|
Previously in this series, there was an article that looked at what makes a good coach.
The bottom line, of course, is winning.
With this in mind, a look at the biggest winners in NFL history seems appropriate. To
do so, pro football historians Jim Campbell, Bob Carroll and Joe Horrigan were asked for
their comments on NFL coaches with 100 or more career wins. (Coaches are listed in order
of career wins)
Don Shula
Career record: 347-173-6
Campbell: "Something I never realized about Shula is that he was a hell of a
quarterback’s coach. (Dan) Marino is living testament to that. I guess because he was
such a student of the game, all phases, he really knew quarterbacking and if you look, I
don’t think you’ll ever see a quarterback’s coach listed on the Dolphins
staff chart. And that’s simply because he assumed those duties and did a great job
with that. And the fact that he used such diverse quarterbacks as (Bob) Griese, Marino,
you know, their style of the game, and even won with David Woodley, I think he’s one
of the underappreciated quarterback coaches and certainly one of the finest all-around
coaches. … To me, a great coach is a coach that can win anywhere with anything. Maybe
Bum Phillips said it best, I think he was talking about Shula when he said, ‘He can
take his’n and beat your’n, and take your’n and beat his’n.’ To
me, that is what a great coach is all about."
Bob Carroll: "I go along with what Bum Phillips said. … What he was saying
was that Shula was not locked in with any particular kind of player. OK, he didn’t
win a Super Bowl with Marino, but let’s face it he didn’t have a whole lot more
with Marino. He certainly could win with a passing team, but the perfect team was with a
running team. On the other hand, the Baltimore wins were more passing. So, yeah, he could
win with anything."
Horrigan: "It used to be that you measured your success against George Halas, and
now obviously with Shula being the all-time winningest coach, I guess he’s the new
measuring stick. To me it comes down to a coach who was willing to work with what he had,
and that means when he had strong, talented running, he ran the ball; when he had a
passer, he passed the ball. And he made offenses work regardless, which I think is, you
can get a coach that can fall into the trap of being sold on one system and not being able
to adjust. I think he was able to do that. He had two great quarterbacks in his career and
also had great running backs. So he was blessed with talent for sure but was able to make
the most of it."
George Halas
Career record: 324-151-31
Campbell: "Papa Bear. Just the fact that he elevated the position to a full-time
job is a great innovation. The fact that he broke plays down and just all of his
innovations make him truly one of the great pioneers of the game. One of the great
personalities of the game ever."
Carroll: "George Halas was so many things. As a coach, I think he was a good solid
coach. But he was more a force than a coach. … Halas was a good coach, don’t
misunderstand me. But I don’t think he ranks from sheer coaching with Shula or some
of the others. But he also, I will say this for him, he went out and got the best possible
people, and long before scouting was going on, the reason he could build these great teams
in the ’40s was that he kept in touch with former players who were coaching all
around the country. Lambeau had something similar going, too, but not quite to the extent
that Halas did. So I don’t know what I can say about him other than he was more of a
force than a coach."
Horrigan: "When I think of George Halas I think of him in so many different ways,
but as a coach I guess he was the guy that made the NFL professional. He came up with the
league and at the same time was in it for the long haul. He was not somebody that was
there and going to take the short-term results. He was a player, a coach, an owner and
grew with the game and made the game better. Not only with his coaching but using the
assistant coaching, the great assistant coaches in an age when you didn’t have very
many assistant coaches for sure, but was able to mold a staff and create the great teams
that he did. I think part of the George Halas mystique obviously was his personality,
which I think was somewhere between father confessor and Attila the Hun. He knew which to
use when."
Tom Landry
Career record: 270-178-6
Campbell: "Landry was a real student of the game. And I don’t mean this as a
knock on Landry, but I wonder if he had been a little more emotional how many more games
they might have won. … I think with that talent and maybe a little bit more of a
fire-eater for a coach, Dallas might have won sooner. But overall I don’t think you
can argue with Landry’s success."
Carroll: "Great technician. Maybe not as inspirational as some other coaches,
which is kind of odd if you think about it. The guy was a military hero. But he was kind
of cool. The strange thing about him is he was a great defensive coach. So he goes to
Dallas, and Dallas is known for their offense — the great teams with the wide-open
offense. But it was his defense of course that was still probably the best part of that
team. But they were much more famous for their wide-open and varied offense."
Horrigan: "There’s a guy if you met him and didn’t know what he did for
a living and he told you he was a professional football coach, you wouldn’t have
believed him. He certainly didn’t have the obvious demeanor for what one would
consider a head football coach in professional football. But he obviously was a student of
the game that appreciated students of the game. Landry was one of these guys who was
extremely involved in the game. Not just from explaining it, but from dissecting it.
Obviously defense was his original strength coming off the field as a defensive player and
the umbrella defense and so on, but he was one that, like Halas, grew with the game. With
the shotgun formation, revived that from Red Hickey. And took the players that he had and
created a system that they performed in his system. He had players that probably
wouldn’t have excelled with other teams because it was the system that they excelled
in."
Earl (Curly) Lambeau
Career record: 229-134-22
Campbell: "Lambeau was ahead of his time in that he advocated a passing attack. I
think he probably is the true pioneer of pro passing. I think (Sammy) Baugh gets a lot of
credit as the quarterback, who was actually a single-wing tailback, for elevating the
game, but I think what Lambeau did with (Arnie) Herber and (Don) Hutson and even Johnny
Blood before Hutson got there kind of validates him as an outstanding pioneer coach
certainly, gives him Hall of Fame credentials."
Carroll: "Great innovator at the time. Kind of ran out at the end when people
caught up with him. But Lambeau, he was the original passer with Green Bay. And because he
was the tailback, I always said he realized that he wouldn’t get tackled as much if
he threw the ball away, so he was throwing a lot more than anybody else back in the early
’20s. He was not afraid to use the pass, and you look at the teams and you see why.
He had the great receivers. Went out and got the great receivers. He had Hutson. He had,
before him, (Lavvie) Dilwig and Johnny Blood. And of course obviously good passers.
Lambeau and then Herber and then (Cecil) Isbell."
Horrigan: "He was kind of the guy that obviously guided the Packers into the NFL
and guided them through the early years and had great success. He was probably what the
doctor ordered for that team. It was a team that was constantly struggling to survive. It
was the smallest market always, and because he was the local guy that literally bought the
franchise, he saw to it that they succeeded not only on the field but as an entity. So he
had a double responsibility I think that maybe Halas might have been the only other great
coach that had that same responsibility of making sure that the franchise survived.
Lambeau literally bought it when it was about to fold back in ’21. He was a guy that,
I guess he wasn’t the most personable guy. I never met him, but very short-tempered.
Dictatorial. But again, sometimes that’s what was needed in those days in particular.
It was tolerated for one thing. I’m not sure it would be today. But he was, again,
just unique to the circumstances in the era."
Chuck Noll
Career record: 209-156-1
Campbell: "My man (laughs). I had the distinct privilege of being up close and
personal during the Steelers’ Super Bowl years, having worked on the sidelines, and
Noll just amazed me (with) his attention to detail. He is what every coach says they are
— a teacher. But he really taught. Some people say that the Steelers’ scouting
department got short shrift because they provided Noll with all this talent. Uh-uh. They
certainly did, but Noll developed the talent. And I don’t know that anybody else
would."
Carroll: "Boy, I don’t know. I’m a little close to him. He’s sort
of my favorite coach of all-time — even maybe more than Paul Brown. I am a Steeler
fan. Noll I think was maybe, again I may just be a little too close, he kind of reminds me
of Shula. Same kind of coach. But maybe a little more Halasy as far as inspiration goes. I
may be wrong on that. I really don’t like to give an opinion on Noll. I just think he
was a hell of a coach."
Horrigan: "Landry and Noll remind me so much of each other. Both from the
defensive side of the ball as players. Both were good players, not great. And then both
went on to have successful teams at essentially the same period of time and became each
other’s nemesis. But their demeanors were so similar. They were very low-key. Not
fiery guys. Both had certain ways about them. Chuck Noll used the run to open up the pass,
and yet by the same token recognized the talent he had and made them work within his
master plan of what he saw. And then of course, obviously, defense was something that he
was very, very comfortable with, because he understood it so thoroughly. He just never
looks at the spotlight. He was always a low-key guy and just, I guess, very happy to be
what he was. He was probably one of those coaches that would have run away from the
opportunity to be a coach and general manager. I don’t think that was what he wanted.
He just wanted to be coach."
Chuck Knox
Career record: 193-158-1
Campbell: "Knox, I think, was a fundamentally sound coach. Probably might have
been able to win a few more games if he had opened up his offense, but certainly won
enough. And I think he was a proponent of the Western Pennsylvania school of football
— you know, set ‘em up, knock ‘em down. I think in a sense he was probably
like Lombardi — you know what we’re going to do but try and stop it. I think his
ground game was very, very effective."
Carroll: "Ground Chuck. Great coach as far as a running attack. Good coach all the
way around, but never could quite put it across."
Horrigan: "Knox is somebody that I think unfortunately gets forgotten often in
terms of how successful he was. Chuck got kind of pigeonholed into that Ground Chuck
description, but I think the thing that really speaks so well of him is how well he did
everywhere he went. He took teams that were down and out and made them winners. He and
Marty Schottenheimer remind me of each other in that sense. He comes in and takes over
organizations — and they both do take over organizations — and turn teams around
very quickly. And somewhat like Marty, I guess the thing that hangs on him too is that he
gets to a certain point and then doesn’t seem to be able to get over that next hump.
In my mind sometimes I think it’s just because he chooses to move on and take on his
next project. If he perhaps had stayed longer with a particular team, he may have gone to
that next playoff level. But his accomplishments are very similar to Bill Parcells. The
same way where he went to three different franchises that were a long time away from the
playoffs and turned them around in short order."
Dan Reeves
Career record: 188-157-1
Carroll: "He’s been around for a long time. I don’t know. I don’t
know whether Reeves is still a good coach. He was. Don’t misunderstand me. He was in
Denver. Maybe a little too much of a control freak. The problem with people like that is
eventually they run up against the Jimmy Brown syndrome, which is what Paul Brown ran up
against. … Eventually you get to a point where the players just don’t listen
anymore. They’ve heard it all and heard it all and heard it all, and they kind of get
older, and they get resentful. They act like people."
Horrigan: "Dan Reeves is interesting that in this day and age where survival is
almost 10 years and you’re out, he’s already, I don’t know what year
he’s into now. I think ’81 was his first year as a head coach. That makes him a
very seasoned veteran in this coaching fraternity. Again, if you took his personality,
obviously he’s a little more fiery on the sideline, but off he’s a Tom Landry
student. I think he carries a lot of Landry’s qualities — personal and
professional. I think that he’s, again, someone that if survival is the
characteristic that suggests how good he is then obviously it must speak for itself in
that respect."
Paul Brown
Career record: 170-108-6
Campbell: "Paul Brown is probably the prototype modern coach. As much as Halas
innovated in the early days, Paul Brown took it to another level. Paul Brown really
enhanced the coaching profession with his innovations in the late ’40s, especially in
the AAFC years. He was doing stuff that nobody else was doing, and much of what is
standard operating procedure today didn’t even exist before Paul Brown did it, and
everybody else imitated him."
Carroll: "Paul Brown is the greatest coach of all-time. Period. As far as being an
innovator, (as far as) running a team. Everything except for one thing; he was not
inspirational at all. And he was such a control freak that, actually that’s a
terrible term — control freak. He wasn’t a freak. He was a great man. But he was
so much of a controller that eventually he had to go. He had to leave Cleveland."
Horrigan: "A teacher. That’s the first thing that I think everybody thinks of
when they think of Brown. That’s what he was first and foremost in his career. Halas
and he, and I sometimes get a little annoyed when I hear everybody talk about Paul Brown
as being the first teacher, well Halas was a real teacher too. Halas used film as Paul
Brown did and so on. But Brown was a very serious man and had a classroom approach to
things, and I don’t think football had quite seen that kind of an organized teacher
to that point. He came up, he was a giant killer, which to some coaches might swell their
ego, but he never got caught up in that. He was always very laid back in the sense of
attention seeking. It was his team. I guess that was probably the rub with he and Art
Modell. He was very much the man that wanted to be in charge of his team, but it
wasn’t an ego thing so much as it was more of a personal characteristic that he just
needed to be in total charge. … An innovator in a methodical way. I think when we use
the word we tend to think of it (as) more of a flashy new wrinkle to something — the
no-huddle offense or Red Hickey’s shotgun. Some kind of goofy different something.
When I think of innovative with him, he was more of a conservative innovator if that makes
sense. Almost an oxymoron. But with Marion Motley, he had a great blocker. But certainly
Marion Motley with a head of steam he recognized right away was a lethal weapon. So to
develop the screen pass or the out pass to him, that was something he did. But he did it
not as a flashy play. It was just such an earth-moving, line-plunging kind of fullback
move. They just utilized him in a way that no one else had really been using
fullbacks."
Bud Grant
Career record: 168-108-5
Campbell: "Grant took a pretty downtrodden franchise and developed them into a
consistent winner."
Carroll: "He seemed to be very, very effective, easygoing, apparently had
tremendous confidence from his team. Maybe psychologically he was pretty good because of
the way he used the outdoor weather."
Horrigan: "I guess I’m resisting the temptation to compare him to Marv Levy,
(both of whom went) through the similar disappointments, and I think the similarities end
there. They’re different types of people and coaches. (With Grant) I think of great
defenses and going a long way with fairly average offense, believe it or not. The defenses
really carried that team in a division that it was necessary. Consistent. I think maybe
that’s the word I would think of when I think of him."
Marty Schottenheimer
Career record: 158-104-1
Campbell: "I think Schottenheimer is a good coach and a sound coach and has a
system that he believes in and in the past has gotten great results with it. I think he
stresses the fundamentals and so forth. I don’t know that he might be overworking
today’s athlete. I don’t know. But a good solid coach."
Horrigan: "Marty, I think, is really one of the great coaches, and I’ll go
back and compare him again to Chuck Knox. Marty has always been someone who can take a
franchise and in short order turn it around into a winning franchise. I think this past
season at 8-8 was one of the remarkable stories in recent times. This was a team that was
in absolute, total disarray midway in the season, and it would have been very, very easy
for not only the players but the coaches to pack it in. And to go out and do what they
(did) I think was a testament to dedication not just on Marty’s part but on the
players to hang in there and to see it through. But I think that’s how he is. Marty
is a very intense man. Always has been. Was as a player. You’ll do it Marty’s
way or you won’t be with Marty very long. He’s obviously coaching the defensive
side of the ball, and this is an extremely offensive world in terms of what people want to
see. So (with) coaches like Marty who tend to excel on the defensive side of the ball,
they’d better win, because the fans will be screaming for your head (if they
don’t)."
Marv Levy
Career record: 154-120-0
Campbell: "I think Marv is one of the great human beings in addition to being one
of the great coaches. And (there is) his intellectual approach. He is intellectual. I
think he has a very cerebral approach to the game, but when he says before kickoff,
‘Where else would you rather be than right here, right now?’ he gets down to the
basics also. I think he’s a rare combination of a cerebral coach that doesn’t
lose sight of the basics. And the fact that he kept that team consistently in Super Bowl
contention for as many years as he did is enough for me."
Carroll: "Brightest man I guess who ever coached. Maybe. Certainly extremely
intelligent. The interesting (thing) about him was, until he got to Buffalo he looked like
an absolute failure as far as head coaching jobs. At least in the NFL. And then he got
there and showed, gee, suddenly he got so smart. It really does a hell of a lot of good to
have good players. You get a lot smarter."
Horrigan: "Motivator. I’ve said it and I believe it and I think that one of
the biggest challenges is to keep his team together. Together meaning not only the same
players, but together mentally in keeping the belief that they can do something. Even the
most fervent believer in themselves would have had a hard time going into their fourth
consecutive Super Bowl (after three straight losses) believing they could win. And he
managed to do that. He managed to pick these guys up every year and get them to start all
over again for that long trek. And I think that’s a feat that I don’t think
we’ll ever see again to be honest with you. It’s very difficult to hold any team
together today with the type of player movement that exists. Marv epitomized where
coaching had gone to. There was a need for a leader who knew how to use coordinators, who
knew how to use players, and I think Marv had the true leadership skill to pull all of
that off."
Steve Owen
Career record: 153-108-17
Campbell: "Steve Owen was an innovator in that he stressed defense and had an
innovative defense. … What Owen did in stressing the importance of the defense I
think laid the groundwork for many, many defensively oriented coaches that followed.
… He was an innovator."
Carroll: "Steve Owen of course was known for his defense. My favorite Steve Owen
quote is when the Steelers beat them 63-7, I think the score was, he said, ‘It’s
a good thing I’m a great defensive coach or we’d have really gotten
whipped.’ But anyway, Owen came up, he was an old tackle, and he was the right guy
for the period. He built the Giants’ defense through the ’30s. They had good
defenses all the way through. Fell apart just a little bit after World War II, but he got
them back and showed that he still knew what he was doing with that umbrella defense. And
of course the only team he ever coached in the NFL was the Giants, and I think his record
certainly is excellent."
Horrigan: "Steve Owen is obviously a throwback to an era when coaching was
something that a player did after he retired. His strength was defense. … I guess
when I think of him I think of a slower game. I think of a simpler time. But I also think
of a guy who was in an organization that was extremely loyal — the Mara family. He
fine-tuned some real good talent, one being Tom Landry. And you can see a lot of Steve
Owen in Tom Landry in the defensive philosophies — the umbrella defense being Steve
Owen’s creation, and Tom Landry was the on-the-field coach with it. Obviously
there’s some influences there. The family tree, if you will, of coaches. … But I
do think of a time when we’re talking about, I don’t want to call it a simpler
game but a slower game and defense was definitely his forte."
Bill Parcells
Career record: 149-106-1
Campbell: "Parcells is a proven winner. He’s taken the Giants, Patriots and
Jets and turned those franchises around. A lot of it is stressing a no-nonsense approach,
maybe even a my-way-or-the-highway approach. It gets results."
Carroll: "Parcells is a better coach than I thought he was. When he was just
starting out coaching the Giants and before he won his first Super Bowl, I wasn’t
really impressed with him. … But I was very, very impressed with his Super Bowl
teams. I thought they did wonderful jobs. Then I was doubly impressed when he went to New
England, which is a coaches graveyard, and revitalized them. And then, he did the same
thing with the Jets. He’s a much better coach than I thought he was, and I would vote
for him for the Hall of Fame."
Horrigan: "Bill Parcells is in that mold of turning teams around quickly.
Extremely intense and totally absorbed into what (he’s) doing. Although I know Bill
dabbled in front-office personnel sort of matters, I think his strength is what he does on
the field. He’s a great field general. He’s a smart coach. Super Bowl XXV you
had this wide-open, no-huddle offense of Buffalo against the conservative, ball-control
Giants. It was just an absolutely beautiful battle. Both those coaches (Parcells and Levy)
did a great job of showcasing their philosophies, but I think that’s the contrast
that you can see in a Bill Parcells. It’s checkmate. He won that time."
Joe Gibbs
Career record: 140-65-0
Campbell: "Joe Gibbs might be as underrated a coach as there is. I think that
people just don’t grasp all he did. When you win three Super Bowls with three
different quarterbacks in a pretty short space of time that tells me something."
Carroll: "I guess Gibbs is a terrific defensive coach. I’m still not sold on
that one-back offense, but obviously it’s worked for some players. I think it’s
probably one of those things that will go around. Which direction do you go? Do you start
adding another running back or do you end up with none? But I guess he’s a great
defensive coach and has been for many, many years. I guess that was really the greatest
strength. I mean, hell, he won with three different quarterbacks."
Horrigan: "The one-back offense that he used was kind of a new set. He again had
the personnel that looked to go that direction. He was a workaholic in kind of the Dick
Vermeil mold. They kind of remind (me) of the same type of person. He’s a hard one to
describe. He wasn’t anybody that ever looked for the limelight."
Hank Stram
Career record: 136-100-10
Campbell: "He was an innovator. He did certain things like the big offensive line
and the little scatbacks hiding behind them. He was probably a very good evaluator of
personnel. … In those days I don’t think there was a separation of church and
state in that I think Hank probably, and knowing how he operated, you know he had his
finger in the personnel pie. So he probably was a good evaluator of talent."
Carroll: "Stram was a very bright man and also apparently very loyal to his
players. A lot of the things you would want in a coach. Couldn’t do much in New
Orleans, but then who the hell could at that time? I think probably a bit
underrated."
Horrigan: "Hank does not get near the recognition that he probably deserves. He
had the moving pocket back when nobody knew what the hell to call it. The great defenses
with (Willie) Lanier and (Bobby) Bell and (Buck) Buchanan and Johnny Robinson, and of
course Lenny Dawson as his quarterback. Dawson was somebody who was a castaway from
everywhere else, and he knew him from Purdue and just knew that he had talent. Hank had a
tremendous eye for talent. People will always say, ahh, well somebody provided that
talent. That might have been what would go on today, but when Hank was coaching the Kansas
City Chiefs, I mean heck he had I think it was four or five members of the coaching staff.
And he coached the special teams. He did everything. It wasn’t near the game in terms
of how coaching staffs exist today, so you get short-changed for a lot of innovative
things that he used. But also that thing about, well, anybody could have won with that
talent he had, but he was the one who found that talent. A lot of these kids —
they’re grown men now — but when they were kids they were coming out of small
black schools. The American Football League in particular was more open I think to black
athletes at that time in the ’60s. Hank obviously had an open mind, an open door. He
had scouts that he trusted, but also he had to get these kids and recognize their talent,
too. That is maybe the biggest cop-out I hear is when people say that he had great talent
on those teams. Well, sure he had great talent. He went out and found it, got it, honed
it, put it together and made some great offenses and defenses out of it."
Weeb Ewbank
Career record: 134-130-7
Campbell: "I think you can make a case for Weeb’s greatness in just the fact
that he won world championships in two leagues and did it by building up some really
square one franchises. There was practically nothing in Baltimore when he got there and
nothing in New York when he got there. The fact that he developed (Johnny) Unitas and
(Joe) Namath speaks highly for him. I don’t know that just any coach could have come
along and developed those guys. I think Unitas and Namath, obviously their personalities
are different, and they probably needed to be handled differently. Whichever way they
needed to be handled, Weeb found out and did it."
Carroll: "The record says that he won with two teams. I certainly find his job
with the Jets was outstanding in that they won, although I’m not quite sure how they
did it even to this day. Overall his record isn’t all that sensational, but … he
didn’t always have great teams to work with. A very good coach. I definitely think he
deserves to be in the Hall of Fame for what he accomplished. I’m just not sure that
if I were going out to hire a coach he’d be in my first 10 choices."
Horrigan: "We’re coming out of that Paul Brown school. The Miami of Ohio
hotbed of football coaches. A lot of Paul Brown in him. But he also had the rare occasion
to have two great quarterbacks (Unitas and Namath). I don’t know whether he made the
quarterbacks better or they made him a better coach. He was blessed by having two of the
best quarterbacks of their eras to play for him. But I think he showed that in both
circumstances and situations, from a more traditional, conservative Baltimore approach he
was able to win to a more wide-open, flashy, AFL New York Jets approach he was able to
win. I think that’s always a credit to a coach that can adjust and play within the
rules or what the competition dictates. I think he was pretty masterful at that.
(Regarding his ordinary won-lost record being at odds with his winning championships with
two organizations) We have to remember when he took over these teams where they were. He
had some pretty sorry cases that he had to work up very quickly, particularly coming out
of the New York Titans to the New York Jets era. He (was) working with a pretty sad-sack
corps and was pretty much starting from scratch."
Mike Ditka
Career record: 127-101-0
Campbell: "I think he was a really good motivator, and I think that worked for a
while. In fairness, I think you have to give credit for the Chicago success to the defense
and Buddy Ryan. Did he have even a half decent season in New Orleans? Did he ever have a
winning record? I think that maybe proved that Ditka was not among the top echelon of
coaches."
Carroll: "I like Ditka, but not as a coach. I really just was never impressed with
him as a coach. But a great player. And I think somebody I’d really enjoy as a
friend. I like his personality. I just don’t think he was a good coach. He certainly,
again he had the players the year he won, but it’s only one year he won. Why
didn’t he win more?"
Horrigan: "Mike Ditka is as complicated as he is simple. He comes off as this
hard-edged, screaming, sideline maniac, and it couldn’t be further from the truth in
terms of the real guy that he is. He’s a really down-to-earth, both-feet-on-the-floor
kind of guy. But he was a guy who believes in and expected 110 percent all the time, and
that probably in today’s age is a little tougher than it was when he played. Not to
say that they don’t give 110 percent, but the style and the approach of a coach today
is different than in 1963 when the Bears won a title."
Jim Mora
Career record: 125-112-0
Campbell: "Mora is a good, solid coach. He proved it in his early days at New
Orleans. He proved it in the USFL. He was a winner."
Carroll: "Good, solid coach. I think he certainly deserved all the jobs that
he’s gotten and has done well."
George Seifert
Career record: 124-67
Campbell: "I think Seifert probably falls in the category of a lot of guys. They
were great, great coordinators and maybe were not well enough versed on the other side of
the ball and on other matters that a head coach needs to be for them to be truly
successful head coaches. I think he benefited somewhat from the personnel that he had in
the beginning in San Francisco. Obviously he didn’t have that personnel in Carolina
and the record shows that."
Carroll: "Apparently an exceptional coach but not one who really is known as far
as I can see for any one thing. He’s just been very, very good and has won."
Sid Gillman
Career record: 123-104-7
Campbell: "Gillman was an innovator. I think what he did with the passing game and
the fact that probably even today coaches are calling him for consultations speaks for his
greatness. I think Gillman probably more than anyone is responsible for the survival and
the acceptance of the AFL."
Carroll: "The greatest passing coach of all-time. He invented, well, he
didn’t invent the pass, but he damn near did. Paul Brown and Noll are my two
favorites, and Gillman has got to come in third. Gillman is just a real nice guy as far as
I’m concerned. I did interview him once, and he was just wonderful. The thing about
Gillman that a lot of people don’t notice is after he stopped worrying about being a
head coach and just assisted for a couple of years for different people, he always
improved those teams so much. This guy is just a genius as far as the passing game is
concerned."
Horrigan: "There are few coaches that the word genius applies to, but I think Sid
may be one of them. He has this mind that just never stopped. With the Rams, with the
Chargers and then all the years with every team he bounced around and other coaches wanted
his help. He was the guy that knew the game inside and out and could draw it up on a
blackboard and explain it, diagram it, dissect it. I just think he was tremendous. I have
nothing but great things to say about him. … Sid had all the knowledge, but he also
was able to convey it. … When he was not a head coach any longer, I just think that
everybody understood how much he knew, and they just had to tap that resource."
George Allen
Career record: 118-54-5
Campbell: "I think Allen was an innovative coach, a dedicated coach, a thorough
coach. I think his future-is-now mentality caught up with him at the end of several
seasons and maybe at the end of his career."
Carroll: "Well, for a guy who was definitely wrong, he did wonderfully. His
future-is-now idea I think is terrible. It’s exactly what you don’t want to do,
but he made it work quite well. It always seemed to me like he was just staying ahead of
the game. Well, this team is about ready to collapse so I’ll get out of here.
He’d go to someplace else. But he made it work."
Horrigan: "Interesting case. Twelve years of coaching, never had a losing season.
That’s a hell of an accomplishment, I don’t care what you think of a guy
personally. To not have a losing season, that is almost impossible. He used this theory of
winning is now. It was definitely something he believed in, and he was committed to, and
he was going to trade a lot of players, he was going to use veterans. He had a philosophy
of veterans that he was going to win with them, and he did. And by the same token, I think
you tend to think of him as a conservative coach. Yet he was the first one to have a
special-teams coach. That was (Dick) Vermeil and then Marv Levy. He was both conservative
and progressive at the same time if you will. What he did worked for him. I don’t
know that it could work for anyone else. The time was right. The organization was right.
And what he did obviously was right, because he produced what a coach is supposed to, and
that’s win."
Don Coryell
Career record: 114-89-1
Campbell: "Coryell was a real innovator. He probably suffered from lack of
attention to the defense and to a running game, but boy what he did with a passing game
was just outstanding. To me, John Jefferson was unbelievable in his San Diego years. With
Fouts throwing to Jefferson, (Charlie) Joiner and Kellen Winslow, it was just unbelievable
and a hell of a lot of fun to watch. Coryell knew the passing game."
Carroll: "Next to Gillman, probably the best for passing. Very, very underrated.
Much better coach than he’s given credit for being."
Horrigan: "Sid Gillman all over again. Don Coryell (was) one of the most exciting
coaches, and again someone that I think maybe has not gotten his just due. In terms of
overall (accomplishments it’s) not just won-lost, that’s not really what
you’re going to judge him on. But with his approach to the game, he was exciting. He
made the game more exciting."
John Madden
Career record:112-39-7
Campbell: "Madden, it’s hard to argue with his results. I think he was a very
good coach, and the fact that he got to 100 (wins) as fast as he did, you can’t
dispute that. I don’t know what made Madden great. Probably as a motivator. I
don’t know what kind of an X’s and O’s guy he was, although I suspect he
was much more than adequate. But certainly one of the great coaches."
Carroll: "Well, I don’t think he was coach long enough to form an opinion. Of
course, when he was coach everybody was saying, oh, well, Al Davis is pulling all the
strings. I don’t think he was, but it is difficult to tell how much Madden and how
much Davis was in that team. Whatever it was, he worked it very well. I’ll give him
credit for that. To me, ranked with these other coaches I think he’d almost have to
have taken a job somewhere else and done well."
Horrigan: "If you were going to start a team, you couldn’t go wrong getting a
John Madden. We’re talking about success in a short period of time. Ten years is all
he coached as a head coach. If I’m not mistaken, he was the youngest to have 100
victories. I think of him as a guy who unfortunately may have been unjustly judged because
(it) was always said that it was Al Davis’ team, but I don’t think that was
true. I think that was way overstated. I just wonder why he got out. He was relatively
young. Ten seasons is not a lot, particularly when we’re talking that particular era.
I wish that he had stayed longer."
Ray (Buddy) Parker
Career record: 107-76-9
Campbell: "Buddy Parker I think is vastly overlooked. Certainly I think he was as
good a coach as George Allen and therefore maybe warrants Hall of Fame induction and not
just consideration. He took a pretty rag-tag bunch in Detroit and turned them into
winners. I think keeping the forceful personalities that were on that team all going in
the same direction was quite an accomplishment."
Carroll: "Buddy Parker, well he had a good run there in Detroit because I guess
he’s the first coach to really take his best athletes and put them on defense. I
guess that is the one thing that he really did that was absolutely new. And he did build
very good teams in Detroit. In Pittsburgh, I think he went a little bit too much in the
George Allen direction and never quite came up. Although next to Noll I think his record
is best of the Pittsburgh coaches, and to Cowher of course. The thing about Parker was he
was always doing things impulsively. I mean, you know, how he walked out on Detroit at
their team dinner before the season. He quit. Of all places to quit. And the team went on
to win a championship without him. He apparently, according to what I read, was one of
these guys that would fire a player right after a game and then two or three days later
he’d (find) out, hey, we still need that guy. So Parker I’d say was much too
impulsive."
Vince Lombardi
Career record: 105-35-6
Campbell: "Undisputed in my opinion, the greatest coach there ever was. He just
won immediately and again people, probably not too many of them I would hope, but with his
early success they said, ‘Oh, he did it with Scooter (McLean’s) boys.’ And
if you look at that roster, there were a lot of guys on that roster that were there when
he got there that became Hall of Famers, but who made them that? (Paul) Hornung is
probably the most vivid example, because Hornung never did anything until Lombardi got
there and then he did everything. It’s hard to say how good Jerry Kramer was before
Lombardi was there or Forrest Gregg or guys like that, because the concrete proof
isn’t there. But with Hornung and (Jim) Taylor it is and Bart Starr. Although I think
Starr probably didn’t truly establish himself as the quarterback until about
Lombardi’s third year. … I think Lombardi is just in a class by himself because
of what he did."
Carroll: "Lombardi is I guess the single most inspirational type of coach. The
Knute Rockne syndrome. It worked for him, although, again, maybe he got out just in time
for Green Bay. Many people would rate him as the greatest coach ever. I would say fourth,
fifth, somewhere in there maybe. Certainly the record is undeniable. On the other hand,
there is some question about how well he drafted, so as general manager I don’t think
he gets the greatest marks. But then that’s not coaching either. I don’t think
he could have sustained what he had going in Green Bay much longer. For two reasons: one
is the idea that the veterans get to the point where they just don’t take it anymore,
and the other one is that I don’t think he was drafting that well. He went to
Washington and they straightened up quite well for one year, although (Otto) Graham really
had not done all that badly. And then (Lombardi) died. So who knows. I think he might
(have) improved Washington for another year or two, maybe three, and then he would have
had to leave there."
Horrigan: "Vince Lombardi was the right man at the right time. I use that analogy
of Halas being somewhere between a tyrant and a father confessor, and I think Lombardi was
the same way too. You can use all the clichés — he treats us all equally, like dogs.
It probably was, but they could all say it and laugh. They didn’t hate the man. Maybe
they did at the end of practice. But he was contagious with them, that his hard work, that
his belief in winning was a motivator. And he was a great motivator obviously. I’m
trying to avoid being cliché, but if there was a guy that taught winning it was
him."
Tom Flores
Career record: 105-90-0
Campbell: "Flores I think is a good coach, and like Madden I think you have to
evaluate all of these coaches through the filter that Al Davis is there. To lead a team
and cope with Davis, and I don’t think it’s a secret that Davis if not
interfered at least influenced the coaching that was going on in those days. And for both
Madden and Flores to handle Davis and handle the opposition as successfully as they did, I
think there’s a lot to be said for that."
Carroll: "He seemed to be very effective obviously with the Raiders. He
wasn’t a success in Seattle, but then again a lot of guys aren’t successes with
a second team. And he would be one of them."
Horrigan: "Tom Flores is a guy who has Hall of Fame credentials, frankly. He
really does. A quiet, unassuming guy. I don’t want to say that hurts, because it
doesn’t. I guess that keeps people from remembering him as much as he did. I just
think that Tom was one of these quiet students of the game. He understood the game."
Bill Walsh
Career record: 102-63-1
Campbell: "Walsh understood the passing game and knew how to teach it. I think
there might be some coaches out there that understand the passing game but don’t
necessarily know how to teach it. Or maybe could teach a passing game but didn’t
understand it as well. I think the fact that he understood the passing game AND knew how
to teach it, there’s something to be said for him. And the fact that he had the
success that he did."
Carroll: "Again, certainly had success with one team. As a sidebar, there’s
something that I think you really have to look at is the guys that could succeed with more
than one team like Brown and Shula. The guys that were strictly with one team,
particularly if it’s only a run of maybe eight to 10 years you begin to wonder a
little bit. But Walsh certainly gets credit for (being) a great offensive innovator and
drafting very, very well, which are two things that you want. So he certainly has to rank
up in there. I suppose certainly in the top six or so."
Horrigan: "Maybe one of the best ever. I don’t know who I want to compare him
to. I don’t think I want to compare him to anybody. I just think that he was a kind
of a Paul Brown disciple in the sense of the classroom. He brought the players into the
classroom like Paul Brown did and taught football. He was a great teacher. He molded
players and had great schemes and recognized talent. Nobody thought Joe Montana was going
to be what he was, and he probably wouldn’t have been if not in Bill Walsh’s
system. I just think that maybe if I’m going to compare him to somebody, maybe it is
Paul Brown."
Mike Holmgren
Career record: 108-67-0
Campbell: "I think Holmgren is a good, sound coach. I think he’s probably
finding out now that maybe Ron Wolf did a little bit more than he thinks. I think as a
coach, I guess you could say this is my opinion of him: His credentials as a coach speak
for themselves; his credentials as a general manager are still subject to further
review."
Carroll: "I don’t know at this point whether he might have been overrated in
Green Bay. The two things he had going for him in Green Bay were Ron Wolf and (Brett)
Favre. He hasn’t got either one of those (in Seattle). He is the GM so he’s
making those decisions, and he hasn’t been able to find a quarterback. If you think
about it, there are a lot of good players on that Seattle team, but they’re really
hurting for a quarterback (although Trent Dilfer was very effective in the four games he
started last season and has since been named the full-time starter). (In Green Bay) I
thought he was a terrific coach, but now I’m beginning to wonder how much of it was
Wolf."
Horrigan: "He’s a guy that, let’s see how he does. It’s starting to
turn around up there (in Seattle). They were one win or somebody else’s loss away
from being in the playoffs, which if it had happened I think we’d be even a little
higher in our praise. But I think he is a coach who surrounds himself with great talent.
He recognizes not only playing talent but coaching talent. Just look at the coaches that
have come out of his school already. And the quarterbacks, for goodness sake, how many
coaches could have that many (quality) quarterbacks (in Green Bay)? And quarterbacks that
everybody else missed on. So he obviously has a great eye for talent, which obviously has
made him pursue more than just coaching responsibilities in the organizations he’s
been with."
Bill Cowher
Career record: 105-68-0
Campbell: "Cowher is probably a combination of Chuck Noll and Chuck Knox, which
isn’t the worst thing to be. I think he stresses hard-nosed football. And I
don’t think this was all Cowher’s doing, but for the Steelers to remain
competitive as long as they did in view of the free agency losses they had is just
remarkable to me. I think Cowher is one of the great motivators. A no-nonsense coach. A
hard-nosed coach. A strong fundamental coach."
Carroll: "He has to be intense to win. He has to do it with personality. If
it’s there, I think he can win."
Horrigan: "(When) I think of Bill Cowher, I think of Mike Ditka. I think of those
hard-nosed, in-your-face coaches. I just mean on the sidelines getting in his
player’s face. He’s not afraid to yell at somebody. He’s not afraid to get
in their face. Cowher was that as a player. The quintessential special-teamer. He’s
going to win by will. I don’t know how he does it. He’ll lose a Pro Bowl player
and just fill the hole and move on. And without skipping a beat. This guy has kept that
team together in a way that few coaches are able to do. Totally different personality, but
like Marv Levy I think he gets the team and players believing in themselves. Certainly
he’s got Kordell (Stewart) believing in himself. And that comes from him and his
determination. He’s a very, very effective coach when it comes to convincing his team
that it can win."
Dennis Green
Career record: 101-70-0
Campbell: "Dennis Green can motivate his players and get them pulling in the same
direction. He’s truly a players coach."
Carroll: "He’s somebody (who just had) a bad season. He lets his players get
away with so damn much that you kind of wonder about it, but it seems to work pretty well.
He’s (been) very successful but doesn’t seem to get them into the Super Bowl. I
think right now I’d say he’s only the second best coach that the Vikings have
had."
Part 13: What makes a good coach?
Part 12: Life and death battle
Part 11: Standing tall
Part 10: Mistaken identity
Part 9: Amazing transformation
Part 8: Commitment
Part 7: Variety is the spice of life
Part 6: The hiring game
Part 5: The glass is half full
Part 4: Difficulties of the profession
Part 3: Coping with defeat
Part 2: The player-coach relationship
Part
1: Setting the tone
Series index |
