Can AFC West’s ‘all-star lineup’ of coaches lastly high Andy Reid and the Chiefs? | USAEMALL.com

It is not often these days that Sean Payton is the youngest guy in a room. He has been a head coach in the NFL for nearly two decades and first entered the NFL as an assistant with the Philadelphia Eagles in 1997. Players he once coached, like Dan Campbell and Aaron Glenn, are now piloting their own NFL teams.

So, yes, the 61-year-old coach of the Denver Broncos is reveling a bit in his current status as the junior statesman in his own division.

“I’m the youngest!” Payton, who is six days younger than Los Angeles Chargers head coach Jim Harbaugh, exclaimed at the NFL Scouting Combine in February. “Thanks, Pete.”

Welcome to the AFC West, where what’s old — or rich in experience, to put it more politely — is new again.

When Pete Carroll, 73, was hired to become the new head coach of Las Vegas Raiders in January, replacing the fired Antonio Pierce, he raised the average age of the coaches in the division to 65.5 years old. No other NFL division has an average age among its four coaches that even reaches 50. Every boss in the AFC West had already begun his respective coaching career before any head coach in the AFC South — the division with the youngest average age at 40.5 years old — had even reached middle school.

The West’s sideline leaders have combined to win 668 regular-season games, five Super Bowls and two college national championships (Carroll won one more but it was vacated for NCAA infractions). There has never been a division in which every coach has won at least one Super Bowl or national title.

“It’s outstanding,” Kansas City Chiefs general manager Brett Veach said at the league meeting in Palm Beach, Fla., this week. “It’s an all-star lineup.”

The AFC West is now where some of the most experienced coaches in the sport have been invigorated by a new, heady challenge: loosening the iron grip 67-year-old Andy Reid and the Chiefs have held on the division for most of the last decade. Perhaps the most vibrant illustration of the dominance: Kansas City has collected more AFC West titles since 2016 (nine) than division game losses (eight).

There’s no naiveté from the division’s other coaches about what changing that math will require. But they’re certainly not the kind of group that is shrinking from the task, either. All had to slay proverbial dragons to reach the peak of the profession. Payton outwitted Hall of Fame quarterback Peyton Manning to win the Super Bowl in 2009. Carroll did the same in 2013 — and was one play away from toppling Bill Belichick a year later. Harbaugh beat Carroll to reach the Super Bowl in 2012 — where he lost to his brother John and the Baltimore Ravens — and defeated Nick Saban on his way to a national title at Michigan in 2023.

There’s a reason each coach was chosen to chase Reid, the NFL’s winningest active coach.

“To be battling against Andy and Sean and Jimmy Harbaugh, that’s what it should be,” said Carroll, the former Seattle Seahawks head coach who had fierce NFC West battles with Harbaugh when he was the San Francisco 49ers’ coach. “For us to survive the challenges of that division, we’re going to be ready for whatever comes. If you expect it to be easy, and you’ve got an advantage, I don’t see it that way. The harder it is, the better it is for us to get good. And the sooner it’s hard, the sooner we get better. The challenge is enormous.”

Pete Carroll is back in the NFL after a one-year hiatus. (Kirby Lee / Imagn Images)

That goes for the Chiefs, too, perhaps more than at any point since their destruction of the division — and the league at large — began.

Reid and quarterback Patrick Mahomes have led the charge for Kansas City since 2017, arguably the game’s best quarterback and best coach bringing out the best in one another. The rest of the division hasn’t exactly enjoyed the same continuity. The Raiders in that same stretch have had six head coaches, including those with interim titles, and have seen eight different quarterbacks start a game. The Broncos have cycled through five coaches and 14 quarterbacks. Harbaugh is the fourth Chargers coach since 2017.

That makes 2025 different in the AFC West. Not only has every coach raised the floor of the team they have inherited — Payton and Carroll never won fewer than seven games since 2006; Harbaugh has never had a losing record as an NFL coach — but they also have familiarity with the quarterbacks in their programs. Harbaugh will enter his second season with Pro Bowl QB Justin Herbert, the team’s starter since 2020. The Raiders traded for veteran Geno Smith, who previously started for Carroll in Seattle, a huge upgrade from what Las Vegas had at the position in 2024. Payton will enter his second season with Bo Nix, who is coming off the best season for a rookie quarterback in Broncos history and has already become “one heck of a player,” Reid said.

“(Nix is) exactly what they would have hoped he would have been,” Carroll added. “I saw him from the opening game of the year and he was not ready to be the guy that he showed that he was later on in the season. He became a dynamic football player very quickly. A tremendous amount of credit to Sean — building him and making him. It’s hard to figure those guys out sometimes, and everybody has their own way of going about it and the results are all across the lot, how the young guys do. And you have to have your act together to figure that out and Sean surely did.”

Of course, the Chiefs’ foes in the division have believed they were set up for a real run at the champs before. Ahead of the 2022 season, for example, the Broncos traded for perennial Pro Bowl quarterback Russell Wilson. The Raiders swung a deal that same offseason to pair star wide receiver Davante Adams with his old college QB, Derek Carr. The Chargers acquired stud pass rusher Khalil Mack to form a fierce tandem with Joey Bosa and then loaded up with other marquee defensive additions in free agency.

Justin Herbert threw for 23 touchdowns to just three interceptions in Jim Harbaugh’s first season as Chargers head coach. (Harry How / Getty Images)

The end result: The Chiefs won the division going away and were undefeated in their six AFC West games. The Broncos (Nathaniel Hackett), Chargers (Brandon Staley) and Raiders (Josh McDaniels) all eventually made in-season firings of their head coaches.

Instead of searching for the next Sean McVay — the Super Bowl-winning coach of the Rams who is still somehow only 39 — the challengers in the AFC West have instead opted for something closer to Reid, at least as it relates to experience. Though the Chiefs went 15-2 last season before ultimately being blown out in Super Bowl LIX by the Philadelphia Eagles, there have been signs the gap in the division, thanks to its injection of coaching talent, is shrinking.

The Broncos finally snapped their eight-season losing streak against the Chiefs at home in 2023 during Payton’s first season. Denver would have beaten them in Kansas City last season had a short field-goal attempt not been blocked on the game’s final play. The Chargers’ last three losses to the Chiefs, meanwhile, have come by a combined 12 points.

“We had a really successful regular season … but if you look at the games that we played against the Chargers and the Broncos, they were probably our toughest games and our most physical games,” Veach said. “That’s not going to change. Those teams are only going to add to what they have talent-wise and get better. It will be a challenge just to win the division next year. That’s kind of the mindset we have going into the offseason.”

Carroll’s arrival in Las Vegas and his reunion with Smith already have made the Raiders a far more formidable team than the one that went winless in division games last season.

“He’s a great football coach,” Reid said of Carroll. “He’s got that stability and he’s got the record to go with that. He’s going to come in with cred, and I think the players will listen to him. He’s going to bring a heck of a defensive scheme and offensive scheme with him.”

The Broncos beat the Chiefs in Week 18 last season to clinch their first playoff spot in nine years, a victory that came as Reid rested his starters and key reserves with the No. 1 seed in the AFC already in hand. After the Broncos lost to the Buffalo Bills in the first round of the playoffs, Payton’s mind was back on Kansas City. To truly contend in the playoffs, the coach reasoned, the Broncos would need to host postseason games. And there is only one way, Payton has impressed upon the organization, to earn those.

“Our absolute goal next year,” Broncos owner Greg Penner said, “is to win our division.”

Andy Reid and Sean Payton talk after last season’s Week 18 matchup in Denver. (Isaiah J. Downing / Imagn Images)

The Broncos aren’t the only outfit with an experienced captain hunting for that prize. There is a different kind of challenge when you’re prepping for a full schedule of division games against coaches who have seen it all. But that’s what will make the 2025 AFC West crown all the sweeter to earn — whether it’s No. 10 in a row for Reid’s Chiefs or No. 1, at long last, for someone else.

“You have to go. You have to hit the ground running,” Payton said. “No one wants to hear your woes. We’re excited about it. We’re excited about that challenge.”

The Athletic’s Daniel Popper, Tashan Reed and Nate Taylor contributed.

(Top photos: Sean Payton and Jim Harbaugh by Eric Thayer / Associated Press; Andy Reid and Pete Carroll by Jamie Squire / Getty Images)