhile, went 3-14 as coach of the Raiders, getting fired after only one season.

Overall

Altogether, Carroll's head coaching record is 173-134-1 (.563), with an 11-11 mark in the postseason, including 1-1 in Super Bowls. On the surface, that is a borderline Hall of Fame record. Carroll is tied for 16th all-time in head coaching wins, with more than 16 of the 19 Super Bowl-era HOF coaches, but his .563 winning percentage is better than only five of the 19, and a majority of the HOFers (10/19) won more than one championship. Traditionally, the PFHOF voters have emphasized championships, and have not cared very much about regular-season win totals. That's bad news for Carroll, as his 173 victories look like the strongest asset on his résumé, the stat that positively distinguishes him from coaches who are already in Canton.

However, Carroll was very highly regarded during his time with the Seahawks. Belichick and Carroll were the head coaches on the 2010s All-Decade Team, chosen ahead of Harbaugh, Payton, Reid, and Tomlin. He was vibrant, positive, and generally well-liked, and he led the Seahawks to at least the divisional round of the playoffs seven times.

Hall of Fame Legacy?

Carroll will certainly be nominated for the Hall of Fame at some point. He led a minor dynasty: a team that had nine winning seasons in a row, was in the mix as a Super Bowl favorite half a dozen times, reached two Super Bowls, and won a blowout in Super Bowl XLVIII. That minor dynasty will produce three sure Hall of Famers: quarterback Russell Wilson, linebacker Bobby Wagner, and cornerback Richard Sherman. Free safety Earl Thomas may get in, too, though in two years on the HOF ballot he has yet to be a finalist. I would be surprised if Marshawn Lynch or Kam Chancellor is ever enshrined. Lynch has a better chance.

Carroll's head coaching career is bookended by one-and-done seasons with the Jets and Raiders, which will hurt him with the voters. The committee has been very willing to punish coaches like Seifert for late-career stumbles with a new team, and Carroll's lack of success with teams other than the Seahawks could lead some members of the panel to feel that Carroll was a product of the talent on Seattle's roster, who won when he had Wilson and Wagner and the Legion of Boom, but was subpar when he wasn't coaching a bunch of all-stars. It is probably to Carroll's credit that those players, particularly Wilson, were much less successful without Carroll.

The Hall of Fame vote may hang on how the committee views Carroll's tenure in New England. His teams there certainly weren't bad, but Carroll coached the Patriots in between Parcells and Belichick, both of whom had more success. That's a high standard, but I doubt the voters will perceive Carroll's New England years as anything better than ordinary. That part of his career is not going to help him get elected.

Considering the most recent coaches inducted into the PFHOF, there are factors beyond the record books that can boost a candidate. Cowher and Johnson are TV fixtures, Vermeil is perhaps the kindest and most decent man ever associated with pro football, and Coryell was an offensive innovator who set records and changed the game. Does Carroll have something like that to aid his candidacy?

I don't really think so. He was intense without being a dick, but he wasn't as beloved as Vermeil. He was a media fixture for many years, but not in the same way as Cowher and Johnson. And it's not apparent that he made significant contributions to strategy. One mark of a great coach is that he identifies and hires talented assistants, or sets an example that his players and assistants emulate to facilitate success in their own coaching careers. It's too early to know whether someone like Wilson or Wagner might become a great coach in the future, but to this point Carroll's most successful pro disciple is probably Dan Quinn, who led the Falcons to Super Bowl LI and is currently head coach of the Washington Commanders. Quinn is 60-59 in the regular season, 5-3 in the playoffs.

Sherman recently went on the Rich Eisen Show and made the case for Carroll as an innovator — not on the field but in the locker room and at practice: "that college energy" and an approach that makes players "enjoy coming to work every day."

I would support Carroll as a Hall of Fame candidate, though there are other coaches still waiting whom I think are more qualified. Just last year, the PFHOF voters declined to elect finalist Mike Holmgren, who I think has a stronger case than Carroll. Both went 1-1 in Super Bowls, and Carroll has a few more wins (173 to 161), but Holmgren has a better winning percentage (.592), he succeeded with both the Packers and the Seahawks, and he once had a coaching tree that made up about a quarter of the league, including Super Bowl-winning assistants Andy Reid and Jon Gruden. I suspect Carroll is going to have an uphill climb with the Hall's voting body.

John Harbaugh

Essential History

John Harbaugh was Andy Reid's Special Teams Coordinator with the Philadelphia Eagles. Until the Ravens announced his hiring in 2008, he was best known as Jim Harbaugh's little brother. Baltimore brought him on board following a 5-11 season which saw the team lose to the 1-15 Miami Dolphins.