NFL Coach of the Year: Ranking the 5 Coaches Who Most Deserve Title

There were some amazing coaching performances this season. You have to take a look at where some of these teams were and how they amassed success when many expected downright failure.

We had a rookie coach lead a team that went 6-10 last season to an overtime loss away from playing in the Super Bowl. Another coach, who was on the hot seat when the season began, led a young, up-and-coming roster to a rare postseason appearance.

We also saw the defending Super Bowl Champions flirt with a perfect record and a team that lost their starting quarterback go deep into the playoffs.

This article is going to focus on five head coaches most deserving of the title NFL Coach of the Year 2011.

5. Jim Schwartz, Detroit Lions

You have got to realize just how bad of a football team Jim Schwartz took over when he was hired by the Detroit Lions following the 2008 team. This is a franchise that had finished the previous season without a win and won a total of 33 games over the course of the previous eight seasons. By comparison, the New England Patriots had won just as many games in two seasons.

Dan Orlovksy, Jon Kitna and Daunte Culpepper all started games for the win-less 2008 Detroit Lions, while their best player was a second year player by the name of Calvin Johnson.

To say that this team needed to rebuild was a gross understatement. They need to pick up the majority of that roster and throw them out back in a dark alley, this is pretty much what they did.

The process of building a team from scratch wasn't a quick one. Schwartz and Co. won just two games in 2009, finishing dead last in scoring defense and 31st in point differential.Still, you could see some marked improvement. The process got started during that draft when Detroit selected Matthew Stafford No. 1 overall and got him a play making tight end Brandon Pettigrew in the second round. 

2010 saw the Lions triple their win total from the previous year, remaining competitive in nearly every game and finishing with six victories: one less than their total from the previous three seasons.

Now Lions' players were starting to buy into Jim Schartz's philosophy and it paid of a great deal in 2011. The franchise had their best season since Barry Sanders was breaking the ankles of opposing defenders in 1995.It wasn't that Detroit were real contenders to win the Super Bowl. It was more about the fact of continuing this climb back towards relevance for a franchise that had been dormant for so long.

You have to give Jim Schwartz some credit for the job he did and has continued to do with the Detroit Lions.

4. John Fox, Denver Broncos

No one expected the Denver Broncos to contend this season. Even after John Elway and Co. brought in the talented John Fox to man the sidelines, they just didn't have the talent to succeed in the AFC West.

This is a team that finished 4-12 the season prior, ranking dead last in the NFL in scoring defense. They were, by all accounts, a rebuilding franchise with little hope of contention in 2011. Now, a lot of people would indicate that Tim Tebow's success might have been a fluke and that the Broncos finished the season 8-8.

With that said, the primary reason for their turnaround was the performance of their much maligned defense. This was a unit that completely stunk if up in 2010. You are talking about a unit that gave up 400 or more yards in six of their final games that season. How could they possibly compete against the top tier offenses in the AFC?

John Fox brought with him a strong defensive foundation, one that saved the day for this fledgling franchise. In the process, the defense made a major step toward respectability. Brought together was a combination of young talent and savvy veterans. Von Miller played at an exceptionally high level, while Champ Bailey and Brian Dawkins withstood the test of time.

Denver was able to inch their way into the playoffs and defeated the heavily favored, defending AFC Champion Pittsburgh Steelers in the Wild Card Round. Despite a disastrous loss to the New England Patriots the following week, John Fox proved that he was one hell of a head coach.

For this, he deserves some recognition.

3. Marvin Lewis, Cincinnati Bengals

Raise your hands if you had the Cincinnati Bengals making the playoffs in 2011. I didn't think so. They won a total of four games the previous season, losing ten consecutive at one point from October-to-December. All indications is that this team, full of veteran "stars" was going to have to implode before coming back to respectability.

Following that disastrous 2010 season, changes were made of the wholesale variety. Gone were Chad Ochocinco, Terrell Owens, Carson Palmer, Roy Williams,Dhani Jones and Johnathan Joseph. Their long time head coach, Marvin Lewis, was also on the proverbial hot seat.

Mike Brown made the decision to retain Marvin Lewis much to the chagrin of Cincinnati Bengals fans the world over. However, it was one of the brightest decisions that the controversial owner has ever made.

Cincinnati, depending on a vast array of young players and veteran castoffs, surprised the football world. They finished the 2011 regular season with a 9-7 record, good enough to earn the final wild-card slot.

This was just the third time that the Bengals made the postseason in the last two decades. However short lived their postseason appearance was, Marvin Lewis proved that he was able to withstand controversy and get the most from an unheralded and under respected group of 53 players.

If it wasn't for the two coaches listed above Lewis, there is no doubt he would have won Coach of the Year.

2. Mike McCarthy, Green Bay Packers

I fully understand that the Green Bay Packers were expected to be good in 2011. After all, they were the defending Super Bowl Champions and had one of the best quarterbacks in the entire league.

Building a team from the ground up isn't a prerequisite for being nominated for Coach of the Year. No matter the talent your team has, you still need to lead them to greatness on a weekly basis. This is exactly what Mike McCarthy did with the Green Bay Packers during the 2011 regular season.

This is a team that won their first 13 games of the season, completely dominating opposing teams. They racked up 30 or more points 11 times as Aaron Rodgers had one of the best regular seasons in NFL history. Mike McCarthy was a primary reason for this, he acted as a quasi quarterback's coach for Rodgers. The relationship between these two might one day rival that of Bill Belichick and Tom Brady in New England.

You cannot take into account postseason performance when looking at this award. Rather, you have to take a look at the entire regular season and the Green Bay Packers were, by far, the best team during those 17 weeks.

This alone should garner McCarthy a nice amount of votes.

1. Jim Harbaugh, San Francisco 49ers

If Jim Harbaugh doesn't win Coach of the Year, I am going to throw my remote control and/or Droid at the television screen and Alec Baldwin tonight. Seriously, there isn't even a real contest here, is there?

Not one single "expert' had the San Francisco 49ers winning 13 games this season. Even the most optimistic 49er' fan couldn't have conjured up the dream season that this team had.

You are looking at a franchise that had existed in relative darkness over the course of the previous decade, not once finishing above .500. They were, by all accounts, one of the most underachieving teams in the NFL over the course of the last couple seasons.

Enter into the equation Jim Harbaugh, who set sail to prove all the skeptics wrong. From his introductory press conference in January of 2011, the entire mindset of this franchise changed.

He showed trust in an enigmatic quarterback named Alex Smith because there really wasn't another option.San Francisco, more than any other team in the NFL, was handicapped by the lockout. They wouldn't have a full season to install Harbaugh's new play book as the rookie head coach lost out on a prime opportunity to learn more about his new team.

This is magnified by the fact that San Francisco was still running new plays in the playoffs because they had not yet exhausted the entire playbook. Just think about that for a second.

Still, San Francisco shocked the football world by winning 13 games and becoming the first team to clinch their division. Harbaugh's success as head coach during the regular season can only be taken into account here, not what the 49ers did in the playoffs.

With that said, this was one of the best coaching performances in modern NFL history and I dare someone to argue a contradictory point of view.