Windy City Gridiron
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
