Bill Belichick and the Patriots are now 3-0. That has increased Belichick’s career record to 226-113-0, for a 0.667 winning percentage. He moved into a tie with Curly Lambeau for fourth-place in career wins, and already ranks third in career wins over .500.
The table below shows the career leaders in wins; Belichick trails only Shula, Halas, and Landry in wins, Shula and Halas in wins over 0.500, and Halas, Shula, and Brown (among coaches in the top ten in wins) in winning percentage.
| Rk | Coach | Yrs | Yr-Yr | G | W ▼ |
L | T | W-L% | G > .500 | Yr plyf | G plyf | W plyf | L plyf | W-L% | Chmp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Don Shula+ | 33 | 1963-1995 | 490 | 328 | 156 | 6 | .677 | 172 | 19 | 36 | 19 | 17 | .528 | 2 |
| 2 | George Halas | 40 | 1920-1967 | 497 | 318 | 148 | 31 | .682 | 170 | 8 | 9 | 6 | 3 | .667 | 6 |
| 3 | Tom Landry+ | 29 | 1960-1988 | 418 | 250 | 162 | 6 | .607 | 88 | 18 | 36 | 20 | 16 | .556 | 2 |
| 4 | Bill Belichick | 22 | 1991-2016 | 339 | 226 | 113 | 0 | .667 | 113 | 14 | 33 | 23 | 10 | .697 | 4 |
| 5 | Curly Lambeau | 33 | 1921-1953 | 380 | 226 | 132 | 22 | .631 | 94 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 2 | .600 | 6 |
| 6 | Paul Brown | 25 | 1946-1975 | 326 | 213 | 104 | 9 | .672 | 109 | 15 | 17 | 9 | 8 | .529 | 7 |
| 7 | Marty Schottenheimer | 21 | 1984-2006 | 327 | 200 | 126 | 1 | .613 | 74 | 13 | 18 | 5 | 13 | .278 | 0 |
| 8 | Chuck Noll+ | 23 | 1969-1991 | 342 | 193 | 148 | 1 | .566 | 45 | 12 | 24 | 16 | 8 | .667 | 4 |
| 9 | Dan Reeves | 23 | 1981-2003 | 357 | 190 | 165 | 2 | .535 | 25 | 9 | 20 | 11 | 9 | .550 | 0 |
| 10 | Chuck Knox | 22 | 1973-1994 | 334 | 186 | 147 | 1 | .558 | 39 | 11 | 18 | 7 | 11 | .389 | 0 |
Halas started coaching (and owning, and well, lots of other things) back in 1920, so he’s really from a different era. But it’s interesting that Shula has more wins, a better winning percentage, and has more wins above 0.500 than Belichick, but I don’t think many people would say he was a better coach. I want to investigate why.
Shula has a 2-0 career record against Belichick, with those wins coming on the road in 1992 and 1993. But, of course, Belichick’s first run in Cleveland came when he was a much less successful coach. Let’s take a look at Belichick’s year-by-year winning percentage, through 2015. A fun note: Belichick has never gone 8-8 in his career: he was above .500 just once in five years in Cleveland, and below .500 just once in 16 (and counting) years in New England:
Let’s do the same with Shula, who spent the first seven years of his career as head coach of the Baltimore Colts.
Shula and Belichick have a lot in common — they both had perfect* seasons, one incredibly embarrassing loss as a heavy Super Bowl favorite, and long years of Hall of Fame quarterback play — but the charts above show some differences. Shula coached for a lot longer, and he didn’t have the bad early years. So let’s reconstruct the graph, in descending order of winning percentage by season, which will make it easier to compare the two. So both Belichick and Shula are at 1.000 for their best season; Belichick’s next three best seasons were all 14-2 (0.875), while Shula’s second-best year was 13-1 (0.929), 14-2, and 12-2 (0.857). Take a look:
Shula’s success is remarkable. Even if we take a favorable comparison for Belichick’s purposes and look at just each coach’s best ten seasons, Shula still wins. The Dolphins great won 84.4% of his games, compared to 81.9% for Belichick. And that’s not really a function of longevity: if you look at just Shula’s first 21 seasons, he had a 0.831 winning percentage in his best ten seasons (and his 14-2 1984 season that ended in a Super Bowl loss came in his 22nd season).
So, what do you think? I see four main reasons for why Belichick is considered the better coach. How much weight would you assign to each reason?
- Belichick won 4 Super Bowls, going 4-2 in them. Shula won just 2 Super Bowls, going 2-4 in them.
- Belichick is coaching in a much harder era.
- Belichick is coaching now (i.e., recency bias).
- Belichick is more responsible for his team success’s than Shula was for his team’s success.
What do you think?