In an article entitled Aaron Rodgers has strong stance on coaching after retirement, the journalist says:
He is right, though, there haven’t been many coaches — at least in the NFL — who come from playing backgrounds.
Of the 32 current NFL coaches, Tennessee’s Mike Vrabel and Houston’s DeMeco Ryans are the only two who had extensive playing careers in the league.
The highest-profile coaches to fit into the category are probably Mike Ditka, Jim Harbaugh and Mike Singletary, though Singletary was not particularly successful as a head coach.
Too bad he is not a Packers fan, because otherwise he would have come up with another set of examples, including:
- Forrest Gregg, whom we know was the first player to play in (and win) a Super Bowl as a player and then coach a team in the Super Bowl;
- Bart Starr, who won the Super Bowl as a player but only got to the playoffs twice and had a 1-1 record as coach;
- Doug Pederson, who won the Super Bowl as a Packer in the 1990s, coached the Philadelphia Eagles to a Super Bowl Championship in 2017 and is the current head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars.
And so on.
C’mon, man.
Packers fans: It’s not just that we’re nicer than other football fans, but also that we’re much more knowledgeable about the history of the game (at least in how it is related to the Packers) than other fans. And some veteran sports journalists.
