ESPN's Top 20 NFL Coaches Ever

If this is from 1980 on Noll is Waaaaaaay to high and Johnson is too low.

And Barry Swittzer? GTFO.

 

You do realize that Switzer is listed as the "worst coach since 1980 to win a Super Bowl"

Most people think he's a terrible NFL coach. But, he did win a Super Bowl.

 

Two points. 1. FWIW, Belichick, who's gonna be high on this list, believes Paul Brown was the greatest ever.
2. With my own ears at a Super Bowl XXX hype week press conference, I heard Switzer refer to it as the Fiesta Bowl. Well, we were in Phoenix.

 

Bill Walsh also believed Paul Brown is the greatest ever. Lombardi will be No. 1 and it's impossible to argue that, but Brown should probably be No. 2.

 

It's of course possible to argue Lombardi's rating. He was an unparalleled motivator, and superb judge of talent, but he was nowhere near the strategic and organizational innovator Brown was.

 

asfor point 1, michael, i keep in mind that belichick was a kid when paul brown was playing football genius and he pretty much idolized pb. and what present-day coach calls himself -- or peer -- the 'best ever.'? so i'm not sure how much belichick's vote matters. though pb would surely be in pretty much any historian's top 5. mine, fwiw, are: lombardi, pb, bill walsh, belichick and i'm having trouble deciding on who's no. 5 between noll and landry. and by all means, michael or anyone, please lemme know i'm who i should be ashamed to have forgotten. i thought about gibbs for winning three supes with three different qb's....

hard not to have lombardi and pb 1-2, though i've often wondered if we ALL overrate lombardi for the reasons already mentioned by others... then i snap out of it and order myself not to over-think it. i mean, heck, the damn championship trophy bears his name..

 

And Gino Torretta won the Heisman .. but he's not one of the best college football players of all-time in the last 30 years.
Lots of good-to-decent-to-shit coaches won or got to Super Bowls or won Super Bowls, but that hardly merits them consideration among the best all-time. Even going from 1980 forward.

Switzer gets credit for not fucking it up, but any list that would put him within earshot of Walsh, Darth Hoodie or any other coach considered close to good is FAIL.

 

On Noll vs. Landry, it's so close I think you'd have to go with Noll based on head-to-head in the Super Bowl.

 

You're not understanding that list.

There are 21 coaches who have won a Super Bowl since 1980. Mizzougrad ranked Switzer #21 among them. I'm sure Mizzougrad would have ranked him #36 or 64 or 397 if it were possible, but it is not. Damn mathematical laws and shit.

 

He didn't have to be. His teams did the basics so damn perfectly people couldn't stop them. Come to think of it, finding a way to get your guys to execute the simple things that well could qualify as innovative, couldn't it?

 

The main argument is we will never know if he could have replicated the success. Paul Brown gets some knocks because his teams eventually stopped dominating in the 1960s and 1970s. Same with Noll, Shula and Landry. What would have happened if Noll quit after the 1979 Super Bowl? Or Brown quit of his own accord after about 1957?

The fact is their legends get tarnished because they coached some bad teams during rebuilding seasons. Noll doesn't get enough credit (imho) for putting the players together that Cowher used to dominate in the 1990s. Lombardi turned around the Green Bay shitshow, and it looked like he could do the same thing in Washington, but we will never know.

A second argument (sort of) is Lombardi has no coaching tree of note. Forrest Gregg, Bart Starr and Elijah Pitts did not set the world on fire, though, Gregg did take a team to the Super Bowl ( a Paul Brown team). His assistants mostly had losing records as NFL coaches...Bill Austin, Norb Heckner, (sp) and Phil Bengston.

A third argument is Lombardi did not have a particularly good eye for talent. Starr, Hornung, Taylor, Nitschke, Gregg, Ringo, Taylor, Max McGee and others were already there when Lombardi went too Green Bay. He molded them into a superpower. He made some shrewd early trades ...getting Hall of Famers Henry Jordan and Willie Davis for next to nothing because they were glued to the Cleveland bench. He later drafted (or at least ok'ed the drafting) of Hall of Famers David Robinson and Herb Adderley.

However, the rest of his drafts rarely produced anything of note.

Of course, all of this, pushes him no further than maybe No. 3 all time....

 

Thank you...

The only thing my list says about Switzer is that I think he is the worst coach who has won a Super Bowl in the last 33 years.