Does a head coach need a Super Bowl win to be considered great? There are 20 head coaches in NFL history with at least 50 wins over the .500 mark in the regular season and the postseason. Only three — George Halas, Curly Lambeau, and Steve Owen — did not ply their trade in the Super Bowl era (Okay, Halas retired as a head coach after the 1967 season, but we’ll give him a pass here). Of the 17 remaining coaches on that list, five — Paul Brown, Andy Reid, Marty Schottenheimer, George Allen, and Bud Grant — never won a Super Bowl. Brown and Grant are in the Hall of Fame. Marv Levy, who finished his career 31 games over .500 and lost four Super Bowls as Grant did, is also in Canton.
Eight coaches have won at least 200 games in NFL history. This is of course easier to do in the modern era as the season went from 12 to 14 games in 1960 and from 14 to 16 in 1978, but it’s a remarkable achievement nonetheless. Two of those coaches are active — Bill Belichick, who has won six super bowls as a head coach, and Andy Reid, who hasn’t won one, and lost his only opportunity to date to Belichick in Super Bowl XXXIX at the end of the 2004 season.
Now, Reid gets his second chance with his second NFL team as the Chiefs prepare to face the 49ers in Super Bowl LIV. If Reid loses, and if he never wins a Super Bowl in his coaching career, does that wipe out (to date) 207 wins, a .618 winning percentage, 79 wins over .500, and a well-deserved reputation as one of the finest offensive minds of his generation? Or will we simply continue to make jokes about his clock-management skills?
The latter is more likely than the former, and no matter how long Reid continues to succeed, he’ll have to face that down if he’s unable to bring a Lombardi Trophy home. He is one of 15 head coaches who, by record and achievement, can be considered truly great, but without the ultimate prize.
15. Jim E. Mora
Regular-season record: 125-106-0
Postseason record: 0-6
New Orleans Saints, 1986-1996
Indianapolis Colts, 1998-2001
Known primarily for his soundbites, Mora was the first head coach to take the Saints to the playoffs, which he did in 1987 with the famed “Dome Patrol” defense, and Bobby Hebert completing 55.8% of his passes. The Saints went to the postseason four times in six seasons through 1992, losing in the wild-card round each time. He resigned halfway through the 1996 season after declaring that his team “couldn’t do diddly … poo offensively,” spent 1997 as a color analyst for NBC and returned to coaching with the Colts in 1998, just in time to tutor a rookie quarterback named Peyton Manning. Indianapolis went 3-13 that season, but experienced one of the most remarkable turnarounds in NFL history with a 13-3 mark in 1999. But the Colts lost to the Titans in the divisional round that season and lost to the Dolphins in the wild-card round the next year after a 10-6 regular-season mark — and that was Mora’s last shot at a Super Bowl.
The most brutal postscript: On Dec. 30, 2000, the same day the Colts lost to Miami and ended Mora’s chances to advance in the playoffs for the final time, the Saints won their first playoff game in franchise history, 31-28, over the Rams.
14. Dennis Green
Regular-season record: 113-94-0
Postseason record: 4-8
Minnesota Vikings, 1992-2001
Arizona Cardinals, 2004-2006
Speaking of coaches known for soundbites …
Green’s Cardinals let the Bears off the hook in Week 6 of the 2006 season with a 24-23 loss after holding a 20-0 halftime lead and giving up two fumble returns and a punt return for touchdowns. Maybe Coach Green was upset because his team lost to Rex Grossman. We would be, too. In any event, Green, who spent three years as the 49ers’ receivers coach under Bill Walsh and three more as Stanford’s head coach from 1989 through 1991, was hired as Minnesota’s head coach in 1992 with the idea that he could modernize the Vikings’ offense. By the end of the decade, he had done just that — the 1998 team set what was then the single-season record for points scored with 556, and went 15-1 in the regular season. They blew out the Cardinals in the divisional frame before losing the NFC Championship Game to the Falcons in what was supposed to have been a coronation for the greatest offense in NFL history.
Green lasted with Minnesota until 2001, his first losing season with the team, spent a couple years as an ESPN analyst, and then returned to coaching with the Cardinals in 2004. He never managed a winning record in the Valley of the Sun, but much of the roster that later reached the Super Bowl under Ken Whisenhunt was assembled during Green’s tenure. Green, who died in 2016 due to complications from cardiac arrest, was the third black head coach in NFL history, after Fritz Pollard and Art Shell, and the first black head coach who had not played in the league.
13. Chuck Knox
Regular-season record: 186-147-1
Postseason record: 7-11
Los Angeles Rams, 1973-1977
Buffalo Bills, 1978-1982
Seattle Seahawks, 1983-1991
Los Angeles Rams, 1992-1994
A football fundamentalist above all else, Knox was known for his “run-run-pass” offensive philosophy and stout defenses. In 13 of his 22 years as a head coach, his defenses ranked in the top 10 in points allowed, and his 1974 and 1975 Rams led the NFL in that category. The 1973 Rams were probably Knox’s best team — they finished first in points scored and fourth in points allowed and featured a rushing attack led by Lawrence McCutcheon and Jim Bertelsen that was extremely tough to stop. The Rams tied with the Dolphins and Vikings that season for the NFL’s best record at 12-2, but while Miami and Minnesota went on to face each other in Super Bowl VIII, the Rams were summarily dismissed in the divisional round of the playoffs by the Cowboys. That was the way for the Rams in the 1970s — they couldn’t get past the logjam of great NFC teams, and from 1974 through 1976, they lost three consecutive conference championship games. Knox also found success with the Bills and Seahawks, leading Seattle to its first conference title game in the 1983 season, but the Super Bowl turned out to be his white whale.
12. Blanton Collier
Regular-season record: 76-34-2
Postseason record: 3-4
Cleveland Browns, 1963-1970
Collier didn’t face too much pressure when he replaced Paul Brown as Cleveland’s head coach in 1963. All he had to do was to replace the man who founded the team and perhaps the greatest coaching mind in NFL history after Brown had been forced out in a power struggle with owner Art Modell. No big deal, right? Not to Collier, who had served as Brown’s backfield coach from 1946 through 1953, and returned to the Browns in 1962 after an eight-year stint as the University of Kentucky’s head coach. Collier was less autocratic than Brown had been — he loosened the leash on everything from quarterback audibles to blocking schemes. That’s not to say he wasn’t an exacting football man; he designed the player-grading system Brown used for years.
Collier won the 1964 NFL championship with a 27-0 shellacking of the Baltimore Colts, but the biggest game eluded him once the Super Bowl came into existence. The Browns were the only team to beat the 1968 Colts in the regular season, but the Colts got their revenge with a 34-0 beatdown in the NFL Championship Game before losing to the Jets in Super Bowl III. Collier’s Browns made it back to the NFL title game the following season but were beaten by the Vikings. That was his last playoff game, as the 1970 Browns went 7-7, and Collier retired, citing hearing loss issues.
11. Jeff Fisher
Regular-season record: 173-165-1
Postseason record: 5-6
Houston/Tennessee Oilers, 1994-1998
Tennessee Titans, 1999-2010
St. Louis/Los Angeles Rams, 2012-2016
Lost in the miasma of his “7-9 bull[bleep]” years with the Rams, and Jared Goff’s nightmare rookie season of 2016 in which he may have been the worst first-year quarterback in NFL history is the fact that, for the most part, Jeff Fisher was a pretty good coach. A safety for Buddy Ryan’s Bears defenses in the 1980s, Fisher suffered a broken leg in the 1983 season when he was tackled by an Eagles linebacker by the name of Bill Cowher. Both men would go on to be NFL head coaches. Fisher’s journey started in 1985 when he assisted Ryan while recovering from an ankle injury. Fisher joined Ryan’s coaching staff in Philadelphia after Chicago’s 1985 Super Bowl season and became Ryan’s defensive coordinator in 1989 at age 31. His first opportunity as a head coach came after he replaced Ryan as the Houston Oilers’ defensive coordinator in 1994, and then replaced head coach Jack Pardee with six games left in the season.
Fisher stayed with the Oilers/Titans franchise through the 2010 season, making the playoffs in six different seasons. His closest brush with a Super Bowl win was as close as any coach can get — the Titans lost Super Bowl XXXIV at the end of the 1999 season when Rams linebacker Mike Jones tackled receiver Kevin Dyson one yard from the goal line with the clock running out and the Rams up 23-16. He didn’t make the playoffs in five seasons with the Rams, and was fired after Week 14 in 2016. Fisher’s final loss tied him with Dan Reeves with the most regular-season defeats (165) in NFL history.
10. John Fox
Regular-season record: 133-123-0
Postseason record: 8-7
Carolina Panthers, 2002-2010
Denver Broncos, 2011-2014
Chicago Bears, 2015-2017
John Fox isn’t often mentioned when the greatest head coaches of all time are discussed, but he is one of a handful of head coaches to lead two different teams to the Super Bowl. The 2003 Panthers made it to Super Bowl XXXVIII in Fox’s second year with the team, only to lose to the Patriots, 32-29, on a last-second field goal from Adam Vinatieri — after an out-of-bounds kickoff by Carolina kicker John Kasay gave New England the ball at its own 40-yard line for that final drive. Fox piloted the 2013 Broncos to Super Bowl XLVIII on the strength of Peyton Manning’s 55 touchdown passes and a 606-point season, but the incendiary Denver offense was snuffed by Seattle’s Legion of Boom in a 43-8 laugher. Following a 2014 season in which the Broncos went 12-4 and lost in the divisional round to the Colts, Denver decided to replace Fox with Gary Kubiak. The Broncos returned to the Super Bowl in Kubiak’s first season and earned a 24-10 win over Ron Rivera’s Panthers. Both Kubiak and Rivera had replaced Fox.
9. Marty Schottenheimer
Regular-season record: 200-126-1
Postseason record: 5-13
Cleveland Browns, 1984-1988
Kansas City Chiefs, 1989-1998
Washington Redskins, 2001
San Diego Chargers, 2002-2006
There are a handful of NFL accomplishments we can safely say will never be matched. One I’m pretty sure about is what happened to Marty Schottenheimer after the 2006 season in San Diego — he was fired following a 14-2 season in which the Chargers were booted in the divisional round by the Patriots, and the three games the Chargers lost that season were all by three points. Still, Schottenheimer was cashiered due to a power struggle with then-general manager A.J. Smith, and that was the end of his NFL coaching career. But he did get to consecutive AFC Championship Games with the Browns in 1986 and 1987, losing both in heartbreaking fashion (The Drive and The Fumble) to the Broncos. That was as close as Schottenheimer ever got to a Super Bowl, though he had just two losing seasons in a 21-year career and is one of eight coaches in NFL history with 200 wins.
8. George Allen
Regular-season record: 116-47-5
Postseason record: 2-7
Los Angeles Rams, 1966-1970
Washington Redskins, 1971-1977
It was said of George Allen that he did not curse, smoke, or drink, and that his favorite beverage was milk. As opposed to carousing, Allen spent most of his time working to make his teams better through scheme — as the Bears’ defensive coordinator in the early 1960s, he helped design the first zone defenses. As a head coach, Allen took his “Over the Hill Gang” to Super Bowl VII at the end of the 1972 season, only to be beaten by Don Shula’s Dolphins, the only single-season undefeated team in NFL history. Known for preferring veterans to draft picks and subsequently trading away as many picks as possible for established NFL players, Allen never had a losing season in his 12-year career.
7. Dan Reeves
Regular-season record: 190-165-2
Postseason record: 11-9
Denver Broncos, 1981-1992
New York Giants, 1993-1996
Atlanta Falcons, 1997-2003
Reeves, who helped win Super Bowl VI at the end of the 1971 season as a running back with Tom Landry’s Cowboys, won another at the end of the 1977 season as Dallas’ offensive coordinator as Dallas beat the Broncos, 27-10, in Super Bowl XII. Denver responded by hiring Reeves as its head coach for the 1981 season, and within five seasons, Reeves had helped to design a Super Bowl team. Reeves’ Broncos represented the AFC in three of four Super Bowls from the 1986 through the 1989 seasons, and they were thrashed by the NFC team in every one. Denver’s 55-10 loss to the 49ers in Super Bowl XXIV, the team’s inability to return to the Super Bowl, and subsequent power struggles with quarterback John Elway, led the Broncos to look elsewhere following the 1992 season. After four seasons with the Giants, Reeves got back to the Super Bowl at the end of the 1998 season with the Falcons, only to lose to Elway and the Broncos in Super Bowl XXXIII.
6. Marv Levy
Regular-season record: 143-112-0
Postseason record: 11-8
Kansas City Chiefs, 1978-1982
Buffalo Bills, 1986-1997
Only one head coach has ever led his team to four straight Super Bowls, and that’s Marv Levy, who did so for the Buffalo Bills from 1990 through 1993. The Bills would have won that first one over the Giants had Scott Norwood’s field goal attempt not gone wide right, though the last three of Levy’s Super Bowls were blowouts in favor of the Redskins (XXVI) and Cowboys (XXVII and XXVIII). Levy also made the playoffs with the Bills in the 1995 and 1996 seasons, but wasn’t able to advance beyond the divisional round again. Selected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2001, Levy is a long-time Chicago Cubs fan (which gave him a head-start on athletic despair), and was certainly one of a very few in attendance for both the 1945 and 2016 World Series, both of which featured his favorite team.
5. Bud Grant
Regular-season record: 158-96-5
Postseason record: 10-12
Minnesota Vikings, 1967-1985
Selected in the 1950 NFL and NBA drafts after his time at the University of Minnesota, Grant played a while for both the Minneapolis Lakers and Philadelphia Eagles before heading to the Canadian Football league as a player and coach. The Vikings, who had asked Grant to become their first head coach in 1961, tried again in 1967, and the offer worked this time. Grant brought a sense of order and a bunch of great defense to the Vikings — much needed after six years under the rambunctious, profane Norm Van Brocklin — but what he couldn’t do was to bring a Super Bowl to his franchise. The 1969 team was thought to be a shoo-in over Hank Stram’s Chiefs in Super Bowl IV, but Stram outdid Grant with all kinds of offensive and defensive formations, while Grant was more content to let his players do the playing. In the 1970s, Grant’s Vikings lost three more Super Bowls to the 1973 Dolphins, the 1974 Steelers, and the 1976 Raiders — three of the most imposing teams of the era. As could be said of Marv Levy, it does take a special coach to lead your team to four Super Bowls, no matter the result.
4. Andy Reid
Regular-season record: 207-128-1
Postseason record: 14-14
Philadelphia Eagles, 1999-2012
Kansas City Chiefs, 2013-Present
We know this guy, right? Reid has an opportunity to work himself off this list on February 2, but even if he isn’t able to, he’s already one of eight coaches with 200 or more regular-season wins, and his ability to create dynamic offenses, especially in his willingness to adopt spread concepts into his offenses years before other coaches did, makes him notable as a play-designer. Reid will always encounter static over his clock–management skills, especially in the Eagles’ eventual loss to the Patriots in Super Bowl XXXIX at the end of the 2004 season, when Philly wasn’t quite as quick from the huddle to the snap as it could have been late in the game. Still, Reid is one of the game’s great quarterback developers, he’s taken his Chiefs to the AFC Championship game in each of the last two seasons, and anytime you can come back from a 24-0 deficit in a playoff game, score touchdowns on seven straight drives, and ultimately come up with a 51-31 win, as Kansas City did over Houston in the 2019 divisional round, perhaps the criticism of Reid’s urgency should now be put aside. If he beats Kyle Shanahan’s 49ers in Super Bowl LIV, one has the sense that a lot of beefs people may have had with Reid over the years will disappear.
3. Don Coryell
Regular-season record: 111-83-1
Postseason record: 3-6
St. Louis Cardinals, 1973-1977
San Diego Chargers, 1978-1986
Before his NFL career got started, Coryell spent 12 years at San Diego State, perfecting his passing concepts and coaching everyone from Brian Sipe to Haven Moses to Issac Curtis to Fred Dryer to Carl Weathers — who you know as the guy who played Apollo Creed. The St. Louis Cardinals, who had not made a postseason since the 1948 NFL Championship game, hired Coryell in 1973 to turn things around. By his second season, Coryell had turned the Cardinals into a force, with a 10-4 record, an NFC East title, and a balanced offense that relied on the run more than people may have thought. St. Louis upped the ante in 1975 with an 11-5 record, but the Cards couldn’t advance past the divisional round in either season. Cost-cutting by owner Bill Bidwill left Coryell in an untenable situation, which he resolved by moving back to San Diego and coaching the Chargers five games into the 1978 season.
1-4 when he took the job, the ’78 Chargers rolled off eight straight wins and finished 9-7, the franchise’s first winning season since 1969. And from 1980 through 1983, the Chargers led the NFL in points scored — a four-straight feat that has never been equaled in NFL history. But again, Coryell was dealing with a mercurial owner in Gene Klein, and it was Klein’s decision to start offloading players he couldn’t re-sign that stopped Coryell short. Losing pass-rusher Fred Dean, now in the Hall of Fame, might have kept the Chargers out of the Super Bowl in multiple seasons, and Dean was a force multiplier for the 1981 49ers, who beat the Bengals in Super Bowl XVI after the Bengals beat the Chargers in an AFC Championship game in Cincinnati that featured arctic wind chills and negated Coryell’s offense. Coryell died in 2010 at age 85, and his omission from the Pro Football Hall of Fame remains the institution’s most glaring embarrassment.
2. Sid Gillman
Regular-season record: 122-99-7
Postseason record: 1-5
Los Angeles Rams, 1955-1959
Los Angeles/San Diego Chargers, 1960-1971
Houston Oilers, 1973-1974
It could be said that there was a football offense before Sid Gillman and a football offense after Sid Gillman, and the one after Sid Gillman is the one most NFL teams are using today in some form or fashion. Everybody from Bill Walsh to Al Davis swore by Gillman’s offensive expertise, which he first showed at the professional level with the Rams in 1955. Coaching a team in transition, Gillman got his Rams to the NFL championship game in his first year, only to lose to the Browns. He accepted the Los Angeles Chargers’ offer to become their head coach in 1960, moved with them to San Diego in 1961, and went about creating an offense, with its multiple route concepts and pre-snap shifts, no pro league had seen before. Gillman’s Chargers won the 1963 AFL Championship, and offered to NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle the opportunity for the Chargers to play the Bears, the 1963 NFL champions, in what would have been the Super Bowl before its time.
Rozelle refused, the Chargers lost the 1964 and 1965 AFL title game to the Buffalo Bills, and he was never able to make the playoffs after that. Not with the Chargers, and not with the Houston Oilers, who he coached for two seasons, setting Bum Phillips up for success. Though he never appeared in a Super Bowl as a head coach, Gillman is owed a debt by every modern offensive coach, and that will be true for a very long time.
1. Paul Brown
Regular-season record: 213-104-9
Postseason record: 9-8
Cleveland Browns, 1946-1962
Cincinnati Bengals, 1968-1975
After years in Ohio high school and college football, Brown was hired to coach the Cleveland team of the new All-America Football Conference in 1946. The team that bore his last name won all four of the league’s championships, leading in part to the AAFC’s demise because the other teams couldn’t make it competitive enough. The Browns joined the San Francisco 49ers and Baltimore Colts as entrants in the NFL in 1950, and all Brown did in that first season was to beat the two-time defending champion Eagles both in the opening game of the season, and the “point-a minute” Rams in the NFL championship game. Brown won three NFL titles as Cleveland’s head coach, and he also developed the first face mask, hired the first complete coaching staff, integrated game film into team preparation, and helped break pro football’s color ban.
What he could not do was to win a power struggle with Art Modell, who bought the Browns in 1961 and wanted more say than Brown wanted to give him. Fired in January, 1963, Brown waited until another opportunity presented itself where he could have the control he wanted. The American Football League gave him that with the expansion Cincinnati Bengals, and Brown returned to the sidelines in 1968. The Bengals made the playoffs three times in Brown’s tenure, losing every time. He retired from coaching after the 1975 season, naming offensive line coach Bill “Tiger” Johnson as his replacement over his offensive coordinator — some guy named Bill Walsh.
Whoops. Brown stayed on as team president, and the Bengals lost two Super Bowls to Walsh’s 49ers.
