Five Best NFL Coaches

My Facebook buddy Bill Furman posed another good question last week at PHILLY PRESSBOX: Who are the five best NFL coaches?

I took my time with this one. There are some really great coaches in the history of the NFL. Just getting down to my list of 20 finalists, I had to make some difficult decisions on who to eliminate. So I decided to go by the numbers.

First, I ranked all NFL coaches who won two or more championships. I considered both NFL championships – in the pre-Super Bowl days – and Super Bowls. That left me with 20 coaches.

My first casualty was Guy Chamberlain – someone I never heard of before – even though Chamberlain has the best winning percentage of all NFL coaches. His 78.4% is better than three points ahead of Vince Lombardi at 75.0%.

But Chamberlain coached only 81 games back in the Neanderthal Age of the NFL. Yes, he won five NFL championships, but he was a player/coach during the 1920s with the Canton Bulldogs, Cleveland Bulldogs, and Frankford Yellow Jackets.

Then I refined the stats into three categories – first came total wins.

So I’ve got Don Shula, George Halas, Tom Landry, Curly Lambeau, and Chuck Noll. Each finalist gets one point.

The second category is highest winning percentage.

That gives me Vince Lombardi, George Halas, Don Shula, Paul Brown, and George Seifert. Each gets one point.

The final category is most championship wins.

This gives me Vince Lombardi, George Halas, Curly Lambeau, Bill Belichick, and Chuck Noll. Each also gets one point.

Including every coach who got at least one point left me with nine finalists.

Five coaches had at least two points and the other four just one. That made it easy for me.

Paul Brown and Tom Landry were eliminated – both great coaches and both victims of circumstances.

Tom Landry began his head-coaching career in 1960 with the expansion Dallas Cowboys – a collection of cast-offs, misfits, and rookies. It took Landry seven seasons to go from a record of 0-11-1 to the break-even point of 7-7 in 1965. His record at that point was 25-53-4 – for a winning percentage of 32.1%.

From that point on, Landry went 225-109-2 and doubled his initial percentage – 67.4% – and won two Super Bowls.

Paul Brown was an innovative coach who went 159-80-5. His circumstance is that the first four years he coached the Cleveland Browns, the Browns played in the old All-American Football Conference – not the NFL. He also coached the Cincinnati Bengals for two years when the Bengals were in the old American Football League – and not the NFL.

He was 54-24-4 during those six non-NFL seasons. Those 54 wins plus the four AAFC championships he won would’ve put him near the top of all three categories.

By the way, both Don Shula and Chuck Noll played for Paul Brown and learned how to coach from him. Shula was a defensive back and Noll was a guard – a messenger guard who shuttled in an out with the play-calls.

George Seifert and Bill Belichick were also eliminated in the final go-around. Seifert took over a good 49ers team in 1989 and went 98-30-0 in winning two Super Bowls in eight seasons. After that, he went to Carolina and was just 16-32-0 in three seasons – including a 1-15-0 swan song in 2001.

Yes, Bill Belichick won four Super Bowls with the Patriots in 15 years at the helm – 175-66-0 – but there’s all that SpyGate and DeflateGate flack to detract from his accomplishments. His first five years were spent coaching the Browns – where he was under .500 at 36-44-0. Good coach? Or good players? A good mix of both.

My five best NFL coaches are:

1 – George Halas – 324 wins – 68.2% – 8 NFL titles

2 – Don Shula – 347 wins – 66.7% – 1 NFL title – 2 Super Bowls

3 – Curly Lambeau – 229 wins – 63.1% – 6 NFL titles

4 – Chuck Noll – 209 wins – 57.3% – 4 Super Bowls

5 – Vince Lombardi – 105 wins – 75.0% – 6 NFL titles – 2 Super Bowls