Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh can’t quite explain one of the most peculiar hiring patterns in NFL history.

Why don’t NFL teams hire special teams coordinators to be head coaches?

The New Orleans Saints recently promoted their special teams coordinator, Darren Rizzi, to run the team as head coach on an interim basis. But only twice in league history have special teams coordinators been hired as non-interim head coaches, indicating another potential blind spot or bias in the hiring process among NFL teams.

NFL team owners instead typically hire head coaches who look a certain way (white) and fit a certain mold (dynamic play-caller), according to USA TODAY Sports data, even though such traits don’t predict future success as head coaches.

“I thought it would change,” Harbaugh told USA TODAY Sports in May. “I thought if I was able to be successful, that it would open the door for those guys, and I think a lot of those guys felt that way as well. It hasn’t been the case. Nobody’s been hired who was mainly a special teams coordinator in their career. I’ve got to be honest: That’s been a disappointment.”

Harbaugh isn’t even among the two special teams coaches in NFL history who got directly promoted to head coach. He spent nine seasons as a special teams coach in Philadelphia before he switched to defensive backs coach in 2007, then got hired by the Ravens as head coach in 2008. Likewise, several other successful NFL head coaches worked with special teams early in their NFL careers but seemingly had to prove they could coach another part of the team before getting a head coaching job — including Bill Belichick, Marv Levy, Dick Vermeil and Bill Cowher.

Despite their track records, the pattern continues, suggesting biases come in different forms, not just with race, when hiring head coaches.

‘Look at who’s doing the hiring’

Data compiled by USA TODAY Sports for its NFL coaches project shows just how rare it is for special teams coordinators to even be considered for head-coaching vacancies. Of the 80 NFL assistant coaches who have held the title of special teams coordinator since 2010, only 12 have gotten an interview to be a non-interim head coach — and only one was promoted directly to head coach, according to the data, which analyzed interviews reported publicly and announced by teams.

The bias also appears to be about the role, not race. About 75% of special teams coordinators since 2010 have been white.

To gain better perspective about this and how perceptions influence head coaching hires, USA TODAY Sports discussed the trend with former NFL special teams coaches and reviewed the data and history. NFL executive vice president of football operations Troy Vincent was not made available for an interview.

Theories abound about why special teams coordinators aren’t considered for head-coaching positions: There are misconceptions about the job. It’s not the standard career path. And these coaches aren’t as well-known as offensive or defensive coordinators.

But special teams coaches work with players from both sides of the ball and oversee a critical part of the game, with new rules for kickoffs and big plays in the kicking game impacting teams every week.

“You have to look at who’s doing the hiring and their comfort level with doing something that hasn’t necessarily been done before and does not have a lot of data behind it outside of Coach Harbaugh,” said Maurice Drayton, a former NFL special teams coach who is now the head coach at The Citadel, the military college in South Carolina.

Only 2 direct hires from special teams in NFL history

All together since 2010, there have been 448 potential opportunities for special teams coordinators to be hired as head coaches — 32 special teams coordinators per season over 14 hiring cycles. Yet only one got a direct promotion from special teams coach to head coach – Joe Judge in 2020. The New York Giants hired him after he previously served as special teams coordinator of the New England Patriots.

Why would the number be so low?

“I don’t know,” Harbaugh said during an interview about his family’s Harbaugh Coaching Academy. “Maybe winning the press conference has something to do with it.”

“Winning the press conference” means generating excitement among fans when introducing a new head coach at a news conference. That often happens when a team hires a hotshot offensive coordinator, whose prior success with scoring points helps create hype.

By contrast, special teams coordinators are not as well known by fans and news media as the coaches running the offense and defense. They’re often not in the spotlight unless something goes wrong.

‘When we do it well, people don’t always notice, but when it goes bad, the only time I show up on TV is when something goes awry,’ former college special teams coach Brian Polian said in 2022.

Before Judge, only one other special teams coach in the NFL was directly promoted to head coach on a non-interim basis — Frank Gansz of the Kansas City Chiefs, who was promoted to head coach in 1987.

Gansz gave a similar answer before he died in 2009.

“Offensive coordinators sell tickets,” Gansz said in a story written by USA TODAY’s Brent Schrotenboer for American Football Monthly in 2001.  “Special teams coordinators don’t.”

So where do head coaches come from? From 2010-2024, USA TODAY Sports data shows 90 head coach hires. Of those, 34 were promoted from offensive coordinator (38%); 23 from defensive coordinator (26%); 14 were NFL head coaches switching teams (16%); nine were NCAA head coaches (10%); six offensive position coaches (7%); two defensive position coaches (2%); one special teams coordinator (1%); and one Canadian Football League head coach (1%).

Small sample size of results

As the only special teams coordinators promoted directly to head coach, Judge and Gansz didn’t help their cause by only lasting two seasons in the top job. Both got fired – Judge with a 10-23 record with the Giants; Gansz with an 8-22-1 record with the Chiefs.

Again, the list doesn’t include Harbaugh, the NFL’s second-longest tenured head coach. He switched away from special teams coaching in 2007 to improve his chances of getting a head coaching job, according to his then-head coach, Andy Reid, in Philadelphia.

He then was hired as head coach a year later by Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti.

“Steve told me when he hired me that he doesn’t look at resumé,” Harbaugh said. “He’s not hiring a resumé. He’s looking for leaders.”

The list also doesn’t include special teams coordinators who became interim head coaches, such as Rizzi of the Saints or Rich Bisaccia of the Las Vegas Raiders in 2021. Bisaccia was deemed good enough to pinch-hit as head coach and led the Raiders to a 7-6 record and their first playoff berth since 2016. But he still didn’t win the job permanently. The Raiders instead hired an offensive coordinator, Josh McDaniels, who failed in his previous head coaching job at Denver and then got fired again from the Raiders in 2023.

The Peter Principle of NFL hiring practices?

Recent NFL history is littered with failed and fired head coaches like McDaniels. They got hired largely because of their histories or reputations as offensive gurus – Kliff Kingsbury, Frank Reich, Todd Haley, Adam Gase, Nathaniel Hackett, Mike McCoy, Chip Kelly, et al.

Some of them even got second chances as head coaches despite their prior failings: McDaniels, Gase, Reich, Kelly.

This shows that being good at dialing up plays or tutoring quarterbacks as an offensive coordinator doesn’t always predict success as a head coach. That’s at least partly because a head-coaching job requires a different set of skills than those required of offensive or defensive coordinators, such as managing a larger organization on and off the field, not just game-planning one side of the ball.

‘In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence,” the late educator and author Laurence Peter once wrote.

This applies to the NFL. It’s called the Peter Principle. This principle describes how employees often are promoted to a new job because they were good at a previous job, even though the new job requires a different set of skills and abilities. These promoted employees then “rise to the level of their own incompetence” because the traits that made them successful in their old jobs might not even be relevant enough in their new jobs to make them competent.

Why would special teams coaches be any different?

The skills that make them good as special teams coordinators also seem to translate well into a head-coaching position. The players they coach come from both sides of the ball and include punters and placekickers.

“You deal with guys on offense and defense as well as your specialists,” said Drayton, who coached NFL special teams in Las Vegas, Green Bay and Indianapolis. “When I was in Green Bay, I coached everybody with the exception of (quarterback) Aaron Rodgers, and let’s face it: He coaches us sometimes. But even with him, we would go through situational awareness, game situations. I had the opportunity to coach him, so you deal with the total roster.”

It’s also a high-stakes job in charge of several units. A single play on special teams can make or break games: field goals, blocked punts, kickoff coverage, etc.

Situational awareness, game management and adaptability are important, too. Consider the recent rules changes on kickoffs.

“We watch every (kickoff) play of every game, every week,” Arizona Cardinals special teams coordinator Jeff Rodgers told reporters about the changes in September. “In the past, we wouldn’t necessarily be studying every scheme. Like maybe you’re evaluating, ‘Was it an onside kick, or was it a longer return?’

‘Every week we’ve done this, we learned something new and, hopefully, it helps us along the way.”

It still boils down to perception

Unfair prejudices can come in many forms, whether it’s about race, age, background or role. In this case, the data indicates team owners have narrowed their vision of who can be head coaches.

Consider how special teams coaches seem to need to prove they can coach something else before they can get a chance as head coach.

In Harbaugh’s case, Eagles head coach Andy Reid moved him to defensive backs coach in 2007 after nine years as special teams coordinator. Reid said then that the job of special teams coordinator is ‘probably closer to a head coaching position than what people perceive.’

Even so, Reid said moving Harbaugh to a new position would help him more than staying there.

‘His goal is to be a head coach and this gives him an opportunity to get closer to that,’ Reid told reporters at the time.

In 1969, Los Angeles Rams coach George Allen hired Dick Vermeil to be the first designated special teams coordinator in NFL history. A year later, Vermeil was replaced by Mary Levy. Both Vermeil and Levy are now in the Pro Football Hall of Fame as head coaches, but neither got their first NFL head coaching jobs until after they proved they could coach something else.

In Vermeil’s case, he didn’t get hired as head coach until after he served as a quarterbacks coach in the NFL and head coach at UCLA. In Levy’s case, he went from special teams coach of the Washington football team to head coach of the Montreal Alouettes in the Canadian Football League before he got hired as an NFL head coach.

Ignorance about the job of a special teams coach might be part of the issue, too.

“It’s a lot of coaching and a lot of skill and a lot of scheme that goes into it,” Drayton said. “I think the lack of knowledge of what special teams coordinators do has hindered that as well.”

Among NFL owners?

“Yes, among owners” Drayton said. “Yes, yes.”

Follow reporter Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. Email: bschrotenb@usatoday.com

(This story was updated to change a photo.)

Georgia will rebound from last weekend’s loss to Mississippi and make the College Football Playoff as an at-large pick.

Doing so would eliminate Tennessee and move the Rebels into the 12-team field. Georgia takes on the Volunteers this Saturday in one of the biggest regular-season games remaining in the Power Four.

While they would have the same record heading into the postseason, the Rebels would get the nod over the Volunteers by virtue of each team’s head-to-head result against Georgia.

Texas takes over as the favorite in the SEC even if the Longhorns have yet to post a win against a ranked opponent. The finale against Texas A&M is set to carry enormous weight in determining which teams play for the conference championship and a bye through the opening round of the playoff.

Miami stays atop the ACC despite losing to Georgia Tech. The Hurricanes are projected to meet SMU in the conference championship game, in what will very likely be a win-or-go-home matchup that drops the loser out of the playoff picture. Clemson could replace the Hurricanes should they lose again this month.

UP AND DOWN: Army, Georgia lead CFP ranking winners and losers

College Football Playoff bracket projection

While almost anything can happen down the stretch of November, the breakdown of teams by Power Four conference is becoming a little easier to predict.

The Big 12 is set to send only one team. Brigham Young might be able to earn an at-large bid by going 12-0 and then losing the conference championship, but that defeat would come to a team with two or three losses and likely ruin the Cougars’ reputation.

The chances of the ACC sending two teams dropped significantly with Miami’s loss. The opportunity is still there should extensive chaos hit the top teams in the Big Ten and SEC. But the odds are that either the Hurricanes, Mustangs or Tigers are the league’s only representative.

One team apiece from the ACC and Big 12 along with Notre Dame and Boise State leaves eight playoff spots to be shared by the SEC and Big Ten.

As of now, the signs point to an even split: Oregon, Ohio State, Penn State and Indiana from the Big Ten, and Texas, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi from the SEC.

Four teams to watch

Louisiana-Lafayette

Louisiana has won six in a row since a competitive loss to Tulane in September, a stretch that includes wins against Wake Forest and three potential bowls teams out of the Sun Belt – Texas State, Coastal Carolina and Arkansas State. The Ragin’ Cajuns should head into the conference championship at 11-1 with a chance at finishing atop the heap in the Group of Five, though that would take some significant help in the American Athletic and Mountain West.

Colorado

Incredibly, the Buffaloes are on track to play for the Big 12 crown with wins to close out the year against Utah, Kansas and Oklahoma State. A road trip to Lawrence should be Colorado’s toughest test given how the Jayhawks have played in recent weeks. Losses to Nebraska and Kansas State already doomed the Buffaloes’ chances of an at-large bid.

Clemson

Clemson’s at-large odds are nearly invisible, though there’s always a chance that a path opens with wins against Pittsburgh and South Carolina along with some messy results in the Big Ten and SEC. More realistically, the Tigers need to beat the Panthers on Saturday and have Miami lose to Wake Forest or Syracuse.

UNLV

The Rebels are still hanging around the Mountain West race. UNLV already lost to Boise State and won’t play Colorado State, the only other team unbeaten in league play. Getting ahead of the Rams and earning a rematch against the Broncos isn’t too hard: Colorado State needs to lose once and the Rebels win out. In the case of no head-to-head tiebreaker, the league would decide between the two by either the highest playoff ranking or, if neither is ranked, “an average of metrics.” Both categories would favor UNLV.

San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich had a mild stroke on Nov. 2 before the team played the Minnesota Timberwolves, the team announced Wednesday.

The Spurs said Popovich, 75, has “already started a rehabilitation program and (and) is expected to make a full recovery. At this point, a timeline for his return to the sidelines has not been determined. During this time, the organization is grateful to the extended community for providing privacy and space to the Popovich family.”

Spurs assistant coach Mitch Johnson has been the acting coach in Popovich’s absence. San Antonio is 5-6 and 3-3 without Popovich.

The NBA’s all-time winningest coach with 1,393 victories, Popovich has spent 30-plus years with the franchise, including 28-plus consecutive seasons as head coach, and helped turn the Spurs into a model team that others tried to emulate.

Popovich has not coached a game since the Spurs beat Utah on Oct. 31. He missed the team’s next six games, starting with the San Antonio-Minnesota game on Nov. 2, with what the team then called an undisclosed illness.

He has spent 28-plus seasons with the Spurs as head coach, taking over for Bob Hill in 1996. The Spurs finished 17-47 and won the draft lottery. They selected Tim Duncan with the No. 1 overall pick, pairing him with David Robinson and setting a course for NBA titles in 1999, 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2014.

His career record is 1,393-827 and he also coached the U.S. to a gold medal at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.

The College Football Playoff committee released its second rankings Tuesday with some puzzling decisions that centered around whether more emphasis is being placed on wins and losses compared to schedule strength.

Georgia dropped nine spaces to No. 12 after a loss to Mississippi. It was the second loss for the Bulldogs against a team in the top 11 of the rankings. The Bulldogs, however, also own a win against one-loss Texas, which improved to No. 3 despite no wins against teams in the top 25. Meanwhile, Miami lost for the first time to unranked Georgia Tech and only slipped five spots to No. 9.

So why is this important? Because it’s unavoidable that teams in the same conferences will finish with similar records and imbalanced schedules. It will be up to the committee to decide how to separate them, and their approach will be scrutinized.

In developments on the field, Colorado moved closer to the playoff and needs just to win out to make the field. LSU stumbled against Alabama and fell out of the postseason picture, raising questions about Brian Kelly’s future.

Looking ahead to Week 12, Georgia faces a do-or-die situation against Tennessee. The Bulldogs likely are out of the playoff contention with a loss, a surprising development that was the clear No. 1 team in the preseason.

Dan Wolken and Paul Myerberg of USA TODAY Sports discuss these topics and more in this week’s version of the College Football Fix.

UP AND DOWN: Army, Georgia lead CFP ranking winners and losers

SEC BIAS?: Playoff rankings didn’t do any favors to league usually favored

BOWL PROJECTIONS: SEC teams moving in and out of playoff field

CALM DOWN: The five biggest overreactions from Week 11 action

RE-RANK: Alabama, Mississippi among teams rising in NCAA 1-134