Posts in this topic

[Phits]

Lets not get ahead of ourselves. As of today, he still only has one Lombardi trophy to his name (one less than Shanahan) and the same number of Super Bowl appearances as Reid, and his W-L record is only 0.555, which puts him behind both Reid and Shanahan. It would require at least three, preferably 4+, Lombardis to get HoF consideration in my book.

3-4 Lombardi's to even get consideration?? Don't let your hatred for the Giants cloud your judgement. Shanahan is not the coach he once was, and Reid's best days seem to be behind him.

[TGryn]

3-4 Lombardi's to even get consideration?? Don't let your hatred for the Giants cloud your judgement. Shanahan is not the coach he once was, and Reid's best days seem to be behind him.

There's 21 total coaches in the HoF:

George Allen 1966-1977 Paul Brown 1946-1962 Guy Chamberlin # 1922-1927 Jimmy Conzelman # 1921-30, 1940-42, 1946-48 Weeb Ewbank 1954-1973 Ray Flaherty # 1936-1949 Joe Gibbs 1981-1992 Sid Gillman 1955-1969, 1971-1974 Bud Grant 1967-1983, 1985 George Halas # 1920-29, 1933-42, 1946-67 Earl (Curly) Lambeau # 1919-1953 Tom Landry 1960-1988 Marv Levy 1978-1982, 1986-1997 Vince Lombardi 1959-1967, 1969 John Madden 1969-1978 Earle (Greasy) Neale 1941-1950 Chuck Noll 1969-1991 Steve Owen # 1930-1953 Don Shula 1963-1995 Hank Stram 1960-1974, 1976-1977 Bill Walsh 1979-1988

With few exceptions, you have to have won the championship multiple times and/or had decades-long periods of sustained success AND have introduced some innovation into the game to make it into the HoF as a coach. To cite an example, Jimmy Johnson also has two Lombardis but he's a marginal HoF candidate at best.

EDIT: Coughlin deserves a lot of credit for being able to adapt his coaching style to what NFL players require - the disciplinarian tactics that worked at BC eventually failed in Jacksonville and were failing with the Giants, so he changed and that's when they started winning. However, that doesn't make one a HoF level coach, either.