Yesterday part six of our Super Bowl worst, best, first, and last series rolled on. Super Bowl winners come in different shapes and sizes, but they usually have two things in common. One, they have a real good or great coach. And two, they have a real good or great quarterback.
We continue to examine those very questions in part seven of our series. Today we finish our attempt to answer the question “who is the best head coach to win a Super Bowl?” Yesterday we chose Joe Gibbs at no. 5 and Bill Walsh at no. 4. Clearly the choices are nothing but a who’s who of head coaching. Let the subjectivity begin.
Criteria, in no particular order, that we feel is mandatory to be considered follows.
- Longevity in the league– Longevity usually equates to demand for your ability. Health reasons were considered.
- Won/loss record– Bill Parcells once famously said ” at the end of the year you are what your record says you are.”
- Pregame and in-game strategy– You have to have a plan of attack and you have to adjust to your opponents plan of attack.
- Maximizing your team’s ability– Coaches eventually have 53 players to work with. Did they get all that they could out of the group?
- Recognizing talent and using it– Coaches today have more say in personnel than yesterday. Those that do have to obtain value (if FA cheaper than performance, if drafted better than round, if UDFA seeing something that others do not in a player).
- Super Bowl wins and appearances You are ultimately judged by getting your team to the biggest game of all and taking home the trophy.
We suspect that when objectivity (1,2,and 6 above) and subjectivity(3,4, and 5 above) cross paths the task of definitively ranking coaches is not possible. When art meets science the eye and the mind don’t always agree. Regardless, we press on. Today we countdown nos. 3, 2, and 1. Also, there are many who deserve mention, honorable mention at that. But, we chose to skip those for now to further the discussion. Let the disagreement begin.
3. Tom Landry- The ever impeccably dressed leader Landry coached for 29 NFL seasons all with the Dallas Cowboys. One guesses if you looked up the word “Institution” in Funk and Wagner that Tom’s picture (with his hat of course) might be next to the word. Two hundred and fifty regular season wins, 36 playoff wins, five SB appearances, and two Lombardi Trophies makes his body of work hard to describe.
Landry coached good players and made them better. Walt Garrison comes to mind. He coached great players and helped them get enshrined. Bob Lilly, Roger Staubach, Tony Dorsett, Mel Renfro and many, many others come to mind. His culture of out working and out thinking others created a sustainable winning expectation. After all you were a Cowboy. Landry encouraged the organization to look at the draft and the pool of players differently than others. Gil Brandt his GM masterfully assembled the roster accordingly. The Cowboys dug deep to find talent in undrafted free agency as well as lesser scouted conferences like the SWAC.
He won by strategically putting his offense, defense, and special teams in familiar spots from meticulous preparation. Landry is known as the “inventor of the 4-3 defense” as he was the first to take a lineman out and add a middle linebacker. Landry also invented and popularized the use of keys (analyzing offensive tendencies) to determine what the offense might do.
2. Don Shula- It’s hard to top Landry’s resume’ but Shula did. He was an NFL head coach for 33 seasons, 26 with the Miami Dolphins and seven with the Baltimore Colts. He won 328 games in all with an amazing 67.7 win percentage. He too won 36 playoff games. One Colt and five Dolphin SB appearances later gave Shula two Lombardi trophies.
Shula changed his coaching strategy as his personnel changed. His Super Bowl teams in 1971,2,3, and 1982 were keyed by a run-first offensive strategy and a dominating defense. In 1983, shortly after losing Super Bowl XVII to the Washington Redskins, the Dolphins drafted quarterback Dan Marino out of the University of Pittsburgh. Marino won the starting job halfway through the 1983 regular season, and by 1984, the Dolphins were back in the Super Bowl, due largely to Marino’s record 5,084 yards through the air.
Shula’s Miami teams were known for great offensive lines (Larry Little, Jim Langer, and Bob Kuechenberg), strong running games (Larry Csonka, Jim Kiick, and Mercury Morris), solid quarterbacking (by Bob Griese and Earl Morrall), excellent receivers (Paul Warfield)and a defense that worked as a cohesive unit. The Dolphins were known as “The No-Name Defense”, though they had few good to great players, including MLB Nick Buoniconti.
In 1972, the Dolphins were unbeaten in the regular season, 14–0–0. They swept the playoffs and finished 17–0–0. They remain the only team in the modern era to do so.
1. Bill Belichick – Is there really any doubt as to who is the most successful coach of all time? There really isn’t. But, “most successful” and “best” may not be exactly the same. With Belichick we think it is the same. What is not debatable is 1) on Sunday he will be coaching in the SB for the ninth time which is three more than Shula’s six, and 2) he can put further distance in the win column between himself (five now and maybe six soon) and Chuck Noll who has four.
In 24 years as head coach (5 Cleveland and 19 New England) the irascible one has won 261 regular and 30 post season games. That’s a 68% win percentage overall and 74% in NE alone. Seventy four percent equates to an average season being 12-4. There’s nothing average about that!
Belichick is a grand master at finding a opponent’s weakness and exploiting it. A defensive side of the ball head coach with perhaps the GOAT QB in Tom Brady is the perfect combo for long term success. This is especially true with the rules the league has put in place in the last 15 years to protect QB’s.
His coaching tree grows significantly each offseason. Eight of his former assistants to date have become NFL head coaches. Seven have become NCAA head coaches, one of which is Nick Saban.
But, perhaps his most significant measure of success is one that is actually hard to measure. How good has the Patriots personnel (outside of Tom Brady, which is a big “outside of”) been during his incredible run? Current and future Hall of Famers are few. Their best RB has been? WR? LB? DL? You get the picture. There have been many, many good to real good ones no doubt. Perhaps Belichick has the key to making the whole far greater that the sum of the individual parts.
Tomorrow we briefly examine two who were strongly considered for the final five, but ultimately left out.
won a much deserved MVP trophy for his 10 catch, 141 yard performance. No one can cover the guy. No one. On a team that has been excellent for nearing two decades their Hall of Fame candidates are few. Edelman might be one before he is done. One wonders if he could run even faster if he trimmed that wooly beard of his.
Pitt’s first round pick in Noll’s year one was Joe Greene, who went on to become a perennial All-Pro and anchor the defensive line. During the next few years, the Steelers drafted quarterback Terry Bradshaw (Louisiana Tech) and running back Franco Harris (Penn State) as round one picks. In the 1974 draft, the Steelers achieved a level of drafting success never seen before or since, when they selected four future Hall of Fame players with their first five picks: wide receivers Lynn Swann and John Stallworth, middle linebacker Jack Lambert, and center Mike Webster. To this day, no other draft by any team has included more than two future Hall of Famers. Back then coaches didn’t have the draft day influence that they have today. Did Noll make Stallworth, Swann, Bradshaw, Greene, Ham, Harris, and Webster? Or was it vice versa?
Gibbs’ teams controlled the line of scrimmage, allowing workhorse running backs such as John Riggins, George Rogers, and Earnest Byner to power the ground game. Gibbs added a deep passing attack to this which complemented the ground game. Gibbs’ offense was aided during his tenure by aggressive defensive units under the direction of defensive coordinator Richie Petitbon.
