INDIANAPOLIS — NFL Draft picks don’t get to determine their first professional home or which coach they’d play for to start their career. But if they could pick which coach they’d play for, who would they pick?
We asked 42 players participating in this year’s combine that question in our NFL Combine Survey. It’s seemingly an easy question, but prospects can be superstitious. Some are even cloaked in secrecy. They want to make it clear they’ll be grateful to play for any NFL team that will have them.
Or, more bluntly: “I don’t really know the names of the head coaches,” one told me.
We had 10 prospects skip the question for one reason or another. With 10 head coaches losing their jobs in the last two months, some familiar names aren’t available now. The same exercise had former Pittsburgh coach Mike Tomlin lead the way a year ago.
Recency bias or not, the two big winners were fresh from this year’s Super Bowl. Unlike the result of Super Bowl LX, though, Mike Vrabel came away with the victory in this question. Eight of the players picked the New England Patriots‘ head coach, who also won Coach of the Year for the second time in 2025.
Seattle Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald settled for second place here. He received five votes, which counted one prospect saying, “Seattle’s Mike McDaniel,” which is the name of the former Miami Dolphins head coach, and “the young head coach of the Seahawks.”
“It’s hard not to say the Seahawks,” another prospect added. “He led them to the Super Bowl.”
It’s worth mentioning that two of the NFL’s newest coaches were among those named — Baltimore’s Jesse Minter and Miami’s Jeff Hafley. Some of that might be them coaching in college recently enough to have former players at this year’s combine, with Minter serving as Michigan’s defensive coordinator as recently as 2023. Hafley also left his post as Boston College’s head coach at the end of the 2023 season, becoming the Green Bay Packers‘ defensive coordinator in 2024.
Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid was able to muster three votes, with his three Super Bowl wins being the most among all active head coaches. John Harbaugh might have been let go by the Baltimore Ravens in January, but a couple of players also said they’d like to play for the new New York Giants head coach.
Here are the full results from the survey question.
RESULTS:
Mike Vrabel, Patriots: 8
Mike Macdonald, Seahawks: 5
Andy Reid, Chiefs: 3
Dan Campbell, Lions: 2
Jeff Hafley, Dolphins: 2
John Harbaugh, Giants: 2
DeMeco Ryans, Texans: 2
(Coaches that received one vote: Ben Johnson, Bears; Jesse Minter, Ravens; Sean Payton, Broncos; Brian Schottenheimer, Cowboys; Kevin Stefanski, Falcons; Kyle Shanahan, 49ers)
