Andy Reid Reigns In Superb Group of NFC East Coaches

On Feb. 3, 2008, Tom Coughlin coached the underdog New York Giants to a monumental Super Bowl upset of the perfect New England Patriots, the NFL's first and only 16-0 team.

New Washington general Mike Shanahan, along with New England's Bill Belichick, is one of just two active coaches to lead a team to multiple Lombardi trophies.

Wade Phillips directed Dallas to the NFC East title in 2009, his second crown in three years with the Cowboys. Both that achievement and the subsequent playoff victory, Dallas' first in 13 years, came at the expense of Philadelphia and its coach Andy Reid.

But when rating the NFC East's quartet of experienced and accomplished coaches, Reid is still at the top of the list.

Of the 17 active coaches with at least four seasons in command, only Belichick has a higher winning percentage than Reid and not by much (.627 to .611). In fact, Reid has won a higher percentage of games during his 11 seasons with the Eagles than legendary Hall of Famers Tom Landry and Chuck Noll did during their coaching tenures.

Since he inherited a 3-13 team in January 1999 and turned it into a wild card qualifier in just his second season, Reid has been a consistent winner. The Eagles were 11-5 in 2000 and 2001, 12-4 in 2002 and 2003 and 13-3 during their 2004 NFC Championship season. Since the crash to 6-10 during the Terrell Owens-related fiasco of 2005, Philadelphia has gone 10-6, 8-8, 9-6-1 and 11-5 -- not as spectacular as the 2000-04 years, but still steady success.

Admittedly, Reid's public utterances have been known to cure insomnia. In 11 years of semi-annual conference calls with the man, I believe I've prompted one funny line from him. That happened in 2004 when he was on the verge of fulfilling his promise to join Owens in donning form-fitting tights if the receiver scored another two touchdowns. I asked the portly Reid what color they were. He paused and replied, "Chartreuse."

Reid is not an inspirational leader like Dick Vermeil, the only other coach to lead the Eagles to a Super Bowl, but his players respect him. Although Reid can be cold-blooded as shown in his recent decisions to cast aside longtime leaders Donovan McNabb, Brian Dawkins and Brian Westbrook, some players even like him. Linebacker Jeremiah Trotter, for one, felt more comfortable as a backup for Reid than as a starter for the Redskins.

As for the criticism that Reid hasn't won the big one, neither did Marv Levy and Bud Grant, who are enshrined in Canton. Reid's .556 playoff winning percentage is much better than those of Hall of Famers Paul Brown (not counting his work in the All American Football Conference), George Allen, Sid Gillman and Steve Owen. Reid has also won more regularly in postseason than Super Bowl winners Vermeil, Coughlin, Tony Dungy and Mike Holmgren (his mentor).

The next big test for Reid comes this season with the unproven Kevin Kolb replacing McNabb, the starting quarterback virtually throughout the coach's tenure. If the Eagles keep winning without McNabb, then Reid belongs among the greats.

So if Reid is No. 1 among NFC East coaches, who's No. 2?

That designation has to go to Shanahan, who led Denver to seven playoff berths during his 14 years. Not only is Shanahan, along with Belichick, the only coach to win consecutive Super Bowl titles during the free agency era, his Broncos ended the Patriots' hopes of three straight championships in the 2005 playoffs. Shanahan didn't win a Super Bowl without Hall of Fame quarterback John Elway and added just one playoff victory after 2,000-yard runner Terrell Davis was hurt, but the Broncos reached postseason with Brian Griese and Jake Plummer at quarterback and Mike Anderson and Reuben Droughns as their No. 1 back.

However, Shanahan, who can move into the top 15 in career victories victories with a .500 season in 2010, still has something to prove in Washington after going just 24-24 during his final three seasons in Denver. As mediocre as the Redskins were the past 11 seasons, they won two playoff games to Shanahan's one.

That Coughlin -- who's even more of a dour, tight-fisted disciplinarian than Shanahan -- is in the bottom half among division coaches, speaks volumes about the quality of the men wearing headsets in the NFC East. Not only does Coughlin have that Super Bowl shocker on his resume, he prodded Jacksonville into the playoffs in just their second season of existence. And the 1996 Jaguars weren't content just to be there, as they edged Buffalo and then stunned Shanahan and the heavily favored Broncos before losing the AFC Championship Game to the Patriots and Coughlin's former boss, Bill Parcells.

Coughlin's Jaguars went 11-5, 11-5 and then a league-best 14-2 the next three years but failed to reach the Super Bowl, getting upset in the 1999 AFC title game by visiting Tennessee. After three losing seasons and a year off, Coughlin took over the Giants in 2004. Like Reid, it took him just two years to turn a 4-12 team into an 11-5 playoff squad. The Giants won the NFC East in 2005 and were a wild card in 2006 and 2007 before posting the conference's top record in 2008, only to lose their playoff opener at home to Reid and the Eagles. But after the Giants started 5-0 only to finish 8-8 in 2009, Coughlin also heads into this year looking to get back on track.

That's not the case for Phillips, who has gone 13-3, 9-7 and 11-5 since being the surprise pick to succeed the retiring Parcells in Dallas in 2007. After all, Phillips, while considered a fine defensive coordinator, was just 16-16 in Denver before being replaced by Shanahan in 1995, and was foolishly let go by Buffalo despite going 29-19 in three seasons and reaching postseason twice. The Bills, 26-22 the previous three years under Levy, have had just one winning season in the nine years since while not making the playoffs once.

Other than three games at the end of the 2003 season when he was Atlanta's interim coach [he also served in that capacity in New Orleans in 1985] , the genial Phillips hadn't been in charge in seven years when Jerry Jones chose him for the Cowboys.

Three years later, Jones is looking pretty smart. Where Chan Gailey, Dave Campo and even Parcells couldn't win a playoff game in Dallas, Phillips -- who failed to do so for the Broncos or Bills (infamously in the 1999 Music City Miracle at Tennessee) -- has accomplished that goal and the Cowboys seem poised for even greater success in 2010.

Phillips, the son of former Houston and New Orleans coach Bum Phillips, might look like your slightly befuddled uncle but he knows football. His .600 regular season winning percentage puts him third among active coaches with at least four seasons, between Reid (second) and Shanahan (fourth).

That's pretty good company to keep, but that's usually the case in the NFC East, a division that has boasted such coaches as Landry, Allen, Parcells, Vermeil, Hall of Famer Joe Gibbs and two-time Super Bowl winner Jimmy Johnson.