by Chase Stuart
on September 25, 2016
Bill Belichick and the Patriots are now 3-0. That has increased Belichick’s career record to 226-113-0, for a 0.667 winning percentage. He moved into a tie with Curly Lambeau for fourth-place in career wins, and already ranks third in career wins over .500.
The table below shows the career leaders in wins; Belichick trails only Shula, Halas, and Landry in wins, Shula and Halas in wins over 0.500, and Halas, Shula, and Brown (among coaches in the top ten in wins) in winning percentage.
| Rk |
Coach |
Yrs |
Yr-Yr |
G |
W
▼ |
L |
T |
W-L% |
G > .500 |
Yr plyf |
G plyf |
W plyf |
L plyf |
W-L% |
Chmp |
| 1 |
Don Shula+ |
33 |
1963-1995 |
490 |
328 |
156 |
6 |
.677 |
172 |
19 |
36 |
19 |
17 |
.528 |
2 |
| 2 |
George Halas |
40 |
1920-1967 |
497 |
318 |
148 |
31 |
.682 |
170 |
8 |
9 |
6 |
3 |
.667 |
6 |
| 3 |
Tom Landry+ |
29 |
1960-1988 |
418 |
250 |
162 |
6 |
.607 |
88 |
18 |
36 |
20 |
16 |
.556 |
2 |
| 4 |
Bill Belichick |
22 |
1991-2016 |
339 |
226 |
113 |
0 |
.667 |
113 |
14 |
33 |
23 |
10 |
.697 |
4 |
| 5 |
Curly Lambeau |
33 |
1921-1953 |
380 |
226 |
132 |
22 |
.631 |
94 |
5 |
5 |
3 |
2 |
.600 |
6 |
| 6 |
Paul Brown |
25 |
1946-1975 |
326 |
213 |
104 |
9 |
.672 |
109 |
15 |
17 |
9 |
8 |
.529 |
7 |
| 7 |
Marty Schottenheimer |
21 |
1984-2006 |
327 |
200 |
126 |
1 |
.613 |
74 |
13 |
18 |
5 |
13 |
.278 |
0 |
| 8 |
Chuck Noll+ |
23 |
1969-1991 |
342 |
193 |
148 |
1 |
.566 |
45 |
12 |
24 |
16 |
8 |
.667 |
4 |
| 9 |
Dan Reeves |
23 |
1981-2003 |
357 |
190 |
165 |
2 |
.535 |
25 |
9 |
20 |
11 |
9 |
.550 |
0 |
| 10 |
Chuck Knox |
22 |
1973-1994 |
334 |
186 |
147 |
1 |
.558 |
39 |
11 |
18 |
7 |
11 |
.389 |
0 |
Halas started coaching (and owning, and well, lots of other things) back in 1920, so he’s really from a different era. But it’s interesting that Shula has more wins, a better winning percentage, and has more wins above 0.500 than Belichick, but I don’t think many people would say he was a better coach. I want to investigate why.
Shula has a 2-0 career record against Belichick, with those wins coming on the road in 1992 and 1993. But, of course, Belichick’s first run in Cleveland came when he was a much less successful coach. Let’s take a look at Belichick’s year-by-year winning percentage, through 2015. A fun note: Belichick has never gone 8-8 in his career: he was above .500 just once in five years in Cleveland, and below .500 just once in 16 (and counting) years in New England: [continue reading…]
Tagged as:
Bill Belichick,
Don Shula
{ }
by Chase Stuart
on May 21, 2013
Belichick checks to see where he is on the list.
Yesterday, I looked at the most pass-happy active head coaches and offensive coordinators in the NFL. If you’ve been a loyal reader of my previous posts on Game Scripts, you understand the methodology I’ve used today to grade each coaches. The quick summary is I’ve come up with the term “Game Scripts” to determine the average points margin over each of the 3600 seconds in each game; from there, I also came up with Game Scripts scores for each season. If you then take each coach’s pass/run ratio, adjust for the league average pass/run ratio, and then adjust for Game Scripts, then you can determine each coach’s passing identity. I’ve done this for every season since 1940.
The table below lists the 252 coaches I have in my database who have been either a head coach or an offensive coordinator for at least four seasons. I suggest using the search box to find your favorite coaches, but as always, all columns are sortable, too. In the table below, the number of HC/OC seasons includes all seasons, but the games, wins, losses, ties, winning percentage, and wins over .500 columns all include only the coach’s records as a head coach. The Game Script column shows each coach’s average Game Scripts average over each season, while the “P/R” column does the same for pass/run ratio. The next three columns are all indexes centered around 100. The “SCRIPT” column is the Game Scripts rating, the “PASS” column is the Pass/Run Ratio rating, and the Pass Identity column is a combination of the two columns. (You can read some of the other Game Scripts articles for more explanation). Based on his time in Green Bay with Aaron Rodgers, Joe Philbin comes in as the most pass-happy coach, but that number seems likely to decline the longer he coaches. George Seifert built his reputation as the defensive coordinator for the 49ers, but having Joe Montana, Steve Young, and Jerry Rice turned him into a pass-friendly coach. As for the next two men on the list, modern NFL fans need no further explanation.
[continue reading…]
Tagged as:
Bill Belichick,
Don Shula,
Game Scripts,
Paul Brown,
Vince Lombardi
{ }
