GCMB Poll: Best NFL Coach Ever

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Circle City Gator

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The old NFL is basically like the NFC. So I'd say it's more like:

Lombardi ----> Five NFL titles
Lambeau ----> Six NFL titles
Belichick ----> Eight AFC titles

Only counting wins as a head coach. Lombardi was a head coach for far fewer years than the other guys though.

The old NFL was the NFL. The AFL only existed from 1960-1969. To pretend an NFL title was the equivalent of an NFC title is, frankly, stupid. Most years, the only professional football was the NFL. There wasn't another conference or league with other teams and half the best players. If a team won the NFL title, it was called the NFL champion. Why? Because they were.

Also, George Halas won 6 NFL championships after his all-pro career, and pretty much invented football and the NFL.

As for coaching trees, these are part of the Halas tree:
  • George Allen
  • Ted Marchibroda
  • Dick Vermeil
  • Marv Levy
Shula had the undefeated season and won with the Colts and the Dolphins, but the most dominant championship game ever, 73-0 over the Redskins. Walsh modernized the game with the West Coast offense, but Halas modernized it first, with the T-formation, daily practice, film, coaches in the press box, radio broadcast, and sharing TV revenue. The Super Bowl trophy is named after Lombardi, but the NFL Hall of Fame is on George Halas Drive. As a head coach, Bill Belichick won 5 NFL championships, and might win a 6th. Halas won 6 as coach, but 8 as owner. Halas is also the #2 winningest coach in NFL history, behind only Don Shula. He's #3 in winning percentage, behind Shula and Belichick.

I might not pick Halas to coach an NFL team today, but without him, I wouldn't have the option, because there wouldn't be an NFL.
 

Bernardo de la Paz

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The old NFL was the NFL. The AFL only existed from 1960-1969. To pretend an NFL title was the equivalent of an NFC title is, frankly, stupid. Most years, the only professional football was the NFL. There wasn't another conference or league with other teams and half the best players.
The NFL had 16 teams, 13 of which became the NFC and 3 of which joined the 10 AFL teams to become the AFC in 1970.

The two leagues split the 4 superbowls that occurred prior to the merger with both the AFL and NFL winning 2.

So yes, winning the NFL championship in the 60s was just like winning the NFC championship today, except that you only had to win one game up until 1967.
 

Bernardo de la Paz

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No he isn't. You are the one hung up on a marketing ploy when the NFL changed the name of their championship from the NFL championship to the "Super Bowl."
It wasn't marketing. The superbowl was an additional game added to play against another league. Like if hypothetically the SEC champion started playing the ACC champion and calling it the superbowl.
 

Circle City Gator

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The NFL had 16 teams, 13 of which became the NFC and 3 of which joined the 10 AFL teams to become the AFC in 1970.

The two leagues split the 4 superbowls that occurred prior to the merger with both the AFL and NFL winning 2.

So yes, winning the NFL championship in the 60s was just like winning the NFC championship today, except that you only had to win one game up until 1967.

Except Halas won championships before 1960, when the AFL was created. You're taking a very short snap-shot in time and trying to apply it across the whole history of football. The argument, at best, holds from 1960-1965, when the AFL and the NFL didn't play each other. Before that the NFL championship was THE championship, and after that the Super Bowl, whether between two leagues or just another name for the NFL championship, was THE championship. And to argue that the AFL was competitive in the early years is as silly as claiming the Super Bowl champion wasn't the champion of all football because they didn't play against the winner of the XFL or the USFL.
 

InstiGATOR1

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It wasn't marketing. The superbowl was an additional game added to play against another league. Like if hypothetically the SEC champion started playing the ACC champion and calling it the superbowl.

So the playoffs expanded, and if you want to you can credit runner up teams in the old days in the NFL as "making the playoffs." The playoffs IN ALL SPORTS tend to expand over time.
 

Bernardo de la Paz

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Except Halas won championships before 1960, when the AFL was created. You're taking a very short snap-shot in time and trying to apply it across the whole history of football. The argument, at best, holds from 1960-1965, when the AFL and the NFL didn't play each other. Before that the NFL championship was THE championship, and after that the Super Bowl, whether between two leagues or just another name for the NFL championship, was THE championship. And to argue that the AFL was competitive in the early years is as silly as claiming the Super Bowl champion wasn't the champion of all football because they didn't play against the winner of the XFL or the USFL.
Okay, let's talk 50s and earlier. Are you really going to argue that it was tougher to win a 2 team playoff in a 12 team NFL, than to win a 6 team playoff in a 16 team NFC?

Do you think the level of competition was higher when some of the players had second jobs and there wasn't anything like the salary cap to level the playing field?
 

Bernardo de la Paz

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So the playoffs expanded, and if you want to you can credit runner up teams in the old days in the NFL as "making the playoffs." The playoffs IN ALL SPORTS tend to expand over time.
They didn't just 'expand the playoffs', they merged 2 independent leagues and doubled the number of teams. The NFL championship became the NFC championship and the winner of that game got to go play in the superbowl.
 

InstiGATOR1

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They didn't just 'expand the playoffs', they merged 2 independent leagues and doubled the number of teams. The NFL championship became the NFC championship and the winner of that game got to go play in the superbowl.

Sorry, but no. The NFL championship became what it always was, the last playoff game of the season. That has always been the case. No amount of old NFL/NFC chauvinism changes that.
 

Bernardo de la Paz

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Sorry, but no. The NFL championship became what it always was, the last playoff game of the season. That has always been the case. No amount of old NFL/NFC chauvinism changes that.
No. The superbowl was created before the merger.
 

78

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Bernie wants an asterisk next to all of the NFL's accomplishments up till 1966.

Take that, Jim Brown.
 

Bernardo de la Paz

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Bernie wants an asterisk next to all of the NFL's accomplishments up till 1966.

Take that, Jim Brown.
:lol:

I really don't. And I also don't have any issue with people saying Lombardi is the best football coach ever. It's certainly debatable.

I just think it's hilarious that people think a superbowl championship today is the same as an NFL championship was 50+ years ago.
 

78

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I really don't. And I also don't have any issue with people saying Lombardi is the best football coach ever. It's certainly debatable.

I just think it's hilarious that people think a superbowl championship today is the same as an NFL championship was 50+ years ago.
Why would it be hilarious? Everything evolves to scale, doesn't it?

If everyone is that much bigger, stronger and faster now, then they were three-dimensionally less 50 years ago.

Except me. I still run a 4.3 to the bathroom.
 

Bernardo de la Paz

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Why would it be hilarious? Everything evolves to scale, doesn't it?

If everyone is that much bigger, stronger and faster now, then they were three-dimensionally less 50 years ago.

Except me. I still run a 4.3 to the bathroom.
Here's where I say to myself, "he must just be ****ing with me."

Do you really think it's as easy to be the best of 32 teams as it is to be the best of 12 or 14?

Never mind the fact that the money involved is 20x even adjusting for inflation and there is a committee that has spent decades doing whatever they can to even the competition.
 

78

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Here's where I say to myself, "he must just be ****ing with me."

Do you really think it's as easy to be the best of 32 teams as it is to be the best of 12 or 14?

Never mind the fact that the money involved is 20x even adjusting for inflation and there is a committee that has spent decades doing whatever they can to even the competition.
Did you forget the 14 NFL teams were split into two conferences back then? The two winners got in.

Everyone else went home.

Compare that to today's environment with wild cards and fewer teams in each division. Your odds are better.
 

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