Ranking the 14 coaching staffs in the 20

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We're now just two days away from the start of the NFL playoffs. It was a long, strange road to get here, but here we are. Throughout this week you have likely read a whole lot about the matchups, the players, the  Green Bay Packers Home Office tactics, the injuries, and everything else that will affect who advances out of Super Wild-Card Weekend and into the Divisional Round and beyond.We're here today to add to the list of things that will affect exactly that by taking a look at the coaches. But not just the head coaches. Instead, we want to take a more holistic view, examining each team's head coach, offensive coordinator, and defensive coordinator. Because the people in charge on each side of the ball will have a whole lot to say in whether or not their teams can advance beyond where they are right now.A few things worth noting before we dive in:I came up with my own rankings to start things off, then ran them by the CBSSports.com staff over the past several days and heavily weighed their input. That proce s is how we came up with rankings that are both tiered and numbered.The tiers themselves should be considered rigid, while the rankings within them are fluid. That means if you wanted to slot one Tier 2 team ahead of another, there would be very little argument. But if you tried to move a Tier 3 team ahead of one of the teams in Tier 1 or 2, that would draw more forceful pushback.What you see below is my analysis of why the teams ended up in the tiers they did, and the strengths and weakne ses of the coaches that factored into them.Were head coach Kevin Stefanski actually coaching this weekend, the Browns would jump up a tier. Given the importance of Stefanski's play-calling to the team's succe s, we were left with no choice but to drop them down.Tier 4It's really unfortunate that Stefanski won't be able to coach this weekend. The difference in the way he put his players in position to succeed offensively than the way his predece sor (Freddie Kitchens) did was night and day. He showed a fantastic feel for game situations with his  Jermichael Finley Jersey play calls, as well, seemingly always busting out a bootleg or a screen at just the right moment. Without him on the sideline, there's simply not enough left on the Browns' staff to be confident in. It's tough to give Van Pelt much credit for the offense when we know how much of it is attributable to Stefanski, and Woods' defense ranked 25th in DVOA this year despite working with better talent than last year's 24th-ranked unit. He was the ' defensive backs coach and pa sing game coordinator last season, but failed to coax the same type of high-level play out of Cleveland's defensive backfield that he did out of San Francisco's.There is not much we have seen from Nagy in his three years at the helm that would indicate he's a positive difference maker for his team. Lazor's offenses have ranked, on average, 25th in yards and 21st in points during his five years as an offensive coordinator. Chicago's strong stretch run against a slate of poor defenses is not enough to over-ride the track record those two have established in the past. Pagano is a strong defensive coordinator (not quite as strong in the role as his predece sor, Vic Fangio, but strong nonethele s) in charge of a good unit, but that is not enough to outweigh Nagy and Lazor.  Rivera is an excellent leader of men type, if not nece sarily the best game-day tactician or decision-maker. He provides a solid baseline for an organization to build its culture, but Josh Jackson Jersey  that's something that benefits the team in the long-term -- not nece sarily in the playoffs, in particular. Turner has shown the ability to coax better performances out of below-average offensive talent than one might expect, but in each of his stops as a play-caller, his teams have ranked very low in explosive plays. Some of that is due to personnel but some of it is also that design of the offense, which favors short, quick pa ses and inside runs. It's tough to a sign Del Rio much credit for the defense given the presence of both Rivera and all those first-round picks up front.Tier 3For a coach who made his name as a "no risk-it, no biscuit" guy, Arians sure is conservative on game days. The Buccaneers went for it only 14.1 percent of the time on fourth down this season, per Pro Football Focus and Tru Media, the sixth-lowest rate in the league. Arians and Byron Leftwich also did not make much of an effort to tailor their offense to skill set, and that shone through when the team played against opponents with strong defenses and largely struggled to score. The offensive succe s of this team seems far more attributable to the talent on hand than anything endemic to the system or  Jordan Love Jersey coaching. Bowles is a fantastic defensive coordinator who coaches one of the most aggre sive and versatile units in the . But it's an offensive league, and specifically a pa sing league, and his defense is better against the run than it is against aerial attacks.  Carroll has a ring. He built one of the best defenses of this century and for a while, changed both how the league evaluated cornerbacks and how it built coverages. But his conservative nature too often undermines his team's ability to win -- or at least hampers it. There's a reason why is always having to stage late-game comebacks, and it's because the Seahawks play in a shell until it's too late to do so and then need their quarterback to come bail them out. It's clear that neither he nor Schottenheimer were ever really on board with the #LetRu sCook movement, as they torpedoed it at the first opportunity. (Wilson threw a few picks in a three-game stretch where the defense was such a disaster that he felt he had to try to win the game on every play. The solution? Stop pa sing on early downs and play slower, for some reason.) Norton seems like a solid coach, but this is still Carroll's defense (and it wasn't very good for most of the year) and "former Darnell Savage Jersey  Seahawks defensive coordinator" has not exactly been a succe sful coaching archetype elsewhere in the league, so it's tough to use him to elevate the staff as a whole.Tier 2This was by far the toughest tier to sort out. We had these teams in a completely different order as recently as Wednesday, and a different order the day before that. You could rank any of them, anywhere from No. 5 to No. 9 and I would not argue with you at all. It's probably not a coincidence that there are three coaches in this tier that may end up head coaches next season, by the way. There's a reason we think so highly of these groups.Let's talk about those three coaches: Colts defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus, Titans offensive coordinator Arthur Smith, and Rams defensive coordinator Brandon Staley.  Eberflus was formerly the linebackers coach in Dallas, back when and were playing at their peak. He came to Indianapolis and immediately installed a defense that focuses on limiting big pla