Most Successful NFL Coaches in the Regular & Postseason
The NFL is a cutthroat league where coaches who don’t meet board expectations are swiftly axed.
With such a short regular season, many aren’t given much time to impress. However, a handful of legendary NFL coaches have amassed stacks of wins in the regular season and the true business end of each campaign.
Here, we’re covering the most successful NFL coaches of all time. To separate serial winners in the regular season from storied champions, the picks will be split into a regular season and a postseason bracket. Most have retired from the game, but there is one who can move up even higher by making good on their NFL odds.
Most Successful NFL Coaches in the Playoffs
NFL head coaches have to be able to wrangle the trials of the regular season to even make it to the playoffs. Still, it’s not until the postseason that legends are truly made.
With the Super Bowl considered to be an almost completely separate entity from the rest of the season, it’s the big game that makes all-time greats in the NFL history books. These are the NFL coaches who are the most successful in the playoffs.
Bill Belichick – 6 Super Bowl Wins
Working as an assistant and positional coach since 1975, Bill Belichick got his big break with the Cleveland Browns, taking the role of head coach and de facto general manager in 1991.
His time in Ohio was blighted by financial struggles, with him being dismissed in 1995 to take on defensive coaching roles with the Pats and Jets.
In 2000, he returned to the New England Patriots to eventually become the greatest NHL coach of all time. In 24 years with the Pats, he won a record six Super Bowls and cultivated the career of arguably the league’s best quarterback, Tom Brady, after picking him 199th overall in the 2000 NFL Draft.
His six Super Bowl wins as a head coach come from nine visits to the big game, which is also an NFL record. Of course, he had to guide his team to several playoff wins to get to the NFL’s grand finale. En route, Belichick amassed 31 wins and 13 losses for an almighty .705 win percentage in the postseason.
Belichick retired from the NFL in 2023 as the man largely regarded to be the greatest NFL coach of all time, with much of that legacy being owed to his imperious postseason record.
Now, he’s running things at North Carolina, so fans can still back him to be even more successful in the NCAAF odds.
Andy Reid – 3 Super Bowl Wins
Andy Reid isn’t the next-best in regards to Super Bowl wins, but the still-active NFL head coach has certainly laid down the gauntlet in the playoffs. Collecting a 10-9 record with the Philadelphia Eagles and an 18-9 record with the Kansas City Chiefs, Reid’s 28-17 playoff record is just three wins back of Belichick’s incredible tally.
His career as a coach began in the college ranks, serving primarily as an offensive line coach for four university programs before getting the assistant OL job with the Green Bay Packers in 1997. He had a few jobs in Green Bay, but by 1999, he’d done enough for the Philly hierarchy to be impressed and bring him over.
Over 14 years, 12 of which were also spent as the team’s executive vice president of football operations, he took the Eagles to the postseason nine times and went to the Super Bowl once. With Kansas City from 2013, he brought through Patrick Mahomes and is on an active run of an absurd five Super Bowl visits in six years, winning three.
Reid is 67 years old now, but still boasts a very strong team in Kansas City.
Chuck Noll – 4 Super Bowl Wins
Only behind Bill Belichick, Chuck Noll stands as the second-best head coach in NFL history regarding Super Bowl wins. Having guided the Pittsburgh Steelers to the championship in 1974, 1975, 1978, and 1979, Noll is easily regarded among the top NFL coaches in the playoffs of all time.
In 1959, his six-year playing career with the Cleveland Browns came to an end. In 1960, he joined the Chargers as defensive line coach, upholding defensive coaching and co-ordinator roles with the team and the Baltimore Colts through to 1968. In 1969, the Steelers handed him their top job.
He spent 23 years in the role, collecting a 16-8 record across 12 trips to the postseason. In the back half of the 1970s, he crafted one of the most dominant teams the NFL has ever seen. Noll put the Steelers on the map, completely u-turning their image as the league’s “lovable losers.”
Bill Walsh – 3 Super Bowl Wins
When Bill Walsh and his San Francisco 49ers were good enough to go to the playoffs, they were either next to unstoppable or a flash in the pan.
Across his ten seasons at the helm, they went to the postseason seven times. On three of those occasions, they won the Super Bowl.
Others ended in an immediate loss or, one time, an NFC Championship Game loss. Still, the turnaround to get to that level of play and his 10-4 playoffs record was incredible. With stacks of experience collected across many coaching roles in the NFL and NCAAF ranks from 1957 to 1978, the 49ers appointed Walsh to their struggling team.
He got to work immediately, changing things behind the scenes in the first campaign, which ended 2-14 again, and drafted Joe Montana in the 82nd overall in the 1979 NFL Draft. They missed the playoffs in 1980, and in 1981, they went all the way for the first time. To this day, Walsh remains among the greatest NFL head coaches of all time.
Joe Gibbs – 3 Super Bowl Wins
Also a serial winner in the NASCAR championship, Joe Gibbs went to the Super Bowl four times as the head coach of the Washington Redskins, taking the crown on three occasions.
His path to coaching excellence began in 1964 with San Diego State. For San Diego, Florida State, and USC, he’d serve as offensive line coach.
Gibbs moved to Arkansas in 1971 to be the new running backs coach, and then stepped into the NFL in 1973 in the same role with the St. Louis Cardinals. After a few years with the Buccaneers and Chargers as offensive coordinator, in 1981, the Redskins handed him their head coach job.
The team took time to adjust to Gibbs, losing their first five games, but by the end of his second season with the Redskins, they’d won the Super Bowl. They’d claim the 1987 and 1991 championships, too, becoming a regular force in between to amass the NFL coach a 17-7 record in the playoffs, easily ranking him among the very best.
Most Successful Coaches in the NFL Regular Season
Dominance in the regular season certainly showcases a different kind of success, but sheer commitment to the game doesn’t always result in a haul of Lombardi Trophies. So here, with the best NFL coaches in the playoffs put to one side, we’re looking at the most successful NFL regular season coaches.
Don Shula
A former player in the NFL and defensive backs coach for Virginia and Kentucky, Don Shula cut his teeth in the NFL with the Detroit Lions from 1960. He spent three seasons with the franchise, coaching their DBs and then taking the role of defensive coordinator. By 1963, the Baltimore Colts had seen enough to hire him as their head coach.
Over seven seasons with the Colts, Shula collected a mighty 71-23-4 record for a .755 win percentage. In this time, he’d go to the playoffs twice, losing to the New York Jets at Super Bowl III. In 1970, he began a new challenge with the Miami Dolphins, which would lead to his final career record as being 328-156-6 for a .677 win percentage.
Running the show from 1970 to 1995, Shula amassed 26 campaigns with at least a .500 record. He also made the Fins back-to-back Super Bowl champions in the 1972 and 1973 seasons. That 1972 season was the ultimate triumph of an NFL coach in the regular season, going a perfect 14-0 en route to the Super Bowl.
George Halas
George Halas did it all as the creator of the Bears franchise and a co-founder of the NFL. He was a player, an executive, and repeatedly the team’s coach. With a record of 318-148-31, he won only ten fewer games than Don Shula and put up a marginally higher win percentage of .682.
Halas’ stints as head coach were sporadic, to say the least. He took the role from 1920 to 1929, 1933 to 1942, 1946 to 1955, and 1958 to 1967, meaning that he coached in five decades of the NFL. In that time, “Papa Bear” guided his team to eight NFL Championships before the league merger and the first Super Bowl played in the 1966 season.
A legendary figure in the history of professional sport, the Bears franchise, and the founding of the NFL, Halas’ massive haul of wins and high win percentage is what lands him among the best NFL coaches in the regular season of all time. He also helped to popularise the T-formation, using it to great effect in his 73-0 championship win in 1940.
Tom Landry
Creator of the 4-3 defence, Tom Landry was originally on the roster of the AAFC’s New York Yankees in 1949. By 1950, he was in the pre-merger NFL with the New York Giants. After six seasons on the field, he moved to the sideline as the team’s defensive co-ordinator, impressing enough to get the call from the Dallas Cowboys in 1960.
His first head coach role would be his last, and it’d run for a colossal 29 years. In that time, he’d cement the Cowboys as a colossus in the sport, riding a 20-season winning record streak. By the end of his time in Dallas, Landry collected a 250-162-6 record for a .607 win percentage.
On top of being one of the NFL coaches with the most regular-season wins, he also enjoyed a tremendous amount of postseason success. He took the Cowboys to the pre-merger NFL Championship Game twice and the Super Bowl five times, taking the title twice.
Curly Lambeau
While continuing to call his number for the Green Bay Packers, Curly Lambeau created one of the most dominant pre-merger NFL teams around. A player from 1919 to 1929 and the team’s head coach from 1921 to 1949, Lambeau won six championships with the Packers alone.
In 30 years as a head coach, Lambeau collected 209 wins, 104 losses, and 21 ties. After Green Bay, he tried his hand at turning around the Chicago Cardinals and Washington Redskins in the early 1950s, but struggled.
Bundling his record from those stints with his time with the Packers, his regular-season record stood at 226-132-22 for a .631 win percentage. He boasts a tremendous legacy in the history of professional sport, and fans are reminded of it weekly during the season with the home of the Packers, Lambeau Field, named in his honour.
Marty Schottenheimer
Finishing on a tidy 200 wins, Marty Schottenheimer just pips Paul Brown on this list of the most successful NFL coaches in the regular season. Brown finished with a 213-104-9 and .672 record, but – not to take away from Brown’s achievements – Schottenheimer made his way in far more disadvantageous circumstances.
Having been a linebackers coach and defensive co-ordinator across NFL teams from 1975 to 1979, the Cleveland Browns would add Schottenheimer as their defensive co-ordinator in 1980. Amid the 1984 campaign, he replaced Sam Rutigliano as the head coach at 1-7.
They ended Schottenheimer’s first season 5-11 and moved to 8-8 and a playoff berth in 1985. Following three more playoff berths, he went to Kansas City, where he turned around their fortunes to create a consistent postseason qualifier, too. Time in Washington and San Diego built his final record up to 200-126-1 for a .613 win percentage.