The Sports Guru

With the skill position players taken care of I thought I would take a look at the guy who are ultimately responsible for the success, or lack thereof, for each team.  The Head Coach usually receives too much of the credit when things go well and too much of the blame when they don’t.  As the old saying goes, “You can’t fire the players”, and these guys pay with their jobs when things go poorly.  The good ones stand out however, just as the bad ones do, and in a “win now” league having a coach that demands respect is as important as the talent on the team.

Top 5 Head Coaches

1.  Bill Belichick, NE – In this era, where players are more mercenary than anything else, the fact that the Patriots have been as successful as they have been, winning 3 of the last 5 Super Bowls, has been truly amazing.  Injuries and Free Agent defections have tarnished a little of the luster in New England, but Belichick always seems to have the parts to plug in to keep his team in contention.  Even more impressive is the fact the Belichick also has final say in all personnel decisions.  He makes sure he gets the type of guys he wants, then puts them in the best position possible to be successful.  Few times do you hear of a FA that has left New England and had success elsewhere.  That speaks volumes to how Belichick gets the most of the players he has and proves that the sum can be greater than the value of all the parts.  Similar to Bill Walsh and Bill Parcells, the Belichick coaching tree is continuing to grow, with braches now in charge in Cleveland, Miami, New York and in the college level at Notre Dame and Iowa.

2.  Bill Cowher, PIT – They aren’t a big market team.  They don’t have bottomless pockets to spend.  They don’t always have the most talent.  What the Pittsburgh Steelers do have is stability.  And at the heart of that stability is Bill Cowher.  After Jeff Fisher in Tennessee(Houston), Cowher has the longest  tenure of any active coach and has the most wins.  Amazingly, the Steelers have only 2 losing seasons under Cowher and always seem to be on the cusp of the Super Bowl.  Cowher was finally able to get the big monkey off his back last season as he finally won a Super Bowl, but even before the title, Cowher had cemented himself as one of the all-time great coaches.  The Steelers have played the same style of football for the last 40 years, and even when you know its comin’ it is hard to stop.  Pittsburgh has seen its’ share of players leave for greener pastures, but like the Patriots, always seem to have that next guy to plug in, especially defensively.  Primarily a Special Teams players when Cowher was in the league, the same fire and passion has followed him into coaching and even after all of these years Cowher’s message still gets across to his players.  Cowher recently moved his off-season home to North Carolina, and there has been speculation that with his Super Bowl and legacy intact, Cowher may be looking at retirement.

3.  Mike Shanahan, DEN – Few coaches in this league have won 2 Super Bowls.  Even fewer have survived the retirement of a legend.  Shanahan has done both, and has successfully kept the Denver Broncos at or near the top of the AFC.  Perhaps his greatest success yet has been the maturation of QB Jake Plummer.  After years of losing in Arizona, Plummer had created a number of bad habits that Shanahan has worked hard to break.  The Result?  A 13-3 season with Plummer having the best season of his career.  Sure, Plummer didn’t play well in the AFC Championship game, but going into his 4^th season as the playcaller for the Broncos,  optimism runs a Mile High.  As great as Belichick and Cowher are on the defensive side of the ball, Shanahan is a master on Offense, and his teams have rushed for more yards since 1995, when Shanahan arrived in Denver, than any other team in the league.  If Shanahan can add a 3^rd Championship to his resume his status as one of the best ever would be finalized.

 4.  Joe Gibbs, WAS – After winning the 3^rd Super Bowl Championship in 1991, Joe Gibbs rode off into the sunset to start a NASCAR team.  Few thought we would ever see Joe again after Joe Gibbs Racing won 2 Cup Series Championships with Bobby Labonte and Tony Stewart.  There was an itch that neede d scratched for Gobbs, however and in 2004 he returned to the sidelines.  With doubts swirling around him of whether the game had passed him by, Gibbs proved everyone wrong as the Redskins advanced to the Divisional Round of the playoff before losing to the NFC Champion Seahawks.  As he had done in his first stint with the Skins, Gibbs resurrected the career of an aging QB, Mark Brunell, and produced a 1500 yard rusher and 1500 yard receiver.  The game has definitely not passed Gibbs by, and the Redskins look like they are set to contend in ’06.

5.  Jeff Fisher, TEN – There were a lot of ways I could go here at Number 5, but I have to give some love to the longest tenured coach on the NFL in Fisher.  Sure, the Titans have gone through some rough times, but through it all Fisher has remained a constant and if one thing is certain Fisher’s squad is always going to play hard for 60 minutes.  Leading his team through a move from Houston to first, the University of Vanderbilt, the on to Nashville, Fisher kept the team together through some very challenging times, and went on to lead the Titans to their first Super Bowl.  Every time Fisher’s name comes up as a possibility to lose his job, 5 teams are lining up hoping for the chance to grab him.  The pure wins/losses numbers for Fisher may not directly compare with some others on this list, but ask around the League and you will quickly find out that Fisher is one of the most respected leaders in the game.

The Bottom 5 Head Coaches–
Out of fairness to them, I am going to exclude any of the first-time coaches hired this off-season.  It would be obvious that any coach with no track record would be at the bottom of the list.

32.  Dick Jauron, BUF – Picking the “worst” Head Coach in the NFL is tough.  And in recent years, everyone of my “worst” coaches ended up being fired.  Dave Wannstadt would get the award now for worst coach in Division I colleges football, for instance.  But looking at all the coaches that have had experience in the past, Jauron has to be the worst.  Excluding an abhorration in Chicago when he went 13-3 for the Bears, Jauron’s record as a Head Coach is 38-58.  He was awful as a fill-in for Steve Mariucci last season in Detroit and was a surprise pick for the job in Buffalo this off-season.  My guess is this lasts about 2 season before Marv Levy and Ralph Wilson realize the truth about Jauron. With Eric Moulds in the fold in Houston this season to mentor him Johnson might be primed to have a breakout season and catapult himself back to the part of this list he belongs in, instead of being dead last.

 31. Brian Billick, BAL – Just like Quaterbacks, a Super Bowl win doesn’t alone prove greatness.  In 2000, when the Ravens won that Super Bowl they went 5 games without scoring an offensive touchdown.  Luckily for them they had Ray Lewis and one of the best defenses in NFL History.  Billick came to Baltimore as an offensive mastermind from Minnesota.  In Baltimore, his offense has been anything but.  After shuffling through QB’s and casting Super Bowl winner Trent Dilfer aside, Billick drafted Kyle Boller to be the next great Billick QB.  That failed miserably as well.  After last season’s collapse the Ravens thought seriously about canning Billick.  After a meeting with the new team Owner in which he was basically told to drop the attitude Billick survived.  He was awarded with Steve McNair to give him one last shot to get the Ravens back to the Playoffs.  There are a lot of miles in McNair, however, and serious questions about how much he has left.  If the Ravens falter again, this could be the end of Billick in Baltimore.

30.  Andy Reid, PHI – The Eagles are another team that has had success Despite the coach.  If one of the guys from the top of the list was on the sidelines in Philly the past 5 years the Eagles would probably have a couple of rings and would be shooting for another.  Reid’s insistence on not running the football has caused QB Donavan McNabb to face quite a beating, surely shortening his career.  When the Eagles were fortunate enough to have opportunities to get to a Super Bowl, Reid’s ultra-conservative “play not to lose” play calling left inferior teams in games long enough to win in the end.  In the Super Bowl against the Patriots it seemed Reid was on another planet as everyone watched the Eagles slowly and methodically drive the field when they needed 2 scores.  This all culminated last season with the whole T.O. mess.  A strong head coach, with control of his locker room, would have never let that situation grow to the point it did.  The Eagles have had success in spite of Reid and as long as he is in charge in Philly the Eagles fans will keep being disappointed.

 29.  Marty Schottenheimer, SD – Another great example of a Head Coach having a lot of success, but never getting over the hump.  Schottenheimer  is in the Top 10 in wins, and his longevity speaks for it self.  But in the League where the line between winning and losing is super-thin Marty has done enough to stay on the losing end of the spectrum.  Starting in Cleveland in the mid-80’s when the Browns were the best team in football, yet were repeated beaten by an inferior Broncos team, then on the Kansas City, where that same inferior Bronco team beat the Chiefs consistently through the 90’s, and on to Washington and San Diego, Marty’s conservative style in big games has cost great teams the chance to show they were great.  I haven’t looked it up, but Marty has to be up there in most home-playoff losses.  Last season, after the Chargers were coming off a 12-4 season, Marty inexplicably decided that LeDainian Tomlinson would be better used as a decoy.  The Chargers lost the first 2 games of the year on their way to a 9-7 season, and missed the playoffs.  Unless something amazing happens in San Diego, this will probably be Marty’s last year.

28.  Bill Parcells, DAL – If Brett Favre is overrated as a QB these days, then Parcells is overrated as a coach.  Parcells’ story is getting old.  Go into a situation, stay awhile and when thing sdon’t go your way blame everyone else and run away.  What exactly has this guy done without Bill Belichick, or Romeo Crennel for that matter, on the sidelines with him?  You guessed it, nothing.  Now Bill is in Dallas, where his is again being given everything he wants.  He asked for T.O. and now he has him.  If things don’t work out, I am sure there will be several very good reasons why it isn’t his fault.  You could do a lot worse than Bill Parcells as your head coach, but Bill isn’t even close to the top guys on this list.  Another mediocre year in Dallas will prove that and Bill will once again run off into the sunset.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 25th, 2006 at 12:50 pm and is filed under Broncos/NFL, 2006 NFL Preview. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.