Dave Toub
Dave Toub has been with the Kansas City Chiefs since 2013, reuniting with ace head coach Andy Reid to help create a perennial playoff team in the AFC West. Though the Chiefs have had some hiccups, they are among the Super Bowl favorites in 2018 due to first-year starting quarterback Patrick Mahomes, who just might be on a path to being the most individually gifted passer in the history of this league.
Even with a player as transcendent as Mahomes, the coaching staff in Kansas City deserves plenty of credit, and that includes Toub. A long-time special teams coordinator, Toub was also given the title of assistant head coach in 2018, working closely with Reid to help the Chiefs emerge as an elite force in the AFC.
Toub has been viewed as a favorite to become the Browns head coach for a couple of months, but this isn’t the first time he’s been rumored as a future leader of a team. When he was a special teams coordinator with the Chicago Bears, Toub was given the opportunity to interview for the vacancy left behind by former NFC Champion head coach Lovie Smith, but the Bears elected to hire former CFL coach Marc Trestman instead. Toub left for Kansas City shortly afterwards.
Though not as splashy of a hire as the others on this list, Toub worked with John Dorsey on the Chiefs and could get an edge as a result of that connection. After all, decision-making in the NFL is all about connections (note the John Lynch/Kyle Shanahan partnership with the San Francisco 49ers as a recent example).