We’re ranking the 10 best head coaches in Philadelphia Eagles franchise history ahead of 2023 training camp
Philadelphia has a storied NFL franchise, but the history of head coaches reads like a list of unfinished business and mediocre shelf lives.
One of the gold standard organizations in the league, the Eagles only have eight coaches to win a playoff game in franchise history, with Doug Pederson and Nick Sirianni adding to the list over the past five years.
With training camp for 2023 fast approaching, we’re ranking the top ten head coaches in franchise history from top to bottom.
Our list includes coaches who coached at least 15 games as an Eagles head coach. In our book, wins and losses are essential, but not the only factor determining the ranking.
In this week’s Throwback Thursday, the Bears were shocked by the Dolphins, losing their only game of their legendary 1985 season.
Every Thursday throughout the 2021 regular season, Bears Wire will take a look back at some of the most memorable moments in Chicago Bears history that occurred on or near that given day.
December 2nd, 1985: Chicago Bears get shocked by the Miami Dolphins, lose only game of the season to end undefeated streak
When it comes to the 1985 Super Bowl champion Chicago Bears, there weren’t many blemishes from that special season. In fact, there’s really just one game that stands out in a negative way. I’m talking, of course, about the prime-time loss to the Miami Dolphins that ended the undefeated season.
The Bears were still without starting quarterback Jim McMahon, who had missed the last three weeks due to an injury, meaning Steve Fuller would once again get the start. But the matchup everyone wanted to see was the Bears’ suffocating defense against Dan Marino. Surprisingly, Marino won this battle in a knockout.
Miami decided to roll Marino out of the pocket more frequently to avoid the Bears pass rush and it worked to perfection. Marino was able to easily connect with his receivers and struck first, finding Nat Moore for a 33-yard touchdown. Fuller and the Bears responded in kind, scoring a touchdown of their own when the quarterback called his own number to get into the endzone. Unlike the Bears previous two games where they combined to shutout their opponents 80-0, they knew this one was going to be different.
Early in the second quarter, the Dolphins kept coming and took a 17-7 lead, putting the Bears in a spot they’re not accustomed to being in. By halftime, the Dolphins had this game wrapped up, leading 31-10. The mood was tense in Chicago’s locker room, with reports of head coach Mike Ditka and defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan going at it after Ditka tried to meddle in defensive affairs, which Ryan didn’t appreciate.
Chicago trimmed the lead early in the third quarter thanks to another Fuller touchdown run, but the Dolphins responded right away with their own scoring drive to keep their 21-point lead. Marino had himself a day, throwing for 270 yards, three touchdowns and one interception. It was the best performance a quarterback had against the legendary defense.
Though Fuller finally threw a passing touchdown later in the quarter, he was removed near the end of the game for McMahon. Fuller finished the day 11-for-21 with 169 yards, one touchdown and two picks. McMahon also threw an interception, attempting just six passes. The only standout offensive performer was Walter Payton, who accumulated 121 yards on 23 carries.
The Bears wound up losing 38-24 for their one and only loss of the 1985 season. To make matters more interesting, they recorded their famous “Super Bowl Shuffle” the very next day, despite some concerns about the optics coming off a loss. It turned out to be the thing they needed though, as they wouldn’t lose another game en route to their first Super Bowl title.
In the latest Giants Wire Throwback Thursday, we head to 1989 when Eagles QB Randall Cunningham unleashed a 91-yard punt against the Giants.
In 1989, the rivalry between the New York Giants and the Philadelphia Eagles was at a fever pitch. The Giants, led by head coach Bill Parcells, had won the Super Bowl three years earlier and were a top contender again after two disappointing seasons.
The Eagles, under head coach Buddy Ryan, had become a force in the NFC, winning the NFC East in 1988, and had designs of repeating when they invaded Giants Stadium on Dec. 3.
The Giants were in first place by a game with a 9-3 record. Philadelphia came in at 8-4. A win would give the Eagles sole possession of first place since they had already beaten the Giants, 21-19, at home in Week 5.
The showdown was on. The Eagles were ready. The Giants were not.
Philadelphia took an early 14-0 lead on two defensive touchdowns. The first was on a strip-sack by Reggie White and the second was when defensive lineman Clyde Simmons snatched a Phil Simms pass out of the air and then rumbled 60 yards to daylight.
The Giants narrowed the score to 14-7 on a 41-yard strike from Simms to Mark Ingram in the first quarter. Simms would get picked off again in the second quarter, which led to a field goal and a 17-7 halftime lead for the Eagles.
The Giants scored the first 10 points in the second half to tie the game at 17. Then this happened, as recounted by Frank Litzky of The New York Times:
Early in the fourth quarter, the Giants almost broke the 17-17 tie when Erik Howard sacked Cunningham and drove him into the Eagles’ end zone. The officials spotted the ball on the 2-yard line, making it fourth down and 33 yards to go for a first down.
Usually, Max Runager would have punted for the Eagles. But Cunningham, an outstanding punter in college, told Coach Buddy Ryan of the Eagles he wanted to punt, and Ryan let him.
It was a good decision. The ball sailed to the Giants’ 39 and bounced to the 7 before an apparently baffled (Dave) Meggett picked it up and returned it 9 yards.
Two plays later, the Giants gave up the ball again. (Mike) Golic sacked Simms and stripped the ball, and Mike Pitts recovered for the Eagles on the Giants’ 7-yard line. Three plays later, from the 2, (running back Keith) Byars squirmed into the end zone for the winning touchdown.
The Giants lost, 24-17, and sank to second place in the division. They wouldn’t lose another game the rest of the season. Not as much could be said for the Eagles, who lost to New Orleans in Week 15 to fall one game behind the 12-4 Giants at 11-5.
Notes
Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor did not play the second half of the game due to a “nondisplaced hairline fracture at the base of the right tibia,” an injury originally thought to be a sprained ankle.
Randall Cunningham’s punt officially went for 91 yards and is still the third-longest punt in the history of pro football. The longest punt ever was a 98-yarder by Steve O’Neal of the Jets back in 1969. That is followed by the 93-yarder off the foot of the Patriots’ Shawn McCarthy in 1991.
Only two other punts have gone for 90 or more yards. Don Chandler of the Packers blasted a 90-yarder back in 1965, and the Giants’ Rodney Williams punted a ball 90 yards in a game in 2001.
Houston Texans coach Bill O’Brien is entering risky territory doubling up as general manager. Here are nine NFL coaches who did so and failed.
In an earlier entry, Texans Wire took a look at nine NFL coaches who doubled up as their teams’ general managers, like Bill O’Brien has done with the Houston Texans, and had success.
Now, here are nine NFL coaches who weren’t so fortunate.
Davis may have been what the Cleveland Browns needed after returning to the NFL in 1999. Chris Palmer mustered five wins over the first two seasons, and Davis was brought in from the University of Miami to get the Browns at least to where they were in 1994, their last playoff appearance. After going 16-16 the first two seasons, including the organization’s last playoff appearance to date, the Dog Pound got hit with distemper as Cleveland followed up with a 5-11 record. In 2004, Davis went 3-8 before being fired midseason and replaced by Terry Robiskie.
The Mahomes, Ryans, Mannings and Rivers are some families that have seen fathers and sons have careers in pro sports.
Fathers and sons have dotted the sports landscape, most recently coming to the front as Patrick Mahomes watched his son lead the Kansas City Chiefs to the Super Bowl championship. How many dads have won titles and their sons and how many have seen their offspring win when they didn’t?
The Mahomes
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While Patrick Mahomes pitched in MLB from 1992-2003, he never earned a World Series ring. His son, Patrick Mahomes II, however, will receive a Super Bowl ring for guiding the Chiefs to the NFL Championship.
Mike and Kyle Shanahan are one of a number of father-son tandems to have coached or managed.
Mike and Kyle Shanahan are a father-son combo that has done well in coaching, for sure. There are many sons that have followed their dad’s careers.
Eddie, Scott and Sean Sutton
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The Suttons have held many jobs in college basketball. Eddie was the head coach of Creighton, Arkansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma State, and University of San Francisco. He has taken two schools (Arkansas and Oklahoma State) to the Final Four, and was the first coach to lead four schools to the NCAA tournament. Sean Sutton was a head coach of Oklahoma State University and Scott Sutton coached Oral Roberts University,
Eagles, Cowboys rivalry celebrates the 30-year anniversary of ‘Bounty Bowl’
History tells a story for all of us and in 1989, the top songs from that year included ‘Right Here Waiting For You’ from Richard Marx, ‘Miss You Much’ from Janet Jackson and Blame It On The Rain’, from Milli Vanilli.
During the 1989 NFL season, two heated contest between the Dallas Cowboys and Philadelphia Eagles shaped and helped define a rivalry that remains heated some 30-years later.
For these two storied franchises, the infamous ‘Bounty Bowl’ took place on this day 30-years ago, and it’s only fitting that the date is celebrated some four weeks from when another Cowboys and Eagles matchup will once again provide us with the winner of the NFC East.
On Thanksgiving Day, 1989, the 1-12 Dallas Cowboys faced off against the 7-4 Philadelphia Eagles at the old Texas Stadium.
In that ballgame, a 27-0 thumping by the Eagles, then Cowboys head coach, Jimmy Johnson, alleged that former Eagles coach, the late and great Buddy Ryan, put a $200 bounty on Cowboys kicker Luis Zendejas, who had been cut by Philadelphia earlier that season.
Ryan allegedly put a $500 bounty on Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman as well.
“I have absolutely no respect for the way they played the game, Johnson famously said.” “I would have said something to Buddy, but he wouldn’t stand on the field long enough. He put his big, fat rear end into the dressing room.”
There’s no love lost between the Dallas Cowboys and Philadelphia Eagles. 1989’s Bounty Bowl didn’t start the feud, but it sure deepened it.
November 23, 1989. “Blame It on the Rain” by Milli Vanilli was the No. 1 song in the country. Harlem Nights starring Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor had just unseated Look Who’s Talking from a month-long run atop the box office. The Berlin Wall had come tumbling down two weeks prior. A gallon of milk cost $2.34. A gallon of gas was just over a buck. And, at least on the visitors’ sideline of Texas Stadium that Thanksgiving Day, the price for laying out Cowboys kicker Luis Zendejas was $200.
Saturday marks the 30th anniversary of the “Bounty Bowl,” one of the ugliest incidents in team history, an unfortunate stain on the league’s rich Thanksgiving Day tradition, and one of the most notorious chapters in one of the nastiest rivalries in the National Football League.
“Why would I place a bounty on a kicker who can’t kick worth a damn?”
The Cowboys were a dismal 1-10 entering the Week 12 game of the 1989 season; Jerry Jones had just purchased the team in February. Jimmy Johnson had replaced the legendary Tom Landry as coach. The team’s best player, Herschel Walker, had been traded away a few weeks earlier, and Troy Aikman was nearing the three-quarter mark of his rookie campaign as starting quarterback of the league’s worst squad. Hosting its annual Thanksgiving Day contest was one of the lone chances that season for the struggling Cowboys to shine before a nationwide audience. The opponent that day? The 7-4 Philadelphia Eagles, helmed by coach Buddy Ryan.
Down by a 10-0 score coming out of halftime, Dallas kicked off to open the third quarter. Moments after sending the ball deep on his first kick of the game, Zendejas was leveled by Eagles linebacker and special teams player Jessie Small. Replays seem to show that Small bypassed several members of the Cowboys coverage team to get to Zendejas. Once there, he delivered a massive blow that sent the 175-pound kicker flying and left him wobbling as he tried to stand.
In today’s game, the hit would have drawn an immediate flag, resulting in not only a penalty for the Eagles, but a stiff fine for Small from the league. But on that day in Irving in 1989, it was- incredibly enough- Zendejas who was flagged, for a low block. (In retrospect, Zendejas was clearly crouching in anticipation because he knew a big hit was coming; more on that later.) And for his bone-crunching blow, Small actually made money- directly from Coach Ryan, no less- according to blockbuster accusations leveled after the 27-0 loss by Johnson and the Cowboys.
The first-year coach claimed that Ryan had placed a bounty on Zendejas, promising a $200 cash payment to the Eagles player who flattened the kicker. Zendejas, coincidentally (or not, depending on your interpretation), had been cut by the Eagles less than a month earlier and then signed by Dallas.
Ryan laughed off the accusation as absurd.
“Why would I place a bounty on a kicker who can’t kick worth a damn?” he asked, according to Mark Eckel of NJ.com. “The guy was in a six-week slump. I wanted him in the game.”
Zendejas had, in fact, missed two field goals in Dallas’s previous game versus Miami. He did not seem to be, at least on the surface, a dangerous playmaking threat truly worthy of the personal ire of the Eagles coach.
The Dallas kicker, though, felt he had proof of the bounty. Eagles punter John Teltschik had warned him before the game that he was a target for a big hit. But there was more.
“Watch out for yourself…”
“In the days leading up to the game,” wrote Ray Didinger in a 2014 piece on the Eagles team website, “a story circulated in Dallas that Zendejas had received an ominous phone call from Eagles special teams coach Al Roberts. According to Zendejas, Roberts told him that Ryan had instructed his players to go after their former teammate.”
Zendejas claimed that upon his release in Philadelphia, he had been notified by Roberts, not Ryan directly. At the time, the kicker took to the media to voice his disappointment, calling his coach’s move “classless.”
”Buddy didn’t have the decency to tell me to my face; he had an assistant coach do it,” Zendejas said of his termination. ”When I phoned to ask him about it, he hung up on me.”
Roberts’s warning for Zendejas to “watch out for yourself” on Thanksgiving 1989 in the game that was quickly dubbed the “Bounty Bowl” was just the latest evidence of bad blood between Ryan and the Cowboys. Ryan, in fact, harbored a hatred for the rivals from Dallas ever since taking over in Philadelphia in 1986. That hatred that grew exponentially the following season.
During the 1987 NFL players’ strike, Dallas saw several high-profile members of their roster cross the picket line to continue playing. Ryan accused then-coach Landry of running up the score on his replacement players in a 41-22 win. After the strike had ended and full-time players returned, Ryan got his revenge on Dallas. He instructed his starting offense to run a fake kneeldown play – after two actual kneel-downs – in the final seconds of a game the Eagles were already leading 30-20. The ensuing rub-it-in touchdown beat the Cowboys by 17 points. In 1989, Ryan saw a chance to kick the rebuilding team when they were down, in their own stadium and on national television.
But the notion of Ryan placing a price tag on the heads of opposing players wasn’t even a new one.
“Ron Wolfley, a Pro Bowl special teams tackler for the [then-]Phoenix Cardinals, disclosed [in 1988] that he had heard that the Eagles had a bounty on him during the 1987 season,” as per a 1989 New York Times piece by Dave Anderson. He goes on to write that, in an Eagles-Bears game that same 1989 season, “similar bounties were whispered to be on Mike Tomczak, the quarterback, and Dennis McKinnon, a wide receiver,” and adding, “Ryan, who has feuded openly with Mike Ditka, also supposedly had offered a bounty if any of the Eagle players flattened the Bears’ coach on the sideline.”
To be sure, the Cowboys were well aware of the bounty rumors when they took the field that Thanksgiving Day. And Zendejas wasn’t the only Dallas player with a supposed price on his head.
“He never used the word ‘bounty.'”
In the first half of the game, Aikman was slammed to the ground by Eagles linebacker Britt Hager well after an aborted-play whistle. The hit, despite broadcasters Pat Summerall and John Madden clearly being entertained by the “fracas” that followed, necessitated X-rays for Aikman. Johnson claimed the Eagles had also put a $500 contract on his rookie quarterback.
“As far as I know, he never pointed out a guy,” Hager answered. “I never heard, ‘Go take the kicker out.’ Who would say, ‘Go take the kicker out?’ That’s why we all kind of laughed about it.”
He admitted, though, that Ryan wasn’t above at least insinuating that opposing quarterbacks were fair game for his players.
Eckel explains, “Ryan would say to me after the fact that he would tell his players at times before games, ‘I want to find out who their backup quarterback is today.” But he never used the word ‘bounty’.”
Anderson adds that Zendejas himself “spoke of having seen ”Buddy call guys out and give them $100” for what the kicker called a weekly Big Hit award but what Ryan called a Big Play award.
“Ryan acknowledged those $100 bonuses to his Eagle players, but insisted they were for an interception or a jarring tackle that caused a fumble in the context of the game, not for leveling a certain opponent.”
But, Sabin writes: “At the time, Hager and the Eagles special teams and defensive players would collect a pool of money and redistribute it for big hits, ‘decleaters,’ sacks, and turnovers. It wasn’t an uncommon practice in the NFL during a bygone era when the league’s image was less sanitized and the game wasn’t as scrutinized. In fact, the Cowboys had a similar system, according to [Dallas fullback Daryl] Johnston.
“‘There was no intent of malice,’ Johnston explained.”
But to anyone watching the 1989 Thanksgiving Day contest, there was clearly intent of malice in the Eagles hit that left a diminutive kicker staggering off the field.
Didinger, the famed Philadelphia sportswriter, had a private film session with Jimmy Johnson at Valley Ranch several days after the Bounty Bowl.
“On the film, you could see Small take a straight-line course to Zendejas. He actually ran right past Bill Bates, the Cowboys’ best special teams player, to get to the kicker who never made a tackle in his entire career.
“‘Why would he do that,’ Johnson said referring to Small, ‘unless somebody told him to do it?’
“I had to admit Johnson had a point.”
“You all know what you were doing!”
The New York Times quoted Zendejas as saying of Ryan after the Thanksgiving Day game, ”If I could’ve stood on my two legs, I would’ve gone over and decked him… We’ll play again in two weeks. If I see him then, I’ll deck him then. Honestly, I will.”
Zendejas did share words with several of his ex-Eagles teammates when the Thanksgiving game ended. Small, in fact, was overheard by Didinger telling Zendejas, ”I was just doing my job.” The Cowboys’ kicker reportedly replied, ”You know what you were doing! You all know what you were doing!” An Eagles’ trainer offered his hand; Zendejas slapped it away.
Johnson himself intended to confront Ryan right there on the field after the final gun. But the Eagles coach hurried off the Texas Stadium field, skipping the traditional coaches’ face-to-face meeting.
According to Didinger: “It was true Ryan left the field as soon as the game ended, but he did that every week. He didn’t believe in postgame handshakes. Professional courtesy wasn’t his thing.”
Johnson famously said of the moment, “Oh, I would have said something to Buddy, but he wouldn’t stand on the field long enough. He put his big fat rear end into the dressing room.”
In his response, Ryan, as he did with most things, deflected the criticism with a joke.
“I resent that,” Ryan said. “I’ve been on a diet, I lost a couple of pounds. I thought I was looking good, and he goes and calls me fat. I kind of resent that.”
The teams played again two weeks later. It was not nearly enough time, though, for tempers to have cooled. “Bounty Bowl II” had become a promoted event, and it carried the animosity into the Veterans Stadium stands, with Philadelphia fans pelting Cowboys players, NFL officials, CBS broadcasters, and even their own players with ice-packed snowballs in one of the most chaotic game environments ever seen at an NFL venue.
On the field, Zendejas was left alone, and he never went after Ryan. But Aikman took several hits during the game along with Eagles quarterback Randall Cunningham; nine total sacks were recorded in a notably physical 20-10 Eagles win. Cowboys punter Mike Saxon was also roughed up during play, drawing an unnecessary roughness flag.
“He never truly admitted it.”
As for the initial Bounty Bowl accusations, NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue- on the job just one month when it happened- followed up by interviewing a handful of players. There was even talk of a recording Zendejas had supposedly made of the phone conversation where the Eagles assistant had warned him of the bounty, but the kicker never turned over any such tape.
In the end, according to the Dallas Morning News, “the league dropped the inquiry, saying it found no ‘convincing evidence of an intent to injure any Cowboys player or to make contact with any player outside the rules of the game.'”
The 1989 season ended with the Cowboys finishing 1-15, the second NFL team to ever do so. Their league-worst record would have given them the top pick in the 1990 draft, but the team had given up that pick by taking quarterback Steve Walsh in the first round of the previous year’s supplemental draft. The Cowboys eventually traded picks with the Steelers to re-enter the first round; they selected running back Emmitt Smith 17th overall.
The Eagles came in second in the NFC East in 1989 and lost to the Rams in the wild card round of the playoffs.
Ryan never admitted to a bounty system in the years that followed, maintaining that position until his passing in 2016.
Johnson, now a FOX studio analyst, recalled Ryan’s denials in a 2014 interview.
“He sloughed it off. He never truly admitted it,” Johnson said. “I think Buddy was trying to play games. I kid him, ‘You had one of the great all-time defenses, but you never won a playoff game.’ I had the last laugh.”
Johnson’s championships may have afforded him the luxury to find humor in it long after the fact, but the Bounty Bowl saga remains a seminal part of the lore of the Cowboys-Eagles rivalry any time the franchises meet. Thirty years of hindsight has perhaps turned the original controversy into just a colorful chapter from a distant era; nothing, though, has diminished the intense dislike the two teams have for one another to this day.
