Few head coaches in NFL history have been allowed to lose 14 or more games twice in their careers, but Steve Spagnuolo was an exception during his three years with the St. Louis Rams. Spagnuolo now has four Super Bowl championships to his name, having served as the Kansas City Chiefs defensive coordinator for the previous five years.
Spagnuolo has been dubbed the most valuable coordinator in the NFL because clubs are hesitant to hire him as head coach again, but now that he is the most talked-about coach for another Super Bowl, I’m not so sure.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72698712/1672081945.0.jpg)
Despite his flaws as a head coach, Spagnuolo was able to persuade just one league owner that his defence might work for another side.
Spagnuolo began his football career in 1981 as a 22-year-old graduate assistant at UMass. He interned with the Washington Redskins in 1983 but did not return to the NFL until 1999, when Andy Reid hired him as a defensive quality control coach for the Eagles.
Spags, who was part of a powerful coaching staff that included John Harbaugh, Sean McDermott, Ron Rivera, Pat Shurmer, Leslie Frazier, Brad Childress, and David Culley, would lead Philadelphia to four NFC Championships and one Super Bowl victory. Tom Coughlin hired him as Giants defensive coordinator in 2007, and the “NASCAR package” boosted pass rushers like Osi Umenyiora and Justin Tuck to 10 or more sacks apiece.
The Giants astonished the world by defeating the unbeaten Patriots in the Super Bowl, 17-14.
After leading New York to a top-5 defence in 2008, the Rams hired Spagnuolo to replace Scott Linehan after a 2-14 season in which Jim Haslett led the team to a 2-10 finish in the final 12 games. Though St. Louis performed worse under Spagnuolo in 2009, finishing 1-15, the defence improved from bottom-2 to top-12 in his second season, and the team finished 7-9.
Unfortunately, with Josh McDaniels as offensive coordinator in 2011, the Rams had the NFL’s worst offence by a large margin, finishing 2-14. Spags was permitted to finish the season but was sacked and replaced by Jeff Fisher, ensuring more 7-9 seasons ahead.
Going 10–38 should be a death sentence for any head coach, but in Spag’s situation, I’m not so sure.
He served one season with Sean Payton in 2012, two with Harbaugh on the Ravens, and four with the Giants as defensive coordinator. The squad allowed the second fewest points in the NFL in 2016.
After being out of the league for a year in 2018, a familiar name came calling when the Chiefs needed someone to save Bob Sutton’s defence: Andy Reid asked Spagnuolo to return in 2019, and the Chiefs have won three Super Bowls, four AFC titles, and reached the AFC Championship game in all five of his years as DC. Without Steve Spagnuolo, the Chiefs would have no chance of winning their third Super Bowl triumph with Reid and Patrick Mahomes in 2023.
He may be 64 and have a career winning % of.212, but there may not be a defensive coordinator in the NFL who knows how to stop the San Francisco 49ers like Spagnuolo. Spagnuolo will not leave Kansas City to become defensive coordinator, so you cannot employ him. He is the only defensive coordinator in history to have won two Super Bowls with different clubs.
Will a team be prepared to hand over the squad to him as head coach in an attempt to curb the widespread Shanahan offence?
Spagnuolo stated before the Super Bowl that he hopes so.
“I would love [being a head coach again], just because I think you always want another chance at it,” he stated last week when his Chiefs arrived for Super Bowl LVIII. “And I enjoyed having an entire team.
But I’m fine if we keep going to Super Bowls. It’s difficult to acquire a head job when you’re still playing in the playoffs this late.”
It’s difficult to conceive why Spagnuolo would go unnoticed in a year when Raheem Morris and Dan Quinn received second chances. Since at least 2019, no team has requested an interview with Spagnuolo. Rams fans may reply, “Yeah, we understand,” but three Super Bowl victories later, people may change.
Leave a Reply