Seven new coaches expected to make impact in 2008

John Harbaugh coached special teams for the Philadelphia Eagles for nine seasons. AP

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Of the four new head coaches in the NFL this year, no one is taking over a team that fell further in 2007 than John Harbaugh of the Baltimore Ravens, which nose-dived to 5-11 last season after their magic carpet ride of a 13-3 finish in 2006. Not even the woebegone one-win Miami Dolphins or the sad-sack Atlanta Falcons threw it in reverse last year to the tune of eight fewer victories.

That's the challenge facing Harbaugh, the longtime Eagles assistant who has been a breath of fresh air in a Ravens organization that had grown a bit stale -- and at times contentious -- in the latter stages of Brian Billick's always entertaining nine-year head coaching tenure. He's a rookie head coach taking over a veteran team whose window of Super Bowl contention can't afford to wait for the completion of a multi-year rebuilding program.

For the second consecutive offseason, the Ravens have largely taken a status quo approach to their personnel decision-making. At least thus far, it appears that the draft will again be the primary source of Baltimore's infusion of talent. Which only underlines that hiring Harbaugh was the Ravens' biggest offseason move, and that they are counting on him and his partially new coaching staff to be their difference-maker.

While the game of musical chairs that is free agency dominates the NFL's headlines at this time of year, and the draft's hotly anticipated pick-fest looms next month, the seeds of 2008's turnaround stories are being sown right now by new coaching faces who have re-located to new places. Having talented players always matters foremost, but more so than in any other major professional sport, coaching can be a decisive factor in the NFL.

Last year at this time, new hires like head coach Mike Tomlin in Pittsburgh, offensive coordinator Rob Chudzinski in Cleveland, defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo with the Giants, and offensive coordinator Jason Garrett in Dallas were preparing to make major impacts on their teams in 2007. All four of those teams, the Steelers, Browns, Giants and Cowboys, won at least 10 games last year after being in single digits the year before.

Who will be the NFL's new impact coaches in 2008? Harbaugh tops my informal list, which also includes a coach from the Texans, Titans, Bills, Browns, Falcons and Jaguars -- but more on them later. Besides being a 45-year-old rookie head coach, Harbaugh's a bit of a novelty unto himself in other ways. Sixteen of the league's current head coaches built their reputation on the defensive side of the game, and 15 others come from an offensive background. Harbaugh is the lone exception. His NFL coaching experience has been almost completely on special teams, the position he coached with great success in Philadelphia for nine years before becoming the Eagles defensive backs coach in 2007.

At last month's NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis, Harbaugh got a reminder of his coaching roots, and how many people will be watching Baltimore's coaching experiment to render a verdict on the wisdom of selecting a head coach whose experience lies in the still-underappreciated genre of special teams.

"There's a special teams [coaching] dinner that they have at the combine every year, and the Super Bowl champ's special teams coach has to pay,'' said Harbaugh, noting that the duty fell to the Giants' Tom Quinn this year. "So I went over there for that, and it was fun. I got a little ovation, and a lot of hard looks like, 'You better not mess this thing up.' That was the general consensus. That I can't mess it up for the other guys [who want to be head coaches some day]. There's a lot of good special teams coaches, and maybe this uncorks the bottle a little bit.''

Harbaugh, who I've known for a few years, has a reputation within the league for being an eminently honest, high-character individual who's personable, bright and as articulate as any owner could hope for in being the public face of the franchise. And in some ways, his special teams background gives him a different vantage point of leadership within a team, in that he routinely dealt with players on both sides of the ball and wasn't limited to just one perspective.

In this political year, it strikes me that Harbaugh in that way is a bit like the NFL's version of Barack Obama, a new face with a unique background who is aiming to serve as a unifying force for a Ravens team that was badly divided by a defense versus offense mentality in 2007. By the end of last season, that simmering feud within the locker room and the coaching staff more than just bubbled to the surface, becoming public knowledge in Baltimore. Re-instilling a sense of discipline to the Ravens is among Harbaugh's immediate goals.

"Discipline is kind of an elusive thing, but it shows up,'' Harbaugh said. "They (the Ravens) didn't do the things you need to do to win games in critical moments, and that's what we need to get our football team to do. But they did them two years ago. We've got to find that again.''

My instincts tell me Harbaugh is going to be a good bet in Baltimore, and if he can get some decent quarterbacking, he'll have the Ravens back in position to at least contend for the playoffs this season. The mirage that 2006's 13-3 record turned out to be may not be realistic for some time yet, but Baltimore, in the Harbaugh era, won't be confined to NFL irrelevance either.

"We've got a plan,'' Harbaugh said. "We know where we want to go, and these veteran players, they've pretty much got the same plan. Because they've been around, and they've gotten through some of the young-guy issues. So I feel we're going to be on the same page. We're going to be an aggressive football team. We're going to be an attacking football team, on offense and defense. We're going to get after people.''

Here are six other new coaches I see making a positive impact on their teams in 2008:

• Alex Gibbs, Houston Texans assistant head coach -- The Texans lured Gibbs out of his one-year retirement and will have the well-respected longtime offensive line coach work closely with newly elevated offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan. Gibbs will design the Texans' running game, with the same ultra-successful zone-blocking schemes that Denver was known for during Gibbs' tenure on Mike Shanahan's staff. Kyle Shanahan, Mike's 28-year-old son, will design the passing game and call the plays on game day, with head coach Gary Kubiak having final say.

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