With Vic Fangio winning a Super Bowl, where does he rank among the greats?
The Philadelphia Eagles completely dominated the Kansas City Chiefs on Super Bowl Sunday. The Eagles offense looked good, but the story of this game was Vic Fangio’s defense. They completely shut down the Andy Reid/Patrick Mahomes-led offense. They couldn’t run, they couldn’t pass, they couldn’t protect. They did nothing.
The final score says the Chiefs scored 22 points, but that doesn’t tell the story. They had zero points through the first 44 points and 6 points through 57 minutes. Simply put, Vic Fangio was brilliant.
Fangio’s had an incredible career, and this was the crowning jewel of his career. Where does that put him on the pantheon? We look at the 10 greatest defensive coordinators of all time. One note: this list looks specifically at defensive coordinators, not defensive minds. So when we examine someone like Bill Belichick, we look at his tenure as a DC, not what he did as a defensive-minded head coach in New England.
10. Dom Capers
Capers, like Fangio, spent time with many teams as a defensive coordinator. First leading some great Pittsburgh Steelers defenses in the early ’90s before having some brief stints as a DC in both Jacksonville and Miami. Capers settled down to have a long run under Mike McCarthy as the Green Bay Packers DC, where he helped them win a championship.
9. Tom Landry
Landy was the mastermind of the Dallas Cowboys Doomsday Defense in the 1970s, but as a DC, he led excellent units for the New York Giants in the 1950s. Included in Landry’s DC resume is the fact that he developed the 4-3 defense and also led the defense of a Giants defense that finished in the top 5 every year under his leadership, including being the number one defense back-to-back years in 1958 and 1959.
8. Monte Kiffin
Kiffin has spent over 50 years as a coach at both the collegiate and pro level. He led excellent Nebraska defenses in the 1970s, but we are only looking at Kiffin’s NFL resume. His main success there came as Tampa’s DC from 1996 to 2008. Kiffin came in with Tony Dungy and stayed with Jon Gruden, where Kiffin’s defenses were top ten every year except one. Kiffin is the father of the very popular Tampa 2 defense that Chicago Bears fans know quite well.
7. Wade Phillips
Phillips has had a nomadic NFL career. He’s been a head coach for six different NFL teams and a DC for another nine. Phillips’ defenses have always been strong, including his stint in the late 80s with the Philadelphia Eagles, although Buddy Ryan gets credit for much of that defense’s success. Phillips had a strong resurgence late in his career as the Broncos’ DC in 2015-2016, which included a Super Bowl championship where Von Miller won the game MVP, and he did a fabulous job under Sean McVay as the Rams DC, where he helped develop Aaron Donald and helped the Rams reach the Super Bowl where they lost the lowest scoring Super Bowl in history to the Patriots.
6. Bud Carson
Chuck Noll was a defensive coordinator before he took the head coaching job for the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1969. Noll is the name talked about the most with the Steel Curtain defense, but his DC, Bud Carson, should not be ignored. Carson was the DC there from 1974 to 1977, arguably the peak of the Steelers defense. Carson left Pittsburgh to be the DC of the LA Rams and then later with the Colts, Jets, and Eagles.
5. Dick LeBeau
You could argue that LeBeau is too far down on this list, but this is where I settled on him on this list. LeBeau created blitzing schemes that kept offenses completely off balance and helped create modern-day blitzing schemes that we see today. LeBeau led excellent Bengals defenses in the 1980s and helped them reach a Super Bowl and did so again with the Steelers in the mid-90s. Arguably, LeBeau’s best stretch was returning to Pittsburgh as their DC from 2004 to 2014, where he helped them win a Super Bowl. LeBeau’s defenses were number one in the league four times, including three times in four years.
4. Bill Belichick
Bill Belichick is the greatest defensive mind in NFL history, but he did a lot of it as a head coach with the Patriots. Just because that’s the case, that doesn’t minimize what Belichick did as the DC of the New York Giants. Belichick was the Giants’ DC for six years. His units ranked first only once but were second twice, and he had two other units in the top 10. Most importantly, Belichick helped the Giants win two Super Bowls in that stretch. Belichick followed that up with three years as the DC of the New York Jets. The Jets went from the 29th-ranked defense in 1996 to the 6th-ranked defense in Belichick’s first year in 1997. Belichick’s defense was 2nd in 1998 and helped the Jets reach the AFC Championship game, where, unfortunately, they just couldn’t handle an elite Broncos squad led by John Elway.
3. Buddy Ryan
Buddy Ryan has an argument for the top spot, but I settled with him in the third spot. Ryan was the DC of the Chicago Bears for eight seasons from 1978 to 1985. Ryan, of course, created the 46 defense that created relentless pressure and was the backbone of the ‘85 Bears, arguably the greatest defense in the history of the NFL. This is certainly nitpicking, but why didn’t I put Ryan first? One, the Bears’ defense was actually better in 1986 than it was in 1985 after he left, and, in my opinion, he struggled to adapt his scheme as passing increased in the league. But it doesn’t change what he created and accomplished in Chicago.
2. Steve Spagnuolo
Spags has done remarkable work throughout his career. He first emerged as a DC with the New York Giants in 2007. His crowning achievement that year, of course, was creating a scheme to bottle up the Patriots’ unstoppable offense in the Super Bowl. Spags followed that up with a top 5 defense the following year before he took a head coach job with the Rams. Spags had up-and-down success in his second stint with the Giants as their DC, but that was largely due to the mess that Ben McAdoo made as the team’s head coach. Spags has been the Chiefs DC the last 6 years and has helped create the winning formula the last two years for the Chiefs to win with great defense and have Patrick Mahomes do his thing on offense. Spags is great, but he’s not the greatest.
1. Vic Fangio
I think what Fangio has done throughout his career is truly remarkable. None of these coaches have had as much success as Fangio in so many places. Fangio first got his shot to be a DC with the expansion Carolina Panthers. In their first year in existence, the Panthers defense was ranked 8th! In year two, they were second. Truly impressive coaching. He then went to Indianapolis, where he took a dreadful unit and made it average. He followed that up by going to the Houston Texans and took over another expansion unit. Admittedly, he didn’t have as much success there, but what he’s done since then is truly elite.
Fangio came to the 49ers with Jim Harbaugh and immediately created an elite unit that finished second twice and third once. After Harbaugh left, Fangio chose to come to Chicago with John Fox and remain there with Matt Nagy, where he created one of the elite units of the last 10 to 20 years with the 2018 team that finished first in the league and also created an absurd amount of turnovers and defensive touchdowns. And to top it all off, of course, he took over a dreadful Eagles defense, which he turned into easily the best team by DVOA, first in yards and second in points. He is arguably the best defensive game planner the league has ever seen. What he did to Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes in the Super Bowl will never be forgotten. You may call this an overreaction from one great performance, but Fangio’s greatness has been building to this performance for decades.