One of my highlights of the seemingly eternal NFL offseason is Lindy’s Pro football preview.  I was flipping through the 2006 issue and noticed that the Patriot’s coaching staff had received a ranking of 10.0 out of 10.0.  For those of you not familiar with this publication, Lindy’s ranks every unit of every team, including the coaching staffs, on a scale of 1-10.  I’d been reading this publication for a number of years, and cannot recall ever seeing a perfect score for any unit, though this issue also ranked Peyton Manning and the Colt’s passing game a perfect 10.0.  This, despite, the Pats just lost its defensive coordinator to the Jets and replaced him with a relatively unknown and untested position coach.  Clearly this ranking was based solely on Bill Belichick.  Coincidentally, my esteemed editor (?) recently put out his power ranking of coaches and has Belichick on the top of the list describing him as a “genius.”  Belichick would and should top the list of most writers based merely on the fact that his team has won the three of the last five championships, but is he really an NFL genius?  Is he the NFL’s Bo Derek? (Ten; for you younger people).

Belichick cut his teeth in the NFL under the tutelage of Bill Parcells, and won two Super Bowl rings as the defensive coordinator of the great Giant defenses of the 80’s.  He then had a short stint as the head coach in Cleveland and was canned as the team left for Baltimore.  His record in Cleveland was 36-44 with one playoff win.  He is mainly known in Cleveland as the guy who cut Bernie Kosar, a local icon.  From there he took a job as defensive coordinator for the Jets under Parcells, and when Parcells left, gift-wrapping the Jet’s head coaching job for Belichick, he took the job for a day before jumping ship to the Patriots.  His record in his first year at Foxboro was 5-11, but he won the Super Bowl the next year in large part due to the generosity of the refs using the now infamous tuck rule, a blight to any true football fan.  Since then his teams have soared winning two of the next four Super Bowls and setting the record for the longest winning streak in NFL history.

Without question, Belichick is a very good defensive coach.  Despite his losing record in Cleveland, his defenses there were always tough as were his defenses with the Jets and Pats.  Those Browns were lacking offense, first with an aging Bernie Kosar and later with a not yet ripened Vinnie Testaverde.  Those defenses could not overcome the shortcomings of the offenses, and I doubt that anyone would have described Belichick as a genius then.  The Patriots of the past few years also have had tough defenses, but those defenses cannot be credited with winning the Super Bowls or setting the record for consecutive wins.  The credit for those accomplishments should go to the offense, in the person of Tom Brady.

I have heard it said that Parcells never won a Super Bowl without Belichick.  Well, Belichick never won anything without Brady.  His best decision as a coach was not replacing Brady with a healthy Drew Bledsoe following Bledsoe’s near fatal encounter with Mo Lewis.  I have been watching football since the mid 70’s.  The Steelers are my team, and I have watched them beat and get beaten by all the great QB’s of the day.  Brady is better than Marino; better than Elway; better even than his idol Montana.  His late drives secured every Super Bowl win as well as the “tuck rule” game.  He single handedly could have and probably should have put his team in the Super Bowl last year despite the Patriots’ less than mediocre defense.  Watching this offense, one gets the feeling that it can score at will.  The credit for this goes to Brady and his previous coordinator Charlie Weiss.  If there was a coaching genius on the Patriots, it was Weiss, whose spread offense launched Brady, the Patriots, and now Notre Dame.

One might argue that Belichick’s defensive game plans throttled some of the most high powered offenses in recent history, for example, Buffalo’s K gun in 1990, the Rams’ Greatest Show on Turf in 2001, and of course the annual whipping of Peyton Manning in 2003 and 2004.  I would argue that if Scott Norwood had been a few inches to the left, or if Mike Martz had run Marshall Faulk instead of insisting on throwing into the teeth of a defense waiting for the pass, that nobody would remember those defensive game plans.  As for Peyton Manning, well the Steelers showed that he can be beaten fairly easily in the playoffs, even without home field advantage or icing the field.

If you wanted to start an expansion team, would Belichick be your first choice as coach?  I would take Parcells, Marty Schottenheimer, Mike Holmgren, or Bill Cowher over Belichick.  The first three have each built multiple teams into winners.  Cowher built a winner on a single team, but his rosters have been turned over several times during his tenure and he continues to win, even without a star quarterback.  In time, Belichick will be viewed like the NFL’s last “genius”, Mike Shanahan.  Shanahan rocketed to coaching stardom on the coattails of Elway, but after Elway’s retirement, Shanahan did not win a playoff game until his team beat the Pats last year.  Without Brady, Belichick would meet a similar fate.

That said, here is my list of the most overrated NFL coaches:

1. Bill Belichick.  See above.

2. Jeff Fisher.  Like Belichick and Shanahan, his success was tied to the development of Steve McNair and to a lesser extent, Eddie George.  Without either of them, he is a losing coach.  Now with Vince Young and LenDale White, he may get another chance if he lasts that long.

3. Mike Shanahan.  See above.

4. John Gruden.  I view him as a Barry Switzer or George Seifert type.  They each inherited great teams and won the big one, then stunk afterward.  In Gruden’s case, his team did not win it the year before, and he is credited with getting Tampa Bay over the hump, but how hard can it be to beat the team whose offense you designed?  I recall pundits calling his team one of the greatest ever, but it fell apart the next year, and Gruden has been struggling to rebuild for the past three years.

5. Andy Reid.  Another coach whose success is tied to one player, McNabb.  We got a taste of Philly without McNabb last year, and it wasn’t good.  At least he can be given the credit for developing his star QB.

6. Brian Billick.  He really cannot be considered overrated because he was almost fired last year, but his entire reputation is based on his Super Bowl win which was due to Marvin Lewis’s defense, not his inept offense.  This is a supposed offensive guru known for developing quarterbacks, who is now on his 7^th starting quarterback.  His hand picked quarterback is a bust, and his team’s current savior was developed on another team.

7. Tony Dungy.  I hate to call him overrated because he is such a class act, but like Billick, his team’s success is due to the offense, not the defense which is his specialty.   The defense he built in Tampa did eventually win the Super Bowl, though for another coach.