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I haven’t done a “list” post in awhile, so to kick off Super Bowl week, I’ll list the 5 most memorable NFL title games from the Super Bowl era. There were lots of great championship games played before the Super Bowl era began following the 1966 season, including the “Greatest Game Ever Played”, the 1958 sudden death overtime game between the New York Giants and Baltimore Colts. Some Super Bowl games were considered for this list but didn’t make the cut, like Super Bowl VII, which was historic since it capped off the Miami Dolphins’ perfect 17-0 season, Super Bowl XLI, when Tony Dungy became the first African American coach to win the game, and Super Bowl XLIII, the classic matchup between the Steelers and Cardinals won by a late Ben Roethlisberger to Santonio Holmes touchdown pass. This list, however, is made up of the games that are most memorable to me. Here it is, in no particular order:

1. Super Bowl I – it wasn’t technically a Super Bowl – it was called the AFL-NFL World Championship Game, and was played in front of a sparse crowd in the Los Angeles Coliseum. The NFL’s powerhouse champs, Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers, dispatched the upstarts from the AFL, the Kansas City Chiefs, 35-10. The game was carried on 2 television networks, and was considered mostly a curiosity since the NFL was assumed to be a superior league. It probably was at that point, but that perception would change a couple of years later. It’s hard to imagine today, but at the time it was astonishing to see teams from the rival leagues actually lined up against each other on the same field, which is what makes this one very memorable to me.

2. Super Bowl III – it’s pretty much common knowledge that this game changed history. The New York Jets, led by brash young quarterback Joe Namath, stunned the heavily favored Baltimore Colts, 16-7 to give the AFL its’ first win over the established league after a pair of one-sided Green Bay wins. The win by the Jets was amazing for a couple of reasons. First, they probably weren’t even the best team in the AFL that year, but they surprised the Oakland Raiders in the AFL title game to advance to the Super Bowl. Secondly, Namath guaranteed the win ahead of time, despite being 18 point underdogs.  Then the Jets went out and backed up the talk with the huge upset.

3. Super Bowl VI – this wasn’t a very exciting game by any means, but it’s memorable to me because it was the first championship won by Dallas Cowboy coach Tom Landry, who had led the organization since its’ inception in 1960 and built it into an NFL powerhouse. However, they developed a reputation as a team that “couldn’t win the big one”, as they continually failed in the playoffs. When they lost an error-filled Super Bowl V the previous year in a game that was clearly there for the taking, the pressure on Landry and his team grew even more intense. The Cowboys totally dominated a young Miami Dolphin team, 24-3, on this day to get the monkey off their back, and the scene of a smiling Landry being carried off the field by his players (pictured above) after the win is one I’ll never forget. Landry was one of the great men who helped build the game into what it is today, and it was satisfying to see him cement his legend that day.

4. Super Bowl XXV – being a Bills’ fan, this game didn’t end the way I hoped it would, but to me it’s still the best Super Bowl game ever played. It’s remembered as the “Wide Right” game, as Scott Norwood missed a 47 yard field goal as time expired, giving the Giants a 20-19 win. It is still the only time in Super Bowl history that the game was won or lost on the game’s last play. New England’s Adam Vinatieri won a couple of title games with field goals, but the games were tied when he made those kicks, so the pressure wasn’t the same. Norwood was put in a bad spot, since his history showed that he had a less than 50% chance of making the kick. In reality, the story of the game was the Giants’ ability to control the clock and keep the Bills’ high-powered offense off the field, just as they had the previous week in the NFC title game against Joe Montana and a powerful 49er team.

5. Super Bowl XLII – this game was historic also, since the Patriots came in with an undefeated 18-0 record and were favored over the New York Giants, who had battled just to qualify for the postseason. The Pats, led by Tom Brady, were an offensive juggernaut throughout the season, but the Giants somehow figured out how to apply pressure on him and succeeded in slowing down the league’s best offense. Unheralded Giant QB Eli Manning led a great fourth quarter drive that resulted in the game-winning touchdown in a shocking 17-14 New York win. That drive included the play pictured above, when little known backup receiver David Tyree made an incredible catch to keep the drive alive, cradling the ball against his helmet as he fell to the ground.

In an earlier football “list” post, I named my choices for the top 5 NFL head coaches of all time. This list is a bit different – my choices for the five most innovative head coaches of all time. Any of these could easily be included in the “top five” also, and would probably complete my top ten list. Here are the NFL’s five most innovative head coaches of all time, again, in no particular order:

1. Sid Gillman –  Gillman is considered the “Father of the Modern Passing Game”  as he first coached the high-scoring Los Angeles Rams teams in the 1950s, then expanded his legend as an offensive genius as head coach of the high-powered Los Angeles / San Diego Chargers in the American Football League. Gillman perfected the downfield passing game with the Chargers, and is mostly responsible for developing Hall of Fame receiver Lance Alworth. Gillman also was a pioneer of using film study to develop game plans, and came up with the AFL’s  innovation of putting players’ names on the backs of their jerseys.

2. Paul Brown – Brown is one of the biggest innovators of all time in the NFL, and is responsible for not only coaching but founding two different franchises – the Cleveland Browns and Cincinnati Bengals. He is credited with bringing many innovations to the game, including employing a year-round coaching staff, classroom training for players, creating playbooks, inventing the facemask and the draw play. The Browns started out in the old All America Football Conference in 1945, and when the AAFC merged with the established NFL in 1950, he led them to an upset win over the Eagles in the championship game in their first year in the league.

3. Tom Landry – Landry took over the expansion Dallas Cowboys in 1960 and built them into “America’s Team”, one of the best NFL organizations of all time. He coached the ‘Boys to 20 consecutive winning seasons, and as a defensive mastermind invented the 4-3 defensive alignment, utilizing a middle linebacker, which is commonly used today. His “flex” defense in Dallas was a variation of the 4-3 that gave players the freedom to flow to the ball, a tactic meant to counter Vince Lombardi’s “run to daylight” offensive philosophy. Landry also introduced the tactic of using “keys” to read what offenses were doing. Offensively, he popularized the use of shifts and motion to disguise plays, and brought the “shotgun” formation out of mothballs to help the quarterback read the defense on passing plays, another innovation widely used today. He was among the first coaches to employ strength and conditioning and quality control coaches.

4. Hank Stram – Stram, like Gillman, made his mark in the AFL, and introduced many innovations to the game, including using the I – formation and double tight end offenses, both of which are common in today’s game. He had a close relationship with University of Florida coach Ray Graves, and due to that association was the first pro coach to use Gatorade on the sidelines to keep his team hydrated. Stram was ahead of the rest of pro football in scouring the small black colleges for talent, in a time when unwritten “quotas” still existed on team rosters, and found gems such as Buck Buchanan, Willie Lanier, Bobby Bell and Otis Taylor.

5. Bill Walsh – a disciple of both Gillman and Paul Brown, Walsh made his own mark on pro football as head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, where he developed and perfected the “West Coast” offense that is popular in the game today. He was a perfectionist who believed in total organization, and popularized the “scripting” of the first 10-15 plays of a game, another innovation widely used today. Nicknamed “The Genius”, Walsh’s cerebral style of coaching wasn’t always popular with old school football people, but you can’t argue with the success he had.

Picking the top 5 NFL head coaches of all time was a difficult task, so difficult that what I wound up doing was splitting the list into two categories. There are some glaring names missing from this particular list, but that’s because even though those names, it could be argued, belong on this list, they were included, instead, on a future list of the 5 most innovative coaches of all time. Here are my choices for the best head coaches, in no particular order:

1. Chuck Noll – it’s hard to believe that a coach who guided his team to 4 Super Bowl titles in a decade would be underrated, but Noll never seems to get mentioned a lot when the greatest coaches are discussed. Those 4 Super Bowl wins, by the way, are more than any other coach in league history has. Noll coached the same franchise, the Pittsburgh Steelers, from 1969 until 1991, and the club was a perennial contender almost every year he led them. A lot of people don’t realize that the Steelers were  the losingest team in the NFL when Noll took them over. He completely transformed the culture there, from a team with a rough-and-tumble (some would say dirty) defense but a losing mentality, into the most respected franchise in the NFL.

2. Vince Lombardi – like Noll, Lombardi took a team that was a loser and built them into an NFL dynasty that dominated the decade of the 1960s. Although he didn’t match Noll’s 4 Super Bowl wins, Lombardi’s Packers won the first 2 Super Bowls, and 3 more in the early ’60s before the big game was played. Those Green Bay teams won 5 NFL championships in 7 years. Critics have said that anybody could’ve won with all the great players Lombardi had at his disposal, but I would counter that argument by saying that those players, like Bart Starr, Max McGee, Ray Nitschke, Jim Taylor, Willie Davis, etc. reached greatness BECAUSE of Lombardi.

3. Don Shula – he’s the winningest coach in NFL history, and his teams in Baltimore and Miami were annual contenders. Shula’s 1972 Miami Dolphins are still the only team in league history to complete a regular season and playoffs undefeated. He was a master of molding his teams into winners based on whatever type of roster he had – winning with great quarterbacks like John Unitas and Dan Marino, with journeymen QBs like Earl Morrall and David Woodley, and with a punishing running game coupled with a stifling defense like his two-time Dolphin Super Bowl-winning teams. Former Houston Oiler coach Bum Phillips once paid Shula this down-home tribute: “He can take his’n and beat your’n, and take your’n and beat his’n.”

4. Joe Gibbs – he recently came out of retirement to coach his old team – the Washington Redskins – and that didn’t work out well, but in his original 12-year stint as coach, he guided the ‘Skins to the playoffs 8 times and to the Super Bowl 4 times, winning 3 of them. His legacy is his ability to build winning teams without superstar players. His quarterbacks for the 3 Super Bowl wins were Joe Theismann (a “too short” CFL reject), Doug Williams (a flop in Tampa Bay) and the ultimate journeyman QB, Mark Rypien. Gibbs’ career is a lesson for NFL owners in showing patience, as the ‘Skins started out 0-5 in Gibbs’ first year in 1981.

5. George Halas – “Papa Bear” was much more than just a coach – he was a founder, president, owner – the face of the Chicago Bears franchise for decades. He won 6 NFL championships in 4 different decades, a tribute to his longevity in the game. It was Halas’ record for most career wins that Shula broke late in his career. He was a charter member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1963, and actually coached the Bears to the NFL title that year. The NFC Championship Trophy is named for him. Overall, he was a part of the game for 63 years, 40 as a coach.

This particular list is not a “best of” or a list ranking anything or anybody. It is a list of 5 NFL players whose contributions to the game of professional football were so unique that they actually changed the sport. There were 4 players considered but not included that deserve mention. Two of them are quarterbacks – Slingin’ Sammy Baugh and Joe Montana. I never saw Baugh play so he wouldn’t have made the list anyway, but he deserves credit for being an innovator in the passing game. He basically introduced the forward pass as a major weapon in the game. Montana perfected the offense that is a major part of today’s game, the West Coast offense.  Montana’s San Francisco teammate, Jerry Rice, revolutionized the wide receiver position, and Chuck Bednarik, as the last of the great two-way players, deserve mention also. Here are the five players, in no particular order, who changed the game of pro football:

1. Joe Namath – Broadway Joe did a couple of things to move the game into the modern era. He signed a $400,000 contract with the upstart AFL, which pushed the 2 leagues into merger talks, then solidified the credibility of the new league by first guaranteeing, then delivering, a shocking upset win over the Colts in Super Bowl III.

2. Deacon Jones – David “Deacon” Jones revolutionized the way defense was played in pro football during his career. He was the first to use the term “sack” to describe tackling the opposing quarterback for a loss while attempting to pass. During his playing days, the “sack” wasn’t kept as an official statistic, but in the 1967 and 1968 seasons he recorded 50 of them, an unbelievable total never matched since the stat has been kept officially. Jones, nicknamed “The Secretary of Defense”, also used the “head slap” on opposing offensive linemen trying to block him, a tactic that has since been outlawed from the game. He is, in my opinion, the greatest defensive player in the history of the game.

3. Jim Brown – Brown, as an NFL running back in the late ’50s and ’60s, was a physical freak of nature. His combination of size and speed had never been seen before, and he was a dominant force in the pro game during the 9 seasons he played, changing the way the game was played. Brown actually played the fullback position, which in today’s game is pretty much relegated to nothing more than a blocking back. Brown, with his size, is one player from his era who, if transported through time and dropped into today’s NFL, could easily not only thrive, but dominate. There is no question that he changed the game.

4. Pete Gogolak –  when he entered the pro game by joining the AFL’s Buffalo Bills in 1964, no one had any idea how much of an impact the Hungarian-born Gogolak would have on the future of the game. He was pro football’s first soccer-style placekicker. Before he arrived on the scene, kickers in pro ball were straight-on kickers, and usually played another position on the team, like George Blanda (quarterback) and Lou Groza (tackle). Gogolak introduced specialization to the placekicker position, and the game was changed forever.

5. Steve Tasker – in the late 1980s, Tasker joined the Buffalo Bills, became a terror on kick coverage teams, and revolutionized the “gunner” position on those teams. Tasker’s coach, Marv Levy, was a former special teams coach and made special teams just as important of a unit on those Bills’ teams as the offense and defense. It’s because of how Tasker revolutionized playing the “Bomb Squads” that today, a special teamer is added to the Pro Bowl teams every year, and for the first time ever, special teamers are being discussed seriously as Hall of Fame-worthy players.