Leading Head Coaching Trees -- Billick, Dungy, Parcells
observer
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June 25, 2008
by Don Banks, SI.com
http://tinyurl.com/5gnhlg
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Excerpt:
[Brian Billick]
Brian Billick may be gone from Baltimore
after nine years and one Super Bowl title,
with his future now cast as a game analyst
with FOX and as a co-author of an upcoming
book about the NFL.
But in one key way his imprint on the league
remains beyond his coaching tenure.
No fewer than four former Billick assistants
in Baltimore are current NFL head coaches,
which ties the Colts' Tony Dungy for the
league's second-fullest coaching tree.
Billick's former Ravens assistants include
o Marvin Lewis in Cincinnati,
o Jack Del Rio in Jacksonville,
o Mike Nolan in San Francisco
and
o Atlanta's new head coach Mike Smith,
who also happens to be Billick's brother-
in-law.
Interestingly, all four coached defense in Balti-
more, which was always the strength of Billick's
Ravens teams, despite his offensive background.
Say what you will, but Billick certainly recog-
nized defensive coaching talent when he saw it.
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[Tony Dungy]
Dungy also has four of his former assistants in
NFL head coaching jobs, and all of them worked
for him during his six-season tenure in Tampa
Bay (1996-2001):
o Kansas City's Herman Edwards,
o Chicago's Lovie Smith,
o Detroit's Rod Marinelli
and
o Pittsburgh's Mike Tomlin.
Coincidentally, all four worked on the defensive
side of the ball with the Bucs, but that was Tampa
Bay's strength as well as Dungy's background too.
Whenever Dungy retires, he'll have a fifth member
of that club, because the Colts have already named
assistant head coach/quarterbacks coach Jim Cald-
well as his successor.
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Perhaps the more amazing thing is that Dungy and
Billick worked together in Minnesota from 1992
to 1995, where they were defensive and offensive
coordinators on Dennis Green's staff for most of
that time. Dungy left Minnesota for a head coach-
ing job with the Bucs in January 1996, and Billick
did the same for Baltimore in January 1999.
Combined, their eight former assistants now com-
prise one-fourth of the NFL's 32-man head coach-
ing ranks, a pretty impressive feat in any era.
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[Bill Parcells]
If you're wondering whose coaching tree currently
out-does even Billick and Dungy's, look to South
Florida, where Bill Parcells now works as the Dol-
phins new football czar.
The Tuna still has five former assistants in the
head coaching ranks:
o New England's Bill Belichick,
o the Giants' Tom Coughlin,
o Cleveland's Romeo Crennel,
o New Orleans' Sean Payton,
and
o Miami's Tony Sparano.
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