Throwback Thursday: All-Time Regular Season Coaching Wins

The sad passing of Don Shula on Monday has me thinking about coaching wins. The following are the Top 25 coaches ranked by their regular season wins.

Rank Coach Yrs Games Wins  Loss  Ties   % Titles 1 Don Shula 33   490  328  156   6 0.677    2 2 George Halas 40   497  318  148  31 0.682    6 3 Bill Belichick 25   400  273  127   0 0.683    6 4 Tom Landry 29   418  250  162   6 0.607    2 5 Curly Lambeau 33   380  226  132  22 0.631    6 6 Paul Brown 25   326  213  104   9 0.672    7 7 Andy Reid 21   336  207  128   1 0.618    1 8 Marty Schottenheimer 21   327  200  126   1 0.613    0 9 Chuck Noll 23   342  193  148   1 0.566    4 10 Dan Reeves 23   357  190  165   2 0.535    0 11 Chuck Knox 22   334  186  147   1 0.558    0 12 Jeff Fisher 22   339  173  165   1 0.512    0 13 Bill Parcells 19   303  172  130   1 0.569    2 14 Tom Coughlin 20   320  170  150   0 0.531    2 15 Mike Shanahan 20   308  170  138   0 0.552    2 16 Mike Holmgren 17   272  161  111   0 0.592    1 17 Bud Grant 18   259  158   96   5 0.621    0 18 Joe Gibbs 16   248  154   94   0 0.621    3 19 Steve Owen 24   270  153  100  17 0.605    2 20 Bill Cowher 15   240  149   90   1 0.623    1 21 Marv Levy 17   255  143  112   0 0.561    0 22 Tony Dungy 13   208   139   69   0 0.668    1 23 Pete Carroll 14   224  133   90   1 0.596    1 24 John Fox 16   256  133  123   0 0.520    0 25 Mike Tomlin 13   208  133   74   1 0.642    1

Coaches currently coaching in bold. 

Don Shula was very good at coaching football.

Bill Belichick might be entering the most challenging days of his coaching career. If he had a mid-career Tom Brady leading his offense, he'd probably chase down Shula's win record in less than four years. With the current state of the New England Patriots, who knows? There was a time when Brady was an unknown and the Patriots went on a two-decade tear. Belichick celebrated his 68th birthday last month. He's chasing time and a record.

I heard a talking head say that Shula had the disadvantage of coaching 14-game seasons for the majority of his career. That's not quite true. 15 of his 33 seasons were during the 14-game era. He did have labor issues cut into a couple of his 16-game seasons.

It's great to see that four of the top six coaches have winning percentages greater than 67%. Those four are also the only coaches to hit that mark among the top 25. Of the rest of the list, #22 Tony Dungy, at 66.8% approaches that mark.

There are a few coaches (Jeff Fisher) that pile up wins simply because they somehow dodge being fired. In 22 seasons as a head coach, Fisher won more games than he lost six times. Six times. In 33 seasons Shula lost more than he won two times. How did Jeff Fisher keep a head coaching job for 22 years?

You can tell which era a coach coached in by the number of ties.
Pre-World War II: a lot of ties
Post-World War II: few ties.