This year's playoffs prove importance of head man

	Redskins coach Joe Gibbs has been to four Super Bowls and won it all three times. Jim McIsaac/Getty Images
	RELATED • KING: Thoughts on Tiki Barber, Matt Leinart • KING: The NFL's most disturbing trend • KING: Will Chargers trade QB Rivers?

Take a good, long gander at the NFL's final eight. What jumps out at you about who's still standing? Great coaches on every sideline, that's what.

One divisional round matchup features Bill Belichick versus Mike Shanahan, who have combined to win five of the past eight Super Bowls. Another pits Joe Gibbs against Mike Holmgren, who collectively own four Super Bowl rings and have coached a combined six times on the game's grandest stage. And then there's the Steelers-Colts pairing, which features Bill Cowher and Tony Dungy, who have led teams into the playoffs an eye-popping 18 times in their combined 24 NFL seasons.

Even the fourth glitziest game this weekend is heavy with emphasis on the headset crowd. It's the NFL's coach of the year, Chicago's Lovie Smith, against the sharpest young coach in the NFC, Carolina's John Fox.

As Fox proved once again in the Panthers' 23-0 steamrolling of the favored and out-Foxed Giants in New York on Sunday, the playoffs are about coaching. (Ain't that right, Tiki Barber?) It's great to have difference makers on the field at this time of year, but it's crucial to have the coaching. Rest assured there's not a Barry Switzer among this year's elite eight.

"This league is about coaching,'' one NFC team official told me last week. "In the era of free agency and the salary cap, it's more important than ever.''

In last weekend's first round, coaching quickly came to the fore, and experience got the upper hand in almost every case. Cowher, a playoff veteran, bested first-time playoff head coach Marvin Lewis. Ditto with Belichick and Jack Del Rio. Gibbs, with his three Super Bowl wins and a gaudy 17-5 playoff record, won at Tampa Bay, beating one-time Super Bowl winner Jon Gruden of the Bucs (with a huge assist from Redskins assistant head coach/defense, Gregg Williams).

The Giants' Tom Coughlin has been prowling a sideline longer than Carolina's Fox, but you wouldn't have known that from watching their teams tangle in the Meadowlands. Maybe nobody this side of Belichick consistently gives his team the coaching edge as much as Fox, who had his Panthers ready for everything New York tried.