Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

Who was a greater NFL head coach and why?

Bum Phillips, easily. Although Dick Nolan gets bonus points for suiting up for the Cowboys while being an assistant coach. I would choose Phillips because he was so successful in Houston that he lasted 6 years before Bud Adams fired him.

Dick Nolan did pretty well at San Francisco for a while, but I would go with Bum. Those Houston teams might have won a Super Bowl if they were not good the same time as Pittsburgh, or if Phillips wasn't fired by the owner for some reason.

It would be hard to find two most similar coaches! Both made a couple of championship games in consecutive years and lost to the same team both years. Both later coached the Saints.

I think both of these coaches and their teams were upsets to get to two consecutive championship games in the first place. I don't think the Oilers were better than the 1978 Patriots or 1979 Chargers, but they wound up winning both playoff games under unusual circumstances. For the 49ers, maybe the 1970 team could have won the Super Bowl under the right circumstances, but that's only because there was no single strong team that year. 1971 team wasn't that good. 49ers were lucky to win three straight division titles, as the Rams were arguably more talented all three years, and beat the 49ers 5 out of 6 times from 1970-72.

I'll give the edge to Nolan because he had a better record with the Saints.

I think Bum went further on less talent; without Earl Campbell, the Oilers were probably one of the half dozen weakest teams in the league in 1978-79, but Bum won with smoke and mirrors. At least Nolan had Brodie and Washington and a decent running game and a good defense.

1970 was SF's best chance to get to the Super Bowl under Nolan because:

The 1971 Niners were 9-5 overall yet 2-4 in the Division, losing to each team at least once. Yet they beat the Vikings in Minnesota again,

The 1972 Niners needed to win five of their last six games just to squueze in as an 8-5-1 team. Their last regular season game against Minnesota also needed a fourth quarter comeback where they scored two touchdowns in the final seven minutes, including the game-winner with 25 seconds to go.

Houston got screwed out of a game in 1977 with a bad ref's call against Cincy. They might have been dangerous in the postseason, after winning four of their last five games, although their last two losses did come against Oakland and Denver.

Rupert Patrick wrote:I think Bum went further on less talent; without Earl Campbell, the Oilers were probably one of the half dozen weakest teams in the league in 1978-79, but Bum won with smoke and mirrors. At least Nolan had Brodie and Washington and a decent running game and a good defense.

I recall it being said Bum Phillips was the football version of Earl Weaver.

BD Sullivan wrote:The 1972 Niners needed to win five of their last six games just to squueze in as an 8-5-1 team. Their last regular season game against Minnesota also needed a fourth quarter comeback where they scored two touchdowns in the final seven minutes, including the game-winner with 25 seconds to go.

In their defense, the Niners had Steve Spurrier as their QB for the majority of the year. Going 8-5-1 in that situation is pretty good. The Niners even led the league in TD passes (having Gene Washington and Ted Kwalick helped). Towards the end of the year they defeated the Cowboys 31-10 at Dallas. They had the Cowboys on the ropes in the playoffs...had they won, could they have beaten the Redskins in the NFC Championship game? They did handle the Redskins in the 1971 playoffs.

Dick Nolan is the answer to a trivia question - which NFL head coach amassed the most losses during the 70's.

Dick Nolan played with my father on Maryland's 1953 national championship team. I got to meet him at a 50th anniversary celebration during halftime of a Terps game (along with other future pros like Ronnie Waller, Chet Hanulak and Bob Pellegrini), and must say he had quite the "bourbon tan" going by then. He could not have been nicer, and I interviewed him for a profile of him I wrote for Coffin Corner ("Dick Nolan: Man of Many Seasons"). Nolan inherited a solid core of veterans when he started with the 49ers in 1968 (John Brodie, Jim Johnson, Roland Lakes, Ken Willard, Len Rhode, etc.) and they had a couple of really good drafts in his early years that brought them players like Gene Washington, Bruce Taylor and Ted Kwalick. After their third straight playoff appearance in 1972, the veterans started aging and they had a series of lousy drafts. It went downhill from there.