Exactly. He's always been good, but this year has been outstanding.

Bengals with Marvin Lewis won the AFC North 4 times and made playoffs as wild card 3 other times.

Bengals did not win any playoff games, but with Harbaugh's Ravens winning AFC North 4 times and making playoffs as wildcard 5 times and having 11 total postseason wins. the AFC North may have been the least "soft" division of any of the AFC divisions since Tomlin has been head coach.

Tomlin has 7 AFC North titles and 3 wildcard teams and 8 postseason wins.

Bengals, Steelers and Ravens have all put dominant ass-whuppins on Chiefs since league went to 4 divisions.

After that tier? I'd probably put Carroll and Harbaugh ahead of him. What's interesting about Carroll is how much his image has improved despite a pretty mediocre season because of just how bad Russ has been. I don't know that was even necessary, though. Folks tend to forget that he was a solid HC even in NE before Brady and BB arrived. He was a solid bridge from Parcells (who seemed to be largely checked out) to BB and deserves more credit for that than he gets.

Harbaugh winning a SB with Flacco is awfully impressive, as is building a winner around a guy like Jackson, who couldn't be any different than Flacco.

McDermott may work himself into that second tier, McVay could do so as well if he hasn't already. Kyle Shanahan is in that 'not quite there but likely will be' group as well. Arians is a weird ****er but its hard to argue with his results. I think Payton's overrated but he did win a 'ship and oftentimes his team really did seem to be Drew and scraps.

So in this century you have 2 'top dogs' and maybe 8-10 'also of note' kind of guys. And in that tier I think Tomlin's pretty evenly situated among all of them. I don't know that any of them are clearly better or worse than he is. Those with his track record have similar/greater success than he had. Those with shorter track records seem on a path to surpass him. Hell, man - Doug Pederson REALLY has some nice stuff on his record. I'm not convinced he's not actually a pretty good coach. There's a non-zero chance I'd take Doug over Tomlin.

I just think we know what Tomlin is and it's...solid. Good, not great. I think he's the Alex Smith of quarterbacks. He'll make a bad team above average and he can make a great team...above average. A lot of teams are doing worse than him at HC, but I don't think he's a real difference maker for a championship caliber squad.

Marvin Lewis and Andy Dalton winning the North 4 times kinda makes my point for me. Or losing the division to an offense built around Joe Flacco, a 30 yr old Anquan Boldin and a 36 year old Derrick Mason.

That's a division the Steelers, with Ben, Brown, Bell, Polumalu, Harrison, Heyward, Pouncey should've run. And since 2011 they have all of 3 playoff wins despite prime years from those guys in there.

I look at Reid absolutely OWNING his division for the last decade and see a 'great' coach. I see you making an argument that Tomlin couldn't do so and thus that demonstrates his greatness. That doesn't make sense to me.

Those were not great teams in the AFCN - and yet Tomlin couldn't consistently stand apart from them.

And his major play calling "dipsh*****y" like refusing to run the ball when the time calls for that for the win. He did that with the Falcons in the SB and lost, he did it against us in the SB and lost and yesterday he did it again with the Raiders and about turned the ball over with 40 seconds left in the game; calling a rollout pass when they are deep into Raiders territory, when all he had to do was call 2 running plays keeping the clock running and the ball in the middle of the field for an easy FG for the win. That rollout pass gets batted up in the air and you know John Lynch is still pulling out his "puckered butt" from that play still today.:D

I'd say no, generally, but the Steelers didn't have Tom Brady. I think he's the X Factor that Mahomes is for KC.

So rank the AFC divisions since 2002 and going to 4 divisions per conference from softest to hardest.

Seems to me that AFC North had more years with 3 above average teams in same year than any other AFC division since 2002.

AFC North has the most wildcard playoff teams of all 8 divisions since 2002.

I don't believe I made any comment about how Tomlin compares to any other coach, not sure why you are imagining some argument I did not state.

If Andy retired and you could pair him with a great OC, I'd take Tomlin as HC of the Chiefs in a heartbeat. Great leader of men.