How Jim Harbaugh, other NFL players-turned-coaches carried themselves on the field

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Illustration by Chinedu Nwoffiah. Images courtesy of The Associated Press.

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

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.

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