Want your best and most overrated coaches? Ask for the Bill

Not so long ago during a telephone conversation with Bill Walsh, he was asked who he would rank as his top NFL coach in history (he had to exclude himself of course). There was a long pause as Walsh thought about the question.

Walsh's answer: No way I'm picking just one though clearly Walsh was enamored with his mentor, Cleveland's Paul Brown.

You were good Tom, but that hat was better. (Getty Images)

The passing of Walsh got me thinking. Where does he rank among the NFL coaching eternals and who indeed are the top 10 best coaches ever?

Of course you come to me for the answers and I have them. But we don't just stop with the obvious here at SportsLine.com. Noooooo ... also in this column are the top 10 most overrated coaches of all time.

So enjoy and don't blow up my e-mail box too badly.

Best of the best

10. Tom Landry: Twenty consecutive winning seasons, two NFL titles and 20 playoff wins but is penalized on the Freeman Scale for coaching an abundance of talent. All Landry had to do was stand there in his fedora and get the hell out of the way.

9. Earl Lambeau: Six NFL Championships and basically invented the passing game. He is more of historical importance than coaching genius and some football writers and historians rank him far too high.

8. Bill Walsh: Inventive, creative and probably a better talent evaluator than coach. Partially penalized because when you have Montana, Rice, Craig, and Lott –- just to name a few –- you're going to win a lot of games even if your name is Rich Kotite.

7. Joe Gibbs: Went to Super Bowls with three different quarterbacks and only Doug Williams was any good out of the bunch. One of the true tests of a coach is winning multiple times with different key personnel. I should probably rank him higher.

6. George Halas: Coached the Bears for 40 years. Let me repeat that -– 40 years! Just the fact he could stay in the rat infested cesspool that is coaching for four decades earns him a top 10 spot. Inventive and resilient as well.

Don Shula was famous for his chin and his perfect season in '72. (Getty Images)

5. Chuck Noll: Some old-time football writers have pictures of Noll on their bedroom wall. They worship this guy and what's not to like about four Super Bowl rings? But he should probably be ranked lower because when you coach Terry Bradshaw, Lynn Swann, Joe Greene, Franco Harris, Jack Lambert, Mike Webster, and John Stallworth, among others, your name could be Chuck Norris and you will win a billion games. No coach in history enjoyed such a talent surplus.

4. Don Shula: The achievement of coaching a perfect season cannot be understated. What Shula did might be the greatest single coaching feat in sports annals. The only knock on Shula: He was an average talent evaluator at best and never surrounded Dan Marino with great receivers.

3. Vince Lombardi: Five championships in a decade. The best motivator football has ever seen with Bill Parcells being second. My favorite Lombardi quote: "If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm." Awesome.

2. Paul Brown: Could easily be the best coach ever and one of the most overlooked when these debates arise. No coach -- and I mean no coach -- was more inventive than Paul Brown. He was the first to utilize IQ tests for his players, the first to use facemasks on helmets, the first to use messenger guards to send in plays, and Brown tinkered with radios in helmets long before they would become commonplace. While Brown had Hall of Famer Jim Brown, the Cleveland coach still did not have an abundance of Hall of Famers the way Noll or Lombardi did.

Only Belichick has held court over a dominating franchise in the cap era. (Getty Images)

1. Bill Belichick: I stated this on my Patriots camp package and here it is again:

First: Belichick did the impossible: he created a dynasty in the salary cap era. Greats like Lombardi, Brown, and Noll, among others, were able to keep their teams together because of the lack of a salary cap and more restrictive free agent rules.

Second: Belichick has been able to deal with the bad boy athlete as well as any coach in the modern era. Though there are exceptions, players in the Lombardi and Brown periods, and even into the Noll and Landry dynasties, mostly respected authority. The coach said jump and the player said how high. Today, in the era of Belichick, a coach says jump, and the player says "f--- off. I don't do jumping."

Third: The Chicago, Cleveland, Green Bay, Dallas, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco dynasties (not to mention the Jimmy Johnson Cowboy dynasty) were not ravaged by free agency the way the Patriots have been. Yet New England continues to win.

So Belichick has mastered playing under a salary cap, won championships despite the ravages of free agency, and got the me-athlete to listen.

Also, no coach with the exception of Brown, Walsh and maybe one other coach in history has been more innovative than Belichick. Some of his defensive schemes in Super Bowls both as a head coach and defensive coordinator are legendary.

And while Tom Brady might some day go down as the greatest pass thrower of all time, Belichick's rosters while with the Patriots have been more like Paul Brown's than Noll's. In other words, the New England roster under Belichick has had very good players but it is not overflowing with Hall of Fame talent, so Belichick has had to roll up his sleeves and coach hard to create this dynasty.

Sorry Marty, playoff failure banishes you to the ranks of overrated. (Getty Images)

Now comes the antithesis of Belichick: the top 10 most overrated NFL coaches of all time. Please send all hate mail to Gregg Doyel. Or Prisco.

Overrated

10. Marty Schottenheimer: Lots of wins but a walking playoff atrocity.

9. Brian Billick: The Ravens organization is one of my favorites but Billick has one Super Bowl win and struts around like he's a combination of Lombardi and Tiger Woods.

8. Tom Coughlin: Screamer tough guy who has become extremely mediocre.

7. Marvin Lewis: Known as much for the large number of Bengals player arrests than victories.

6. Norv Turner: Only once has he reached double-digit win totals.

That's right Jon boy, call someone about your wicked potty mouth. (Getty Images)

5. Jeff Fisher: Great guy but hasn't won big in years.

4. Dan Reeves: Didn't win a Super Bowl with one of the top two or three quarterbacks of all time in John Elway.

3. Jon Gruden: I admit when I'm wrong and I was wrong writing in a book that Gruden would win multiple Super Bowls. He's just become a sleep-challenged pain in the ass. And watch your mouth, Jon.

2. Mike Ditka: One Super Bowl victory and should have won two or three. Then almost single-handedly destroyed the New Orleans franchise with asinine trades. Plus, he drafted a guy who wore a dress and smoked pot 24/7.

1. Bill Parcells: Never won without Belichick, his long-time assistant, who was the true brains behind Parcells. While Parcells was a great motivator, second only to Lombardi, his miserable, failing stint in Dallas demonstrated his weaknesses. Late in his career, Parcells was more bluster than victories.