It felt, Jim Harbaugh said, "like being dipped in magic waters." His lone Pro Bowl season as a quarterback, 1995, was 30 years ago, when Harbaugh completed nearly 64 percent of his throws, tossed 17 touchdown passes, led a series of come-from-behind victories that earned his team the "Cardiac Colts" moniker and took Indianapolis through a postseason of road upsets to the AFC Championship Game. Not surprisingly, Harbaugh rhapsodizes about it still.
"It was a real ball team, one of my favorite ball teams I've ever been on," he told reporters during the 2025 regular season. "And also, whether on the field, in the training room, the meeting-room environment, everybody could laugh easy. We worked hard and had fun doing it with a bunch of great guys. It seemed like every game there was someone else contributing mighty to the win. There was some magic made. As a player, it's by far my favorite season."
Harbaugh's finest game that year came in Week 6, when the Colts went to Miami to face the undefeated Dolphins. The Colts were behind 24-3 with four minutes remaining in the third quarter when Harbaugh ignited a furious comeback, completing touchdown passes on three consecutive possessions to send the game into overtime, then leading the drive that ended in a winning field goal. That was already the second come-from-behind victory Harbaugh engineered that season -- he hadn't been the starter when the season opened -- and "Captain Comeback" was in full flower.
Harbaugh is just one of 105 head coaches since the 1970 merger who also played in at least one NFL regular-season game, including luminaries like Hall of Fame coaches Don Shula, Chuck Noll and Tom Landry. Including Giants interim coach Mike Kafka, 10 head coaches in the 2025 season were former players, from those who logged minimal on-field snaps (the Vikings' Kevin O'Connell appeared in two games for the Patriots in 2008, the Broncos' Sean Payton appeared in three for the Bears in 1987 and the Saints' Kellen Moore appeared in three for the Cowboys in 2015) to those with extensive résumés, like the Patriots' Mike Vrabel, who was an All-Pro in 2007 and won three Super Bowls as a linebacker for New England over a 14-year playing career.
Vrabel will undoubtedly lean on his personal postseason experience as he attempts to guide the Patriots through the playoff field, beginning Sunday in a wild-card game against Harbaugh's Los Angeles Chargers. Houston's DeMeco Ryans, who has played in three playoff games, and Harbaugh, who participated in three different postseasons as a player, can do the same for their teams.
What were these coaches -- and the others who played in a significant number of NFL games, including the Jets' Aaron Glenn, the Bucs' Todd Bowles and the Lions' Dan Campbell -- like on the field?
Three decades after Harbaugh led that unlikely run to the AFC title game, and before we see how far he and the other ex-players take their teams this postseason, we're revisiting the playing days of active coaches who starred in shoulder pads, focusing on those who logged a minimum of 100 games as players.
Mike Vrabel, New England Patriots
- NFL linebacker: 206 games (Steelers, 1997-2000; Patriots, 2001-08; Chiefs, 2009-2010) | 20 playoff games
- NFL head coach: Titans, 2018-2023; Patriots, 2025-present
Vrabel was a first-team All-Pro and three-time Super Bowl champion as a linebacker for the New England Patriots, the team he now leads, making him arguably the most accomplished of the current players-turned-coaches. You probably missed his top campaign. It was overshadowed by the best offensive season anyone had ever seen.
Vrabel's lone All-Pro campaign came in 2007, which was the year the Patriots finished an undefeated regular season (before falling to the Giants in the Super Bowl), and Tom Brady and Randy Moss electrified the NFL. Vrabel, though, was a defensive monster. At age 32, he had 12.5 sacks, three more than he had in any of his other 13 seasons. He had 17 quarterback hits and five forced fumbles. He nearly singlehandedly dismantled Washington and quarterback Jason Campbell in a late-October beatdown, with an outrageous stat line: three sacks, 13 tackles, three forced fumbles and one touchdown reception, for which he made one of his occasional forays to tight end.
Even as a player with a smart-aleck streak -- he used to needle Bill Belichick about his adoration for the old Giants linebackers, like Lawrence Taylor and Harry Carson, whom Belichick coached as a defensive coordinator -- Vrabel was regarded as future-coach material. His teammate Tedy Bruschi, now an ESPN analyst, remembers that Vrabel was one of the few players in meeting rooms who went beyond wanting to know his own assignment. He would ask the coaches detailed questions about the concept behind the schemes.
"His pregame warm-up, he would go out with Nick Caserio and run the route tree," Bruschi remembers. "Like, what are you doing, man? I think it was strange. Of course, he ends up playing tight end, but he's running the route tree as a warm-up every single game. That was a good sign of how he saw the whole game. Both sides mattered to him."
That has been obvious since Vrabel returned to Foxborough as the coach this season. His decision-making -- in-game, but also in assembling his coaching staff and influencing roster construction -- turned what was one of the league's worst teams in 2024 into the AFC East champion and an immediate contender. The Patriots, who claimed the No. 2 seed in the conference, have a top-five scoring offense and defense, displaying the kind of toughness and attention to detail that were features of Vrabel's playing career.
"His teams play like he played," Jim Harbaugh told reporters this week, ahead of his upcoming playoff showdown with Vrabel. "I do notice that. Tough, gritty, physical, smart, fast. They kind of like to hit like he liked to hit. That's what I've noticed."
Aaron Glenn, New York Jets
- NFL cornerback: 205 games (Jets, 1994-2001; Texans, 2002-04; Cowboys, 2005-06; Jaguars, 2007; Saints, 2008) | 4 playoff games
- NFL head coach: Jets, 2025-present
When the New York Jets drafted Glenn 12th overall back in 1994, he joined a team that won six games, won three in 1995, then bottomed out with a one-win season in '96. That experience was formative for Glenn, a quick cornerback whose locker-room personality back then mirrored the one he displays now in press conferences as the Jets' head coach: stand-up, blunt, unafraid to ruffle feathers.
He was also a critical piece of the renaissance engineered by Bill Parcells, who had the Jets in the AFC Championship Game in just his second season as the head coach. Parcells' first two seasons (1997 and '98) were Pro Bowl seasons for Glenn -- in 1998, the AFC title game season, Glenn had a career-high six interceptions. (He earned a third Pro Bowl nod with Houston in 2002.)
Vinny Testaverde was one of Glenn's teammates then, and they were good friends. What Testaverde remembers of Glenn then is consistent with how Glenn has been as a coach.
"The thing I remember most was how competitive he was on the field, on the golf course, playing cards," Testaverde said. "He was always very upbeat. He was all about business when it was time to go to work. And then it was time to flip off the switch and be with the guys."
Parcells became a mentor to Glenn, advising him throughout his playing career and then as Glenn worked his way up from being a scout through the coaching ranks. When the Jets hired Glenn in January, Parcells offered a thumbnail sketch of how Glenn would lead that proved prescient.
"He's a high-character guy, and he's not afraid to be contentious," Parcells said. "He's just feisty. He's competitive -- not rude or impolite -- he's just willing to get his point across."
In his first season on the job, Glenn was focused on changing the culture of the Jets, one with which he is intimately familiar. He endured a miserable campaign, finishing 3-14. Glenn contended with struggling quarterbacks, key injuries, the trades of the team's top two defensive players and questions about his own game management. In an apparent effort to improve accountability, he benched quarterback Justin Fields at halftime of one game for poor play, and the team released returner Xavier Gipson just days after he committed a critical turnover in a Week 1 loss to the Steelers. It was the kind of season that, during training camp, Glenn recalled as a player, and a piece of what drove him to want to be the Jets' head coach.
"I was here first couple years when things weren't well at all," Glenn said. "Bill Parcells comes in and we ran the town of New York. So, I know exactly how it is to No. 1, be a Jet, and to be able to run this town. I want the fans to get that feeling back. I want the media to get that feeling back. I want the players that haven't experienced that, I want those guys to feel exactly what I had a chance to feel, because there is no better feeling in the world, especially in this place, to be able to win, to be able to have an organization that is kicking it on all cylinders. So it is personal. It's the team that drafted me, it's the team that gave me opportunity to come back as a coach, this is the place I want to be as a head coach. I don't take that lightly."
Jim Harbaugh, Los Angeles Chargers
- NFL quarterback: 177 games (Bears, 1987-1993; Colts, 1994-97; Ravens, 1998; Chargers, 1999-2000) | 5 playoff games
- NFL head coach: 49ers, 2011-2014; Chargers, 2024-present
The Colts rode the wave of Harbaugh's toughness and competitiveness in 1995 to make it, improbably, all the way to the AFC Championship Game against the favored Pittsburgh Steelers. It was a low-scoring, back-and-forth affair, and the Colts, again, trailed going into the fourth quarter. Midway through the final quarter, Harbaugh hit Floyd Turner for a 47-yard touchdown to take the lead.
When the Steelers came back to take a four-point advantage with 1:34 left, there was time for one more bit of Harbaugh magic. Mixing passing and scrambling, Harbaugh led the Colts from their own 16-yard line to the Steelers' 29. On the game's final play, Harbaugh launched a Hail Mary into the end zone. The ball bounced off Steelers defenders and onto the falling Aaron Bailey's chest, leg, chest again and finally into his hands. For a moment, the Colts thought they had won and began to celebrate, all while the Steelers were celebrating, too. But the nose of the ball had hit the ground, and the season was over.
Harbaugh was the PFWA Comeback Player of the Year that season. Incredibly, that was one year after Harbaugh began his coaching career as an unpaid assistant coach at Western Kentucky University, where his father, Jack, was the head coach. The younger Harbaugh kept coaching at Western Kentucky through 2001. In 2002, he coached the quarterbacks for the Oakland Raiders, and his second act was fully underway. It has included a Super Bowl appearance as the head coach of the San Francisco 49ers and a national championship as head coach of the Michigan Wolverines.
If you watched Harbaugh as a player, not much about his quirks as a coach -- the wearing of cleats so he can participate in training camp strength and conditioning drills, the donning of receivers' gloves to catch Justin Herbert's passes in pregame warm-ups, his hilariously intense press conferences -- comes as a surprise. After all, when he played in Indianapolis, Harbaugh wanted to run with the skill players. His former teammates remember someone who loved to compete.
"He was very direct," said former Colts tight end Ken Dilger, who was a rookie in Harbaugh's Pro Bowl season. "There wasn't any kidding in the huddle."
In a 2024 interview on The Rich Eisen Show, Marshall Faulk, the Hall of Fame running back who played with Harbaugh in Indianapolis, performed an imitation of Harbaugh making a play call in the huddle, sounding an awful lot like the coach in his press conferences now. With his eyes wide, Faulk began Harbaugh's staccato cadence. "I-right ... 20 ... Bob ... we're going to run this."
Faulk also recalled that when Harbaugh released a pass, he would accompany it with sound effects.
"He would literally throw the ball and go, thwooooo," Faulk said. "I'm like, 'Jim, why do you do that?' "
Harbaugh's idiosyncrasies are still catnip to headline writers. His work, though, with Herbert -- whose toughness and physical strength Harbaugh has openly admired, particularly as the QB has played through a broken non-throwing hand -- and the offense, complemented by a top defense, are what pushed the Chargers into the playoffs and their wild-card matchup with the Patriots.
If he is to collect his first postseason win since the 2013 playoffs, he'll have to do something he's never done before: beat Vrabel. The two have never faced off as head coaches, but Vrabel did tackle Harbaugh once, in 1997, when the linebacker's Steelers beat the quarterback's Colts. (Vrabel participated in two more wins over Harbaugh as a player in 1998, when the latter was a backup QB for the Ravens, but Harbaugh played limited snaps in those contests.)
DeMeco Ryans, Houston Texans
- NFL linebacker: 140 games (Texans, 2006-2011; Eagles, 2012-15) | 3 playoff games
- NFL head coach: Texans, 2023-present
The only problem Gary Kubiak ever had with Ryans when he coached him with the Houston Texans?
"He was so smart he would question you as a coach, and usually, he was right," said Kubiak, whose Texans drafted Ryans 33rd overall in 2006. Kubiak coached Ryans for all of his six seasons in Houston. "That's what made him so good. They're going to call you on it."
Ryans has coached the Texans for three seasons, and they have been to the playoffs in each. They won the AFC South in Ryans' first two seasons, along with a wild-card playoff game each time, including a drubbing of Harbaugh's Chargers last year. This year, they entered the playoffs via a wild-card berth, which means they will go on the road to face the Steelers. But they have something they have never had before under Ryans: the top-ranked defense in the league.
They also overcame the slowest start of his tenure thus far. The Texans struggled in the first half of the season, and Kubiak was watching Ryans closely. What he's seen from Ryans the coach is strikingly reminiscent of what he saw from Ryans the player.
"I'm watching him deal with some big disappointment," Kubiak said after the Texans' Week 9 loss to the Broncos, which dropped them to 3-5 -- and ended up being their last defeat of the regular season. "He handled the media, he's staying positive, he's staying on point. He's got it under control. All those guys are competitive. They are also very composed with everything going on around them. 'I can handle this. I can wear a lot of hats. I can handle management, the players, the media.' "
As a player, Ryans was an overachiever -- he didn't run the fastest or jump the highest at the NFL Scouting Combine. Still, he was a tackling machine at Alabama, and a leader in the locker room. He was a second-round draft pick and played 10 seasons in the NFL. He was a two-time Pro Bowl selection, but his finest season might have been his first. He was the NFL's Defensive Rookie of the Year, after he led the league with 126 solo tackles while notching 3.5 sacks, nine quarterback hits, an interception, seven passes defensed and a forced fumble.
When Kubiak remembers Ryans as a player, he talks about his level-headedness -- the ability to handle success and failure -- and his character. Kubiak recalls Ryans leading meetings, so that coaches didn't have to. His promise as a future coach was so apparent to Kubiak that he and Kyle Shanahan, with whom Kubiak has long been close, spoke frequently about Ryans as future coaching material. Ryans' final playing season was 2015. In 2017, Shanahan, in his first year as the 49ers head coach, hired Ryans as a defensive quality control coach. The next season, he became the inside linebackers coach. In 2021, Ryans became the 49ers' defensive coordinator, a job he held for two seasons, before the Texans brought him back to where it all started.
"He was a coach on the field," Kubiak said. "Our guys made him a captain as a young kid, which tells you how much they respected him. He was way ahead of the game from the standpoint of knowledge of offensive and defensive football. Guys like that, you watch them lead a room of men, their teammates, you can see in some of those guys they've got a brilliant future in doing that."
Todd Bowles, Tampa Bay Buccaneers
- NFL defensive back: 117 games (Washington, 1986-1990, 1992-93; 49ers, 1991) | 10 playoff games
- NFL head coach: Dolphins, 2011 (interim); Jets, 2015-18; Buccaneers, 2022-present
Bill Parcells first got to know Bowles when Parcells was the head coach of the New York Giants, and Bowles was a young DB calling the defensive plays for Washington in the 1980s. Bowles later went to work for Parcells, first when Parcells was the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys, and then when Parcells was running the Miami Dolphins' front office.
"He is very cerebral," Parcells said after Bowles became the Bucs head coach in 2022. "He's calculating, not impulsive -- that's a good thing. He has a lot of experience now -- his opinions are usually based on something that he's gone through."
That's why players praise Bowles for his honesty -- as a former player, he knows the value of that -- but also for his empathy. Players are frequently spotted sitting in his office, just as often discussing what is happening in their lives as what is happening on the field. Bowles is a master of tough love. He praises players, defensive back Carlton Davis once said. But not too often. He is most verbose when trash talking with his players, by whom he is so beloved that they used to attend his son's football games.
Bowles was an undrafted defensive back from Temple who signed with Washington in 1986 as a free agent and wound up spending eight seasons in the NFL (seven in Washington, one in San Francisco), five of them as a regular starter. He never won any individual awards, but in 1987, Bowles had a career-high four interceptions, and he was the starting free safety in the Super Bowl, which Washington won. He was then what he is now: a very smart, very tough grinder.
After his playing career ended, he began to work his way up in the coaching world, starting as the defensive coordinator at Morehouse College. He spent four years as the Jets' head coach, and when that ended, he became Bruce Arians' defensive coordinator in Tampa. Following Arians' abrupt retirement in late March of 2022, Bowles became the Bucs' head coach. They won the NFC South in Bowles' first three seasons in charge, with Bowles navigating the team through the departure of Tom Brady and the arrival -- and revival -- of Baker Mayfield. They missed the playoffs this season on a tiebreaker.
After he had been let go by the Jets, Bowles was considered for other jobs before landing on the Bucs' staff. In early 2022, after nine openings had been filled and Bowles -- still in the defensive coordinator role in Tampa -- had been passed over, he had started thinking about what the rest of his career might look like. He had already built the house that he and his son would live in when he retired, and he thought he might coach another five years and then step away. He ran into old friends at the NFL Scouting Combine around then and sounded resigned to never being a head coach again. A little more than a month later, after he was named Arians' replacement, Bowles clarified.
"I didn't even look at it that way," Bowles said. "I resigned myself to being a great coach. I know there are a lot of good coaches that may not get a first or second opportunity because there are so few of them. Every time I won a game, I didn't look at stats like I was saying I should be a head coach because of this performance. I got into this game to make players better and to teach, and I went back to that and that's what got me back, if you want to say it, to the top. I didn't try to be a head coach. I tried to lead."
Dan Campbell, Detroit Lions
- NFL tight end: 114 games (Giants, 1999-2002; Cowboys, 2003-05; Lions, 2006-08) | 5 playoff games
- NFL head coach: Dolphins, 2015 (interim); Lions, 2021-present
One of one. That's the phrase that captures how Detroit Lions president Rod Wood says the team views Campbell.
Campbell's image as a player and coach is more of an everyman than an outlier, all energy and emotion. As a player, he was not a superstar. In his 10-year career, he was a full-season starter at tight end just twice, catching 91 passes for 934 yards and 11 touchdowns in total. He never had a Pro Bowl season, never won an award. As recounted in a story for NFL.com after he became the interim coach of the Miami Dolphins in 2015, he didn't care much about his stats, but he loved to block and preferred to be treated like an offensive lineman. He also had an all-too-rare quality that made him both a locker-room favorite and perfect head-coach material: emotional intelligence, an innate sense of when to be fiery and when to be compassionate, how to reach players, whatever they needed, no matter the circumstance. And, of course, his experience as one of the NFL's grinders meant he knew exactly how players reacted to coaching tactics.
When he stepped in for Joe Philbin in Miami a decade ago, he immediately removed signs featuring motivational messages for players from the team auditorium. He rearranged the locker room so position groups would be together, to better foster relationships and conversations between players who have to perform together. He sped up the pace of practices.
"I feel like I've been blessed with the ability to read people somewhat, understand what makes them tick, what helps them, what hurts them," Campbell told NFL.com then.
Despite respectably going 5-7 as the interim, Campbell didn't get the permanent job with Miami. Instead, he became an assistant head coach for Sean Payton in New Orleans for five seasons. When the Detroit Lions, for whom Campbell played over three seasons, hired him in January of 2021, they were coming off three straight losing campaigns and had not won a playoff game since 1991. Wood and team owner Sheila Ford Hamp walked Campbell through the facility on the way to his introductory press conference. At one point, Campbell bent over and broke down. "Oh my god," he said. "I'm the head coach of the Detroit Lions."
Campbell then conducted an epic media session that foreshadowed the culture change he would demand, and the passion he would bring to the job. He talked about how Detroit had been through tough times and risen from them. He said the team would take on the city's identity, that when they were knocked down, they would get back up and bite a kneecap off on the way up.
The turnaround took two seasons -- and a trade that brought Jared Goff to Detroit -- but the Lions now are exactly what Campbell promised and are a reflection of Campbell himself, playing aggressively and with confidence and relentlessness. They won the NFC North two years in a row, and in their first playoff appearance under Campbell, in the 2023 season, they won two games.
This season, before which Campbell had to replace his offensive and defensive coordinator, the Lions fell short of the playoffs, succumbing to a late-season collapse and a string of injuries that especially depleted the offensive line and led to an inconsistent running game. After the dust settled, Campbell offered reporters a blunt self-evaluation -- "I'd give myself a freaking F" -- and, in characteristic fashion, promised to embrace the pain of missing the postseason in the interest of fueling future success.
"It's going to be a hard pill to swallow watching these teams in the playoffs," he said. "But I think you've got to watch them. You've got to force yourself to do it because that's a drive to want to be there, be a part of it."
