Do-It-All NFL Coaches a Dying Breed

It wasn't very long ago that the position of "head coach" in the National Football League came with more than just coaching.

Successful, veteran head coaches in the league were able to wrestle away total control of their organizations. Other coaches, like former Green Bay head man Mike Sherman, were able to get that control without experiencing a lot of success as head coaches. They did so with varying degrees of success in the "coach/GM" role. After years of this trend building in the NFL, it appears franchises are moving in the other direction.

Only Philadelphia's Andy Reid remains as the sole head of his team's football operations. Other teams -- namely New England and San Francisco -- still lean that direction. Bill Belichick is the guy in New England, but he had Scott Pioli helping him before, and Floyd Reese now. Mike Singletary has control of personnel decisions with the 49ers, but they still employ a general manager (Scot McGloughan).

While this makes it seem as if no other coaches have say in the moves made by their general managers, this isn't totally true. Single-coach power may have gone out of style, but it's been replaced by a new, more harmonious system.

Teams like Denver, Dallas, New Orleans, Tennessee, and the Jets all have appointed personnel heads that are "above" the teams' head coaches. One of those teams (Denver) just moved in this direction after having a head coach who possessed total control for many years (Mike Shanahan). That said, the men who coach these teams do possess some power.

Instead of a coach negotiating a contract, or the general manager walking into the coach's office and declaring that the team was going to sign a specific player, the job is done in tandem. Granted, the general manager has the final say on a player, he has made that call with input from the head coach.

This is likely the best way for the system to work nowadays. The burdens of trying to find players and negotiate contracts became too much for good men like Sherman to handle. Not only is it a lot of work, but coaches can sometimes struggle to separate the two roles when dealing with players.

Nearly everything in the NFL is cyclical. Some really good teams are always really good (lately, it's been franchises like New England, Indianapolis, and Pittsburgh topping the consistency charts). Others come and go, as evidenced by Atlanta's inability to string together back-to-back winning seasons at any point in their 43 years as an NFL franchise. The proverbial "window of opportunity" for a team doesn't stay open as long as it used to in most cases.

Similarly, it seems that the star power carried by coaches seems to come and go. While there are some big names among NFL head coaches, teams have -- for now -- moved away from the one-man power structure.

Don't expect it to last long. Bill Cowher, Mike Holmgren, and Shanahan are three names who will be available for hire in 2010. None of them will come cheap, and it's not likely any of them will take a gig where they don't have final say over personnel.

FanHouse's Nancy Gay and Calvin Watkins contributed information used in this story.