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The NFL's Most Valuable Coaches
Tom Van Riper, 09.03.08, 6:00 PM ET
Naturally, National Football League owners love their post-season revenue, so they'll resort to most anything to build a winner, including luring big-name coaches with lucrative contract offers.
Does it work? Not always. The Washington Commanders tried a few years ago with a $5 million annual contract to bring back Joe Gibbs, the architect of their 1980s and early '90s glory years. The move was pretty much a flop; Gibbs went 30-34 in four seasons before giving way to Jim Zorn this year.
Just barely more successful was the Dallas Cowboys' 2003 hiring of Bill Parcells, a two-time Super Bowl winner, to a four-year, $17 million deal. Parcells improved the Cowboys, who had gone 5-11 for three straight years before his arrival. But an overall 34-30 mark wasn't quite the dividend the club was looking for on one of the league's biggest contracts.
In Pictures: The NFL's 10 Most Valuable Coaches
Plenty of highly paid coaches have earned their keep, though.
To determine which NFL coaches provide their teams with the most bang for the buck, we measured each coach's average salary during his tenure with his current team against the degree to which he improved his team's regular season and post-season performances relative to the club's previous five seasons. We awarded one point for each additional regular-season win the coach has averaged, two points for each additional playoff appearance, and a three-point bonus for a Super Bowl title.
To see which coaches provided the biggest boosts for the least money, we divided each one's total points into his average salary. To avoid having the results skewed by short-term performance, we omitted first- and second-year coaches.
The results, perhaps unsurprisingly, show that those coaches who have been the most successful overall tend to also be the most successful for the money. Leading the list are New England's Bill Belichick (over 11 wins per season; three Super Bowl titles since 2000) and Indianapolis' Tony Dungy (12 wins a year; six straight playoff appearances, including a Super Bowl win, since 2002).
Both have averaged just over $3 million annually in salary since joining their clubs--toward the high end of the coaching fraternity but still a relative pittance, considering their results on the field. Dungy and Belichick have recently been rewarded, landing extensions that now pay each over $5 million annually.
Other Super Bowl winning coaches who land in the top 10 are Denver's Mike Shanahan, a two-time winner, and the New York Giants' Tom Coughlin, whose team stunned the then-undefeated Patriots in last year's game.
Not that a coach necessarily has to win the big one to prove he's worth his salary. Our top 10 list also includes John Fox of the Carolina Panthers, who has improved his club's average win total by three games a year since taking over in 2002. The team--just 1-15 the year before Fox took over--made it to the Super Bowl his second season, narrowly losing to New England.
Also highly rated is Cincinnati's Marvin Lewis, who since his 2003 debut has more than doubled his team's average annual win total to just over eight games a year, and Jacksonville's Jack Del Rio, who's gone 31-17 over the past three seasons while just recently escaping the rungs of the league's lowest-paid coaches.
Relative flops include Cleveland's Romeo Crennel, who's just barely nudged his team's regular-season record upward in three seasons while failing to make the playoffs, and Tampa Bay's John Gruden, who, despite a 2003 Super Bowl win, has averaged an 8-8 record with three playoff appearances in six seasons, worse than the 10 wins a year and four post-season appearances the club managed over the previous five seasons under--guess who?--Dungy.
In their thirst for post-season money, some owners have shown a willingness to go through coaches as quickly as Madonna goes through men. Five of the league's 32 head coaches are new this year, while only four have tenures that pre-date 2000. But recent history shows that itchy trigger fingers are rarely the answer. Only two of the 10 coaches on our Most Valuable list (Dungy and Seattle's Mike Holmgren) had a winning record during his first year on the job. There's the matter of hiring the right coach, but there's also the matter of giving him time to grow. Patience can indeed be a virtue, even in the NFL.
In Pictures: The NFL's 10 Most Valuable Coaches
Link
The NFL's Most Valuable Coaches
Tom Van Riper, 09.03.08, 6:00 PM ET
Naturally, National Football League owners love their post-season revenue, so they'll resort to most anything to build a winner, including luring big-name coaches with lucrative contract offers.
Does it work? Not always. The Washington Commanders tried a few years ago with a $5 million annual contract to bring back Joe Gibbs, the architect of their 1980s and early '90s glory years. The move was pretty much a flop; Gibbs went 30-34 in four seasons before giving way to Jim Zorn this year.
Just barely more successful was the Dallas Cowboys' 2003 hiring of Bill Parcells, a two-time Super Bowl winner, to a four-year, $17 million deal. Parcells improved the Cowboys, who had gone 5-11 for three straight years before his arrival. But an overall 34-30 mark wasn't quite the dividend the club was looking for on one of the league's biggest contracts.
In Pictures: The NFL's 10 Most Valuable Coaches
Plenty of highly paid coaches have earned their keep, though.
To determine which NFL coaches provide their teams with the most bang for the buck, we measured each coach's average salary during his tenure with his current team against the degree to which he improved his team's regular season and post-season performances relative to the club's previous five seasons. We awarded one point for each additional regular-season win the coach has averaged, two points for each additional playoff appearance, and a three-point bonus for a Super Bowl title.
To see which coaches provided the biggest boosts for the least money, we divided each one's total points into his average salary. To avoid having the results skewed by short-term performance, we omitted first- and second-year coaches.
The results, perhaps unsurprisingly, show that those coaches who have been the most successful overall tend to also be the most successful for the money. Leading the list are New England's Bill Belichick (over 11 wins per season; three Super Bowl titles since 2000) and Indianapolis' Tony Dungy (12 wins a year; six straight playoff appearances, including a Super Bowl win, since 2002).
Both have averaged just over $3 million annually in salary since joining their clubs--toward the high end of the coaching fraternity but still a relative pittance, considering their results on the field. Dungy and Belichick have recently been rewarded, landing extensions that now pay each over $5 million annually.
Other Super Bowl winning coaches who land in the top 10 are Denver's Mike Shanahan, a two-time winner, and the New York Giants' Tom Coughlin, whose team stunned the then-undefeated Patriots in last year's game.
Not that a coach necessarily has to win the big one to prove he's worth his salary. Our top 10 list also includes John Fox of the Carolina Panthers, who has improved his club's average win total by three games a year since taking over in 2002. The team--just 1-15 the year before Fox took over--made it to the Super Bowl his second season, narrowly losing to New England.
Also highly rated is Cincinnati's Marvin Lewis, who since his 2003 debut has more than doubled his team's average annual win total to just over eight games a year, and Jacksonville's Jack Del Rio, who's gone 31-17 over the past three seasons while just recently escaping the rungs of the league's lowest-paid coaches.
Relative flops include Cleveland's Romeo Crennel, who's just barely nudged his team's regular-season record upward in three seasons while failing to make the playoffs, and Tampa Bay's John Gruden, who, despite a 2003 Super Bowl win, has averaged an 8-8 record with three playoff appearances in six seasons, worse than the 10 wins a year and four post-season appearances the club managed over the previous five seasons under--guess who?--Dungy.
In their thirst for post-season money, some owners have shown a willingness to go through coaches as quickly as Madonna goes through men. Five of the league's 32 head coaches are new this year, while only four have tenures that pre-date 2000. But recent history shows that itchy trigger fingers are rarely the answer. Only two of the 10 coaches on our Most Valuable list (Dungy and Seattle's Mike Holmgren) had a winning record during his first year on the job. There's the matter of hiring the right coach, but there's also the matter of giving him time to grow. Patience can indeed be a virtue, even in the NFL.
In Pictures: The NFL's 10 Most Valuable Coaches