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The Zim-Zam Flim-Flam: All Things Zimmer


Heimdallr

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1 hour ago, disaacs said:

Just as I feel with the whole Tarkenton/Cousins debate, it doesn't matter to me whether he wins a Super Bowl or not, Zimmer would not be able to surpass Grant.  He'd certainly shoot ahead of Denny, but he ain't surpassing Bud because longevity does have to play a factor. 

Now, let's say Zimmer coaches until he's 70 (8 more years) and he makes 2 Super Bowls, winning 1.  Then, it becomes a good argument, because he'd probably have coached long enough to be in the equation.  But, if he wins 1 in the next 2 years and then retires after 3 more years, then it doesn't matter, because you're talking about 1 coach who only coached 8 years compared to one who coached for 17-18 years.  

Grant coached 17-18 years, but that last 8 seasons actually hurt his legacy far more than it helped it. Grant had an 8-year run (1969-76) where they went 87-24-1 (.777) but they only went 71-72-4 (.483) in his other 10 years (1967-68, 1977-83, 1985).

Now, you could surely say that the .777 far exceeds Zimmer's current .609, but should .609 and a Super Bowl carry more weight than .777 and no Super Bowl if you're comparing 8-year stretches?

Edited by Klomp
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Just now, vike daddy said:

whoa now, let's take a step back here...

 

Grant built a defense that even today ranks as one of the nest. Green had the sensibility to draft Randy Moss.

And did what with it? 

Some could argue that Green was actually a better coach than Grant based on the fact that he didn’t have a Hall of Fame defense, or a Hall of Fame quarterback. 

In fact, given the talent Bud Grant had on his team, he might be the biggest underachieving coach in NFL history. 

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Just now, SemperFeist said:

In fact, given the talent Bud Grant had on his team, he might be the biggest underachieving coach in NFL history. 

yeah, i could accept that. but he still built better teams than Green.

and we're supposed to give credit to Green for basically achieving more with less players? Green drafted Dimetrious Underwood, against his own coach's recommendation. he could have had better players.

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2 minutes ago, SemperFeist said:

But what good is a better team if you don’t do any more with it than a worse team? 

Dennis Green did not do more, he did not get four teams to a Super Bowl.

 

i agree that Grant under performed, and seemed to not care that he did, but he still did more.

Edited by vike daddy
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22 minutes ago, SemperFeist said:

And did what with it? 

Some could argue that Green was actually a better coach than Grant based on the fact that he didn’t have a Hall of Fame defense, or a Hall of Fame quarterback. 

In fact, given the talent Bud Grant had on his team, he might be the biggest underachieving coach in NFL history. 

And the fact that he didn't have a HOF defense or a HOF quarterback was actually his fault, considering he was the one that was in complete charge.  

Either way, they were completely different eras with significantly different rules and lengths, so it's going to be difficult to make adequate comparisons, especially because Grant didn't have to deal with free agency...but he also had players that had to have second jobs in the offseason.  Green had the benefits of significantly better scouting reports on college players (but even then, it wasn't nearly as good as it is now), but also had to face the competition of more teams in the league.  

People are going to have their own opinions on it, but to me, saying Green is comparable to Grant is like saying Slash is comparable to Eric Clapton.  Slash is fine in his own right, but no one is arguably ever going to think that he's in the pantheon of Clapton, Hendrix and Page.  

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20 hours ago, SemperFeist said:

And did what with it? 

Some could argue that Green was actually a better coach than Grant based on the fact that he didn’t have a Hall of Fame defense, or a Hall of Fame quarterback. 

In fact, given the talent Bud Grant had on his team, he might be the biggest underachieving coach in NFL history. 

Those are fightin' words friend!  (I'm giving you the steely eyed Clint Eastwood stare right now!!)

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Something I was just thinking about in regards to Green....

Couldn't win one here, but two of his coordinators moved on to win Super Bowls with two less-heralded franchises.

So did Green hold 'em back in Minnesota or did they overachieve with the talent they had here?

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17 minutes ago, Klomp said:

Something I was just thinking about in regards to Green....

Couldn't win one here, but two of his coordinators moved on to win Super Bowls with two less-heralded franchises.

So did Green hold 'em back in Minnesota or did they overachieve with the talent they had here?

I’m inclined to believe that the coordinators benefited from Green and the talent. Brian Billick, more so. 

Both Billick and Dungy won a Super Bowl, but neither did it while relying on the side of the call that they were respected for. Billick won a Super Bow with a terrible offense and one of, if not the, greatest defensive unit in league history. And Dungy won with one of the greatest QBs of all time and a high powered offense. 

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I don't know that comparing winning percentages of coaches from different eras is a sound analysis. There is far more parity in the NFL today than there was before the 90's, free agency, current revenue sharing models, etc... A decent statistical analysis would be considering something like standard deviations from the norm for the time rather than raw records.

That said, I am firmly in the camp of Bud Grant being the superior coach between the two. Green did some things really well but he did other things that drove me nuts. I suppose the same is true of any coach that is good enough to hang around for more than a few years.

Still, @SemperFeist said, "The only thing separating him from Green is the 4 trips to the Super Bowl." With all due respect to Mr Disaacs argument against, I can get on board with that statement with that qualifier. If Green took his teams to the Super Bowl four times I would rank him right up there with Grant.

As far as the debate about whether a single Super Bowl would be enough to rank Zimmer ahead of Grant, for me it would even if Zimmer won it this year and immediately retired. Championships are important to me. No matter how small a competition I want to win. I always want to win anything and everything. Likewise, I want the team's I root for -- the teams that I live vicariously though because I wasn't a fraction of the player it takes to sniff the NFL -- to win. Just win! 

Anything at the level of head coach or above I am happy to rank all-time according to the number of times they win theSuper Bowl with ties broken by the number of times the team won a conference championship. Further ties can be broken by the regular season performance relative to peers of the time.

I wouldn't make the same argument for positions below head coach. This includes starting QBs.

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