Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

What are some of the best team turnarounds in a given season in which a new HC had to take over during the regular season at sometime after opening day. Dolphins' new HC and the "you-never-know"-possibility of he suddenly turning things around inspired my starting this thread.

Not sure if this counts but Bruce Arians taking over for Chuck Pagano a couple seasons back.

The 1961 Oilers fired Lou Rymkus after a 1-3-1 start (despite the fact that they'd won the championship a year earlier with him as head coach). Under his replacement, Wally Lemm, Houston won its last nine games, then capped it by winning the championship. The AFL was kind of a marginal major league at that time, but still that's a hard record to beat.

In 1986, the Colts went 0-13 under Rod Dowhower, replaced Dowhower with Ron Meyer, then went 3-0 the rest of the way under Meyer to finish the year at 3-13.

It wasn't much of an in-season turnaround, but the 2-7 Bills fired Hank Bullough in 1986, and hired Marv Levy. Marv only went 2-5 the rest of the way, but brighter days were on the horizon.

In 1984, Marty Schottenheimer took over the 1-7 Browns, and went 4-4 the rest of the way. Three of his losses came in this fashion:

*In his first game, the Browns lost 16-14 to the Saints as time expired--on a 53-yard FG from Morten Andersen-in the rain and against the wind. With just over two minutes left, the Browns had just completed a 40-yard pass play that gave them first down at the NO 5. However, they got flagged for holding on the play, and had to punt.

*They lost to Cincy in bizarre fashion: with 1:08 left, they led 17-10, but the Bengals blocked a punt and recovered at the Browns 27. With seven seconds left, Anthony Munoz caught a tackle-eligible TD to send it to OT, and Cincy won it in OT.

*They lost to Pittsburgh 23-20 on a FG with five seconds left.

The Browns made the playoffs in each of the next four seasons under Schottenheimer, until Art Modell pushed him out the door