Ultimately, it is as difficult to compare coaches from different eras as players.
That became all too apparent as we tried to choose the greatest coach in Eagles history. Was it Earle "Greasy" Neale, the only Eagles coach to win two NFL championships, back in 1948 and '49? How about Buck Shaw, who won the last Eagles NFL title in 1960? Dick Vermeil established his credentials by resurrecting a wretched franchise and taking it to its first Super Bowl, after the 1980 season.
And then there is a fellow named Andy Reid. The current Eagles coach has the best winning percentage and most overall wins of any Eagles coach. He also is subject to the slings and arrows of outraged talk-show hosts, columnists and message-board messiahs for falling short of a Lombardi Trophy during his eight-going-on-nine-year tenure.
So how do you choose among these four sterling coaches? The process of elimination.
Shaw goes first. He was the Eagles' coach for just three seasons, and a lot of the credit for the 1960 season goes to quarterback Norm Van Brocklin and ironman Chuck Bednarik, a holdover from the '49 champions. And while the 1960 team won the Eagles' last NFL title, their postseason road consisted of just one game. In that era, there was the 12-game regular season and then the championship game. So Shaw won precisely one postseason game during his tenure.
That leaves Vermeil, Neale and Reid. Sorry, Dick, but yours is the next name off the list. To start with, Vermeil dumped us. At the time, his case of burnout was new and shocking and earned the sympathy of many fans. But the bottom line is that he walked out after rebuilding the franchise, leaving Eagles fans with Marion Campbell and then the fascinating but ultimately unsatisfying Buddy Ryan years. If Vermeil had stayed, the dominos don't fall that way, and modern Eagles history is completely different.
The fact that he unretired, went to St. Louis (of all places), and won his Super Bowl doesn't help Vermeil's case here one bit. Good coach? Great coach. Best coach in history? Rams history, maybe. That's up to them.
So now we're down to the tough call - Neale or Reid - and we're back to the problem of comparing eras. No matter how you evaluate the coaches, it is an absolute truth that they coached in radically different NFLs.
