NFL Coaches Without A Losing Season

Only NFL coach with a perfect season is Don Shula. He is the head coach with the most victories in NFL history.

Shula was a professional football player and served as the head coach in the National Football League from 1963 to 1995. The head coach spent seven seasons in the NFL as a defensive back, as per the Guardian.

He served as the head coach of the Miami Dolphins for the majority of his career. He is the winningest head coach in the NFL with 347 career victories and 328 regular season victories. He has .659 win percentage.

The perfect season NFL coach spent the first seven seasons as a head coach in the Baltimore Colts and 26 seasons with the Dolphins. The first Super Bowl title of Shula in 1972 is the only perfect season in NFL history.

He was the first coach who appeared in the 6 Super Bowls, 5 with the Dolphins and 1 with the Colts. Don Shula appeared in three consecutive super bowls with Miami Dolphins from 1971 to 1973. 

Having guided Baltimore to Super Bowl III and Miami to Super Bowl VI, he was the first head coach who brought two franchises to the Super Bowls’ debut. He was an inductee of the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1997.

NFL coaches can challenge penalties that falls under the game administration. Coaches can review penalty enforcement.

Only certain plays or actions can be challenged in the NFL while some plays are automatically evaluated so a coach doesn’t need to challenge them.

Examples of automatically evaluated plays are scoring plays such as touchdown, field goal, safety, etc., and turnovers such as fumble, and interceptions.

Coaches are not allowed to challenge judgment calls made by officials such as offsides, false starts, or holding penalties. A team is not permitted to take a penalty before the next snap and then challenge.

Every game has two challenges for each team, and each of them requires the use of a timeout. The team gets its timeout back if the challenge is ruled in its favor.

The third challenge is permitted if a team succeeds in winning its first two challenges. If a team starts a challenge when there is no timeout left or it is not allowed to, it is a penalty and a loss of 15 yards.

A team may use the challenge to review the following situations:

• Possession
• Play in which the ground or ball is touched
• Goal line plays
• Plays at the line of scrimmage, the line to gain, and the sidelines
• Number of players on the field at the snap, even when a foul is not called
• Game administration, which includes penalty enforcement, proper down, a spot of a foul, the status of the game clock, and the disqualification of a player

Yes, the NFL coaches can be traded if the team gets their permission. The team cannot trade coaches arbitrarily.

Bill Belichick, Bill Parcells, Jon Gruden, Sean Payton, Herm Edwards, Mike Holmgren, and Bruce Arians have changed their teams since 1997 via trade.

Bill Parcells

Bill Parcels served as the head coach for 19 seasons in the National Football League. He gains fame as the head coach of the New York Giants from 1983 to 1990.

Later, Parcells was the head coach of the New England Patriots from the year 1993 to 1996. He was traded from the Patriots to New York Jets in 1997. The deal cost the team $300,0000 cash.

Mike Holmgren

Mike Holmgren was a head coach of the Green Bay Packers from 1992 to 1998.

And it became one of the most successful coaching stints in NFL history. He resigned from the Packers after the 1998 season and accepted the eight-year head coach contract offered by the Seattle Seahawks.

Bill Belichick

Bill Belichick is an American professional football coach in the National Football League. He is widely known as one the best head coach of all time.

Bill spent two seasons in the New York Jets from 1997 to 1999 as the head coach and was traded from the Jets to New England Patriots in 2000.

Jon Gruden

A former American football coach, Jon Gruden was a head coach for 15 seasons in the National Football League.

He served as the head coach of the Oakland Raiders from 1998 to 2001 where he won two consecutive division titles and made an AFC Championship Game appearance. In 2002, Jon was traded from the Raiders to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for $8 million in cash.

Herm Edwards

Herm Edwards is a former professional player and an American football coach. He spent 10 seasons with the Philadelphia Eagles in the National Football League as a cornerback.

Herm was also a head coach of the New York Jets from 2001 to 2008. A football coach was traded by the Jets to Kansas City Chiefs in 2006.

Sean Payton

Sean Payton resigned from coaching in 2022 after serving as the head coach of the Saints from 2006 to 2021.

He was traded from the New Orleans Saints to Denver Broncos in the National Football League on January 31, 2023.

NFL coaches cannot challenge pass interference. NFL Coaches were able to challenge it for only one season in 2019.

The replay review system of the NFL applied to both offensive and defensive pass interference calls and non-calls for one season. The experiment proved to be a fatal mistake as subjective play was put into replay. It was disbanded the next year. It will now be determined by the officials.

After the NFC Championship Game in January, when Los Angeles Rams cornerback Nickell Robey-Coleman hit New Orleans Saints receiver Tommylee Lewis early on a third-down play late in the fourth quarter then the reviewability of pass interference calls and noncalls came to the forefront.

The major aim of allowing coaches to challenge the pass interference was to prevent appalling missed calls like that one. Out of 81 pass interference challenges, only 13 became successful. The pass interference is no longer among the plays after its introduction in 2019.