Who was the best and worst coaching hires in NYG history?

[MightyGiants]

Who were the best and worst head coaching hires in NYG's 100-year history?

[Philosophers]

Bill Parcells = best
Tom Coughlin = 2nd best

Ray Handley = worst
Joe Judge = 2nd worst

[spiderblue43]

Bill Arnsbarger won what, 7 games? Honorable mention. The much heralded Super Bowl 2-time DC was over his head, plus saddled with the QB Craig Morton trade that cost them a HOF.

That was as bad as I can remember.

[kingm56]

Bill Parcells = best
Tom Coughlin = 2nd best

Ray Handley = worst
Joe Judge = 2nd worst

You nailed it, Joe.

I do have an honorable mention for worst head coach: Jim Fassel.  When you think of all the talent he coached, and the assistants, we should have been far more successful during his era.  Plus, there's a reason he never coached in the NFL again. 

[coggs]

You nailed it, Joe.

I do have an honorable mention for worst head coach: Jim Fassel.  When you think of all the talent he coached, and the assistants, we should have been far more successful during his era.  Plus, there's a reason he never coached in the NFL again. 

Friend of mine was well connected to the Giants during Fassel's time.  It was kept away from media, but when he was fired he told me Fassel would never be a head coach in the NFL ever again.  A non-football issue that many in the NFL knew about.  I often questioned the legitimacy of his claim as it is something I figured someone in the media would have found out. 

[DaveBrown74]

Friend of mine was well connected to the Giants during Fassel's time.  It was kept away from media, but when he was fired he told me Fassel would never be a head coach in the NFL ever again.  A non-football issue that many in the NFL knew about.  I often questioned the legitimacy of his claim as it is something I figured someone in the media would have found out. 

Others here have brought this up in the past.

I have no desire to besmirch a guy who has passed away and who was a good coach for the Giants, plus I don't personally know the specifics, but I have heard enough smoke on this subject that I assume there was indeed fire.

[Jolly Blue Giant]

Best:
I was a toddler, but GM Leo Derocher from 54-56 had to be pretty good as he put a coaching staff together that consisted of:

Head Coach: Jim Howell
Offensive Coordinator: Vince Lombardi
Defensive Coordinator: Tom Landry

Worst:
Probably Joe Judge, although I liked the guy. Just wasn't HC material, highlighted by calling for a QB sneak on the 2 yd line in a 3rd and 7or8 situation, I forget the exact yards, but it was the call of someone who doesn't understand the concept of competition and doing what it takes to win.

[President Rick]

dan reeves because he axed Simms.

[TONKA56]

You nailed it, Joe.

I do have an honorable mention for worst head coach: Jim Fassel.  When you think of all the talent he coached, and the assistants, we should have been far more successful during his era.  Plus, there's a reason he never coached in the NFL again. 

Fassel was one of those guys that would always do just enough to keep hanging around even though he wasn't very good.

[kartanoman]

Recency bias, folks! I don't disagree with Parcells and Coughlin at all. Given their aggregate years as head coach encompassed nearly a quarter of those 100 years, they make a great case for the best. However, there was this other head coach who held the position for 23 years, coached the Giants to eight (8) NFL Championship games, winning two (2) of them, and played for the Giants and captained the team to its very first NFL Championship. Of course, I'm talking about the legendary Steve Owen. He continues to be the winningest head coach in team history at 150–99–17 (.596). The "Sneakers" game may be his greatest head coaching victory.

I LOVE Parcells as a master motivator and a bold gambler. I am INSPIRED by Coughlin's leadership style of submitting the "me for the we" to believe in achieving anything you put your mind to. Steve Owen was a genuine leader of men whose players LOVED him as their leader and wanted to always do their best for him because of the outstanding quality and integrity of a man he was. Think about that for a second. Owen NEVER had a contract while coaching the Giants; his word and a handshake were all that were required.

Best Head Coaching Hires in the Giants' 100 Year History:

1. Steve Owen
2. Bill Parcells
3. Tom Coughlin
Honorable Mention: Jim Lee Howell
Honorable Mention: Earl Potteiger
Honorable Mention: LeRoy Andrews


Worst Head Coaching Hires in the Giants' 100 Year History:

This is much harder to evaluate because you have to mitigate how bad the front office set the head coach up for failure, what impact (if any) did his assistants have in helping/hurt his overall performance and what happened immediately following the individual's dismissal (i.e. did the team get better or worse or N/A because all the players were replaced).

"Ray Must Go" (to H E double hockey sticks) remains the single-most unmitigated and purely unmitigatable Towering Inferno decision in Giants' history when it came to selecting a coach to lead the reigning Super Bowl Champions. It was a difficult hiring choice, no doubt, given the circumstances which led to Belichick's leaving for the Browns' head coaching job, and Parcells stepping down after the draft due to his critical heart condition at the time. Even though Parcells endorsed his former Running Backs' coach, whom he promoted to Offensive Coordinator that year, in order to stop RH from leaving to go to law school, the move led to his immediate promotion into the head role and over more experienced personnel on the team with actual head coaching experience, such as Ron Erhardt, who became Assistant HC in 1991. Without Parcells' motivation to get "his guys" up and leading the charge, the performance of those guys, and the team, started taking a nosedive. RH ensured the nosedive resulted in a death knell when Rod Rust arrived in 1992 to install the "Read and React" defense. The fans, as well as the defensive players, all reacted with pure hostility that turned into mutiny when players tuned out Rod and started calling plays of old. The comprehensive mess was, well, an embarrassment of what was a Super Bowl Champion two years removed from its epic Super Bowl XXV victory. Nothing, before it or since, can supplant such humiliation and shame which was made even worse when the power gap in the NFC East was filled by the up-and-coming Cowboys of the early 90s. Braggards to their very core, humiliating the former champions twice a season became part of their annual modus operandi which continues to this very day. It is with this perspective that I present my "Worst Head Coaches" list:

1. Ray (Must Go) H@}&!?y (i.e. one of the names which shall not be named on this board)
2. Joe Judge
3. Ben McAdoo
(Dis)Honorable Mention: Pat Shurmer
(Dis)Honorable Mention: Bill Arnsparger
(Dis)Honorable Mention: John McVay

Peace!

[kartanoman]

dan reeves because he axed Simms.

It wasn't Dan. It was George.

Peace!

[Philosophers]

You nailed it, Joe.

I do have an honorable mention for worst head coach: Jim Fassel.  When you think of all the talent he coached, and the assistants, we should have been far more successful during his era.  Plus, there's a reason he never coached in the NFL again. 

It wasn't Dan. It was George.

Peace!

You nailed it, Joe.

I do have an honorable mention for worst head coach: Jim Fassel.  When you think of all the talent he coached, and the assistants, we should have been far more successful during his era.  Plus, there's a reason he never coached in the NFL again. 

Your last point reminded me how much I'd scratch my head that another year had gone by and JF was still unemployed.  Yeah he has to be on the list for sure as he had some genuine talent to work with.

[madbadger]

Bill Parcells = best
Tom Coughlin = 2nd best

Ray Handley = worst
Joe Judge = 2nd worst

I agree with three of the four. I think Handley gets a bit of a bad rap as we went from having two very good quarterbacks to scraping the bottom of the barrel. He wasn't a great coach by any means but he won 45% of the games he coached in NY. Shurmur IMHO was a much worse coach. He had already failed spectacularly in Cleveland but that didn't deter Mara. He was awful in almost every regard and his successor Macadoo wasn't much better. At worst Handley was the fourth worse Giants head coach in the past 49 years.

[LennG]

Chris nailed all the best. There is no doubt in all Giants history Steve Owen is in a class by himself. No one is even in the same ballpark
 It's just too bad he coached well before most fans lifetime. After that it would be
Parcels
Coughin

As for the worst, it isn't even close. For years we weren't able to mention his name on this site, always referring to him as "he who shall remain nameless", so I will keep to that and only refer to him as a guy who inherited a Super Bowl winning team and destroyed it. There was no one worse.
Second place for me was Fassel. I hated him from his opening press conference when he annoited Dave Brown as our starter without ever even seeing him.

We can fill a short book with honorable mentions but Joe Judge has to be a very close second if for nothing else then his QB sneak calls.

[MightyGiants]

I agree with three of the four. I think Handley gets a bit of a bad rap as we went from having two very good quarterbacks to scraping the bottom of the barrel. He wasn't a great coach by any means but he won 45% of the games he coached in NY. Shurmur IMHO was a much worse coach. He had already failed spectacularly in Cleveland but that didn't deter Mara. He was awful in almost every regard and his successor Macadoo wasn't much better. At worst Handley was the fourth worse Giants head coach in the past 49 years.

I think when you are evaluating HCs it's worth noting the team records before and after they took over.  In the case of Handley, he took over the champions with a 13-3 record (then going 8-8 and 6-10) and when Dan Reeves took over the record jumped to 11-5

Shurmer took over a bad team and only slightly improved.  When Joe Judge took over from him, there 2 more games were won.