Top 10 Giants coaches of all time
Former Giants head coaches, clockwise from top left: Tom Coughlin, Steve Owen, Allie Sherman, Ray Perkins and Bill Parcells
The Giants have had two Hall of Fame head coaches, five Coach of the Year award winners, and five who won an NFL Championship or Super Bowl. Of the 22 men who have led the franchise in its 100-plus seasons, here is Newsday’s ranking on the top 10:
10. Dan Reeves
Having been the head coach of the Broncos on the losing side of the Giants’ first Super Bowl win, Reeves came to New York in 1993 to replace Ray Handley and promptly brought the team back to the playoffs. His 11-5 record plus a wild-card win over the Vikings that year won him AP Coach of the Year honors, but he went 5-11 and 6-10 the next two seasons and was out.
9. LeRoy Andrews
Going 24-5-1 from 1929-30 gives Andrews the best winning percentage (.817) of any full-time head coach in Giants history. While he was abruptly fired toward the end of the 1930 season – the players revolted against him because he became tyrannically obsessed with beating Knute Rockne in an exhibition against Notre Dame – the Giants finished that year with a league-best 13 wins against four losses. The Packers won the NFL Championship, though, because at 10-3-1, with the league at the time disregarding ties as if they were never played and abiding uneven numbers of games played, their winning percentage was .769 compared to the Giants’ .765. It wasn’t until 1972 that the NFL changed the way it calculates ties, considering them as half a win. If that math were to be applied retroactively to 1930, the Giants would have another championship trophy.
8. Allie Sherman
Known mostly for the end of his career which was accompanied by fans at Yankee Stadium routinely singing “Goodbye, Allie!” to spur his departure and a 1969 preseason loss to Joe Namath and the Jets that led to the Giants firing him one week prior to the start of the regular season, Sherman’s eight years as head coach began with three straight appearances in NFL Championship Games. He took over as offensive coordinator in 1959 (replacing Vince Lombardi) and was named head coach in 1961, winning Coach of the Year honors in each of his first two seasons. His record of 57-51-4 gives him the fifth most wins in franchise history.
7. Earl Potteiger
An original member of the Giants since 1925 as an aging halfback (he was 32 at the time), Potteiger became a player-coach for the team in 1927 and led them to their first NFL Championship. That year, the Giants scored 197 points and allowed just 20 while finishing with an 11-1-1 record. The next year, Potteiger’s last, the Giants went 4-7-2 and finished in sixth place. Potteiger was also an accomplished baseball player and coach and might not have been available to the Football Giants had he stuck with the Yankees when he was originally sold to them in 1919. The Yankees reneged on that deal with the Worcester Baseball Club, though, after they acquired a different outfielder later that offseason: Babe Ruth.
6. Jim Lee Howell
With Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry as his two top assistants for much of his tenure, Howell joked that his job was to “just blow up the footballs and keep order.” He did that fairly well, winning the 1956 championship, appearing in two others (including the 1958 “Greatest Game Ever Played” loss to the Colts) and posting a career record of 53-27-4. Besides having Lombardi and Landry, Howell also coached six future Hall of Fame players: Sam Huff, Frank Gifford, Andy Robustelli, Rosey Brown, Emlen Tunnell and Don Maynard.
5. Jim Fassel
Hired in 1997 – just moments before Bill Parcells expressed an interest in returning to coach the team, it turned out – Fassel’s greatest achievement was born of desperation. In 2000. he staked his job on a playoff guarantee by “shoving my chips to the middle of the table” and the Giants responded by winning seven straight to reach the Super Bowl. They were cut down there by the overpowering Ravens but not before issuing a smackdown of their own in a 41-0 win over the Vikings in the NFC Championship. The Giants made the playoffs three times in Fassel’s seven years and he ended up with a record of 60-56-1.
4. Ray Perkins
Hired the year after “The Fumble” by Joe Pisarcik, Perkins had just one winning season in four but managed to establish the framework for the Giants’ return to respectability and success later in the 1980s. In that brief time he hired young assistants Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick, oversaw the drafting of Lawrence Taylor and Phil Simms, and in 1981 took the Giants to the playoffs to end a 17-year postseason drought. He left the Giants after the 1982 season to replace Bear Bryant at his alma mater, Alabama, handing the reins to Parcells. Had he stuck around longer it’s very likely he would have won the team’s first Super Bowl title.
3. Tom Coughlin
A two-time Super Bowl champion with three other playoff appearances, Coughlin is second in Giants history in wins (110) and games coached (203) and his eight playoff wins are tied for the most with Bill Parcells. Coughlin might not have achieved any of that had he not adjusted his methods after the 2006 season when players were on the verge of mutiny against his strict rules and stern requirements and ownership was nearly ready to part ways with him. The team gave him one more chance to change and he rewarded them with a Super Bowl-winning season in 2007 and another in 2011.
2. Steve Owen
Not only was Owen the first Giants coach to stick around for more than two seasons after he was hired, first as an interim co-coach with quarterback Bennie Freeman in 1930 and then full time in 1931, but he lasted a remarkable 23 years on the job that saw him claim two NFL Championships and reach the title game eight other times. Among his Hall of Fame coaching innovations were the A-formation offense, the umbrella defense, and the two-platoon system, but his biggest stroke of genius was outfitting his team in basketball shoes for better traction on the icy field at the Polo Grounds in the second half of the 1934 NFL Championship against the Bears that became known as “The Sneakers Game.”
1. Bill Parcells
His 3-12-1 rookie season as head coach of the Giants nearly derailed his career and the team was ready to replace him with Howard Schnellenberger. But in 1984, Parcells came back for a second season, had a healthy Phil Simms at quarterback, a dominant Lawrence Taylor on defense, and improved to 9-7 with a playoff appearance. Two years later, Parcells coached the Giants to their first Super Bowl win and added a second trophy in 1990. He retired after just eight years due to health concerns but had 77 regular season and eight postseason wins in that brief time. While he went on to coach and work for several other organizations, including the crosstown rival Jets and the division rival Cowboys, the Hall of Fame Parcells still epitomizes the toughness, guile and leadership against which all Giants coaches before or since are measured.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
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