The other man to do it was Tony Sparano, who passed away unexpectedly yesterday. In one of the great turnarounds in NFL history, taking the 1-15 Dolphins from the worst record in football to AFC East champions in one season.

But even Sparano left Miami with a losing record. In fact, since 2001, Dave Wannstedt (31-26) and Todd Bowles (2-1 as interim head coach) are the only Dolphins coaches with winning records. Adam Gase (16-16) is the next most successful Miami head coach since 2001, followed by Nick Saban (15-17), Tony Sparano (29-32), Joe Philbin (24-28), and Cam Cameron (1-15). Along with Bowles, Dan Campbell (5-7) and Jim Bates (3-4) spent time as interim coaches in Miami.

The Bills have had 9 head coaches since 2001: Sean McDermott (9-7) has the only winning record, followed by Rex Ryan (15-16), Doug Marrone (15-17), Mike Mularkey (14-18), Dick Jauron (24-33), Gregg Williams (17-31), and Chan Gailey (16-32); Perry Fewell (3-4) and Anthony Lynn (0-1) also spent time as interim head coaches.

Meanwhile, the Jets — who had six different head coaches from 1993 to 2001 — have been the second most stable AFC East team since 2001. New York has had only four head coaches, but none of them have had winning records: Herm Edwards (39-41) and Eric Mangini (23-25) were both two games under .500, Rex Ryan (46-50) had a winning record until his final season, and current head coach Todd Bowles (20-28) has the worst record of the bunch.

Over the last 17 years, Bill Belichick is 209-63, making him by far the most successful head coach of this era. When it comes to regular season success, Tony Dungy with the Colts (85-27) is the next most successful, and after that, there’s another long dropoff in quality.

I looked at every head coach since 2001, and added 40 games of .500 play to each coach’s record with each team. This helps smooth out sorting by raw winning percentage, which would otherwise be biased by coaches who had great records over short stints. The table below shows the most successful head coach for each team since 2001. Here’s how to ead it, using the Broncos as an example. Denver’s best coach since 2001 was John Fox, who went 46-18 as the team’s head coach. If you add 20 wins and 20 losses to Fox’s record, he would have an Adjusted Winning Percentage of 0.635, the third-best since 2001 behind Belichick and Dungy. His actual winning percentage was 0.719. Denver has had 5 head coaches since 2001, and the Broncos as a team have won 58.1% of their games since 2001.

Only the Browns, Texans, and Jets have failed to have a coach with a winning record since 2001. For Cleveland, there’s been no successful coach: Robiski gets listed here because of his short stint, so adding 40 games of .500 play makes him look good! Butch Davis (24-35) is probably the actual best coach of the Browns since ’01.

The Jets, Dolphins, and Bills are all in the bottom 10 since ’01 in terms of most successful coach, and Miami and Buffalo are two of the seven teams with six or more head coaches since 2001. So yeah, it’s been rough for the three AFC East teams not in Foxboro for the last 17 years.

Not Don Coryell.

I’m no Mark Sanchez apologist. But that doesn’t mean he’s the only one to blame for the Jets’ passing game struggles.

The Supporting Cast
Jeremy Kerley, Dustin Keller, Chaz Schilens, Stephen Hill, and Jeff Cumberland are the team’s leading receivers. Clyde Gates has started two games at wide receiver. Kerley would be a great #3 receiver, but he’s the Jets #1. Schillens and Gates are best left as fifth receivers, while Stephen Hill is incredibly raw and has struggled most of the year. Keller would be a good tight end on a good passing offense, but is overmatched as the team’s #2 target. I don’t think anyone would disagree that the Jets’ receivers (including stone-hands Shonn Greene) rank in the bottom five of the league.

Mike Tannenbaum

Tannenbaum has come under heavy criticism from Jets fans of late. While I think much of that is probably unfair, there are several areas to point the finger at Tannenbaum — starting with drafting Sanchez in the first place. The Jets general manager listens to eternal optimist Ryan too much when it comes to personnel decisions, which led the Jets to start Wayne Hunter at right tackle last year and enter the pre-season with him, somehow, still entrenched at the spot. The Vlad Ducasse pick has been a bust, leaving Matt Slauson to cover at left guard (you know, when he’s not being rotated out of the game). Trades for Braylon Edwards and Santonio Holmes yielded immediate dividends, but have only added to the disruption in the locker room without helping the 2012 version of the team. Sanchez is playing with one of the worst supporting casts in the league, so the man who picks the talent certainly bears some of the blame.

Rex Ryan

There are very few head coaches who are excellent on both sides of the ball, but Rex Ryan is one of the most specialized head coaches in the NFL. He’s a defensive mastermind — no doubt about that — but he’s as helpless on offense as he is strong on defense. He vowed this year to get more involved in the offense, which should start sending red flags to begin with since 2012 is his fourth season as head coach of the team. To the extent that he has been more hands on in 2012, the results aren’t any better.

Perhaps Ryan is the mirror image of a Gary Kubiak, who took awhile to find the right man to run the other half of his team. But from the standpoint of developing a quarterback, Ryan may even be counterproductive. The red light-yellow light-green light system he gave Sanchez in his rookie season was Ryan’s first attempt to right the ship and a sign of what the coach expects out of the quarterback position. The bottom line is Ryan is focused on playing good defense and running the ball, and as long as his quarterback doesn’t mess up, he thinks his team will win. That’s not the ideal environment for a young quarterback to blossom in, and we learned exactly what Rex thinks about his quarterback when this off-season he chose to hire as his offensive coordinator…

Tony Sparano (hat tip, Brian Schottenheimer)

The former Miami Dolphins head coach did a masterful job his first season, turning the team from 1-15 to 11-5 and pulling down Bill Belichick’s pants on a national stage. Unfortunately, his Wildcat offense in New York has been the least imaginative offense anyone under the age of 90 has ever seen. Ryan hired Sparano because he fit Ryan’s vision of a ground-and-pound offense, but what about finding an offensive coordinator that would help develop his quarterback?

Chad Henne was the star pupil in Miami, and he was looking for a job after 2011 just like his former head coach. Sparano is a former offensive line and tight ends coach with no reputation for mentoring young quarterbacks. Of course, Sparano’s resume looks like Bill Walsh’s compared to the man actually responsible for the position.

Placed in the trusted hands of Matt Cavanaugh.

One of the least inspiring resumes of any quarterback coach you’ll ever see. Matt Cavanaugh’s first major job was as the offensive coordinator of the Chicago Bears in 1997 and ’98 under Dave Wannstedt. Chicago went 4-12 both seasons and ranked 25th and 28th in points scored. Wannstedt was fired, but Cavanaugh landed in Baltimore. In six years in Baltimore, Cavanaugh’s offenses ranked 28th, 24th, 20th, 25th, 27ths and 31st in Net Yards per Attempt. In addition to a string of mediocre veterans, Cavanaugh personally presided over the development of Chris Redman and then Kyle Boller. After it was clear that Boller, a first round pick in 2003, was not progressing — and the coach had earned the nickname “Cavanawful” from Ravens fans — he “resigned” following the 2004 season.

he then went to the Pittsburgh Panthers as Dave Wannstedt’s offensive coordinator in 2005; there, the dynamic duo named Tyler Palko the starter over Joe Flacco, causing the future first round round (spoiler: not Palko) to transfer to Delaware. In 2007 and 2008, the Panthers threw 21 touchdowns and 31 interceptions.

Which brings us to the Jets. Because Cavanaugh was on the Ravens staff, he received VIP access to the Rex Ryan coaching staff. I don’t know how much a quarterback coach is actually responsible for developing a quarterback, but even if it’s 1%, I don’t see what Ryan saw in Cavanaugh to make him the hire. Even worse, how has he stuck around on the team? After nearly four years, he is still the Jets quarterbacks coach. The man who chose Palko over Flacco and was fired for failing to develop Kyle Boller was tasked with the most important job in the organization. Even if you think expectations for what a quarterbacks can do, is there a justifiable explanation for why Cavanaugh was brought back in 2012?

Mark Sanchez

Sanchez isn’t very good and he’s never been very good. Sanchez ranked 21st in NY/A as a rookie and then 29th in NY/A in his sophomore year, which were the two years the Jets made it to the AFC Championship Game. Some Jets fans mistakenly viewed his 26 passing touchdowns last year — 9th most in the league — as a sign of something, but the real takeaway was that he ranked 27th in NY/A in 2011. So far in 2012 he ranks 29th in NY/A, and he’s had turnovers issues in each of his four seasons (which NY/A, of course, ignores).

Right now, Sanchez isn’t good. Period. The question I have is whether even a good quarterback would look good on this team, playing with these teammates and being coached by Cavanaugh, Sparano, and Ryan.