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The best football coach of all time is...


y*so*blu

Is?  

138 members have voted

  1. 1. Is?

    • Paul Brown (defined modern football)
      15
    • Vince Lombardi (a game for madmen)
      8
    • Tom Landry (Men With Hats)
      0
    • Chuck Noll (gave Terry Bradshaw lifelong daddy issues)
      1
    • Don Coryell (Air Someone-or-Other)
      0
    • Joe Gibbs (3 championships w/3 different QBs)
      5
    • Bill Walsh (The Notorious W.C.O.)
      14
    • Bill Belichick (...is on to Cincinnati)
      91
    • Other
      3
    • Don Shula (R.I.P.)
      2


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17 hours ago, bootsy said:

Only your delusional head.

Landry revolutionized defense in the NFL with the flex 4-3 that is still being used to this day. His influence on the sport went beyond his unbelievably consistent teams that has only been out down by Shula. So yea I agree any talk about greatest coaches and Landry not on the list is delusional. 

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1 hour ago, Calvert28 said:

Landry revolutionized defense in the NFL with the flex 4-3 that is still being used to this day. His influence on the sport went beyond his unbelievably consistent teams that has only been out down by Shula. So yea I agree any talk about greatest coaches and Landry not on the list is delusional. 

It's a restrictively short list, though. Also, I don't think you actually realize what Coryell accomplished. 

Edited by Heinz D.
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1 hour ago, Heinz D. said:

It's a restrictively short list, though. Also, I don't think you actually realize what Coryell accomplished. 

I will stack Tom Landry's accomplishments and innovations against anyone on the list including Coryell. Don invented a specific brand of offense, while Landry totally reinvented the way defenses operated, the 4-3 defense and flex defense has been more widely used in the NFL then the Air Coryell offense. 

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35 minutes ago, Calvert28 said:

I will stack Tom Landry's accomplishments and innovations against anyone on the list including Coryell. Don invented a specific brand of offense, while Landry totally reinvented the way defenses operated, the 4-3 defense and flex defense has been more widely used in the NFL then the Air Coryell offense. 

You aren't wholly right, there. Coryell solidified concepts that EVERYBODY uses, all the time, in the current NFL. A better argument(with the OP) would be--why is Noll a candidate over either Landry or Coryell?

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On 4/28/2020 at 5:01 PM, y*so*blu said:

I figured anything NFL Fanzone could do, we could do better. (Especially because their poll left out Landry and Gibbs!)

Obviously Bill Belichick's going to get a ton of votes due to recency and the sheer number of Super Bowls he won. He's probably the smartest and most resourceful in the history of the game, but as for best of all time I say it's Vince Lombardi. He never had a losing season, walked into an obscure city and turned it into Title Town, then rejuvenated the Redskins before his untimely death. Incredibly driven, inspirational, and well-spoken. I wish I could have met him.

Lombardi clearly deserves to be on the short list, but it's amazing how he sucks up all the oxygen and causes Curly Lambeau (6 NFL titles, early innovator of the passing game) to be COMPLETELY overshadowed. 

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On 4/29/2020 at 1:36 AM, RandyMossIsBoss said:

...and to be fair to BB, as an active coach, it's not as easy to see his influences on the game yet but he no doubt will have left a mark on the game similar in size to the ones left by Lombardi, Walsh, Coryell, etc. His might be more team building oriented than Xs Os, but major nonetheless).

I don't think Belicheck is necessarily an "innovator"...I actually think he's a great thief - and I mean that in the most complimentary way. When he sees an innovation someone else, at any level, makes, he is secure enough that he doesn't have to be the smartest guy in the room (even though he's plenty smart), and is more than willing to lift it and apply it. 

He's what a leader should be - get good people around you and let them work to your strengths. If the organisation is successful, it doesn't matter who gets the credit. 

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On 4/30/2020 at 5:00 PM, Shanedorf said:

He's epic, but he never won 5 Titles in 7 years and he never won 3 in a row.  Lombardi achieved both
Lombardi got his 5th title in year...9     BB got his 5th title in year...17
Lombardi also didn't lose 3 Title games, BB did
From the performance side, 5 -1 in Championship games vs 6-3  

I know none of that changes anybody's minds, and that's just fine by me - 
a couple of the greatest coaches ever

I'm also a GB fan, and the one thing you can ding (relatively speaking; I don't think anyone is using this to say "they suck!" more like "well, there's this...") Lombardi and Noll on is that they had MASSIVE success with a core of HoF caliber players, but they didn't necessarily prove they could sustain success once the roster turned over. When the talent drained out of Pittsburgh, Noll was still a good coach, but nowhere near dominant; Lombardi didn't really have the chance to do it again in Washington due to his untimely death. Landry maintained success through 3 or 4 roster churns. 

That's one thing where I feel BB has done something amazing - with constant roster turnover, he's kept NE as The Team to Beat for the bulk of 2 decades. 

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On 4/30/2020 at 6:06 PM, Elky said:

Lombardi coached at a time with neither a salary cap nor free agency and played against like 10 teams.

If there are only 10 teams (there were 13 in 1960 and 16 by 1967) that doesn't bolster your argument.  The more teams you have the talent is diluted.

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Is it "best" coach or most influential? I think BB is probably the best. 32 team league, free agency restrictions, not many Hof players, and they've won all but 1 or 2 division titles in the last 20 years. Playoff record is comparable to other Hof coaches regular season records.

Most influential is tough. Maybe one of Landry, Walsh, Brown

 

 

 

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20 minutes ago, Pugger said:

If there are only 10 teams (there were 13 in 1960 and 16 by 1967) that doesn't bolster your argument.  The more teams you have the talent is diluted.

If there's 1/2 as many teams you're twice as likely to be champion, thus easier to win 5 of 7. 

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On 4/28/2020 at 6:09 PM, Chiefs_5627 said:

Probably gonna go with Bill Walsh just from the innovation standpoint. He really revolutionized the passing game imo.

I became an NFL fan because of Bill Walsh actually RWG Mr Walsh

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On 4/28/2020 at 3:09 PM, Chiefs_5627 said:

Probably gonna go with Bill Walsh just from the innovation standpoint. He really revolutionized the passing game imo.

He did. He also revolutionized the idea that the entire organization was responsible for wins/ losses. No stone unturned and everybody could help
Bill helped make that franchise the Gold Standard both on the field and off. He re-made everything and challenged everybody. He could be a bit prickly at times, but you saw other organizations copy what he did from the janitor to the C-suite to how they traveled to games.

https://hbr.org/1993/01/to-build-a-winning-team-an-interview-with-head-coach-bill-walsh

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On 5/1/2020 at 8:25 PM, Heinz D. said:

You aren't wholly right, there. Coryell solidified concepts that EVERYBODY uses, all the time, in the current NFL. A better argument(with the OP) would be--why is Noll a candidate over either Landry or Coryell?

Coryell is definitely top 3 most influential but not top 3 greatest coach of all time 

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10 hours ago, Pugger said:

If there are only 10 teams (there were 13 in 1960 and 16 by 1967) that doesn't bolster your argument.  The more teams you have the talent is diluted.

Diluted for the Pats as well, though. If the argument is that less teams means talent is more concentrated in those teams, in the 1960s, that would also apply to Green Bay. So the competition has a greater concentration of talent, but so do you. There was more talent concentrated on those Packer teams, relative to the league, than the Patriots of the 2000s - 2010s. So it doesn't move anything, really. You can't say concentration of talent made it harder when that same concentration led to those teams having like 11 hall of famers at one time.

On the other hand, fewer teams makes it simply statistically more likely to rack up multiple championships. And this is why you very commonly saw stretches of the same teams in championship games. The Giants went to the championship like 6 out of 8 years at one point in there. The Lions went to 4 out of 6. The Browns went to 6 straight. Repeat appearances were incredibly common back then because fewer teams made it more likely to see repeats, and low roster turnover made it easier to repeat. Both statistically and anecdotally, it was more likely and more common.

It also helps that many of those NFL Championships were 1 game playoffs. You didn't earn the #1 seed and then have to go and play 2 single elimination games just to get to the superbowl, winning in the regular season meant they just handed you a one game shot at the trophy. I would be shocked if the 07 Patriots couldn't have knocked out the 07 Cowboys in a one game championship, for instance. It only took Lombardi 9 playoff wins to get 5 superbowls. Statistically impossible anymore. Bill had to go 3-0 each time. His last championship was the only time Lombardi had to do that.

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