Coach of the Year Runners-up

It didn't take Andy Reid long to establish that the 2000 season wasn't going to be a run of the mill one for the Eagles.

On the opening play of the team's opening game against Dallas, the second-year coach called for an onsides kick that was ultimately converted into a touchdown as the Eagles blasted the Cowboys 41-14.

Criticized in 1999 for being too conventional, Reid was anything but by-the-book during the season that saw the Eagles reach the playoffs for the first time since 1996.

The 43-year-old, known as a strict disciplinarian and a master of organization, proved his critics wrong as he overcame enormous odds, such as losing his leading rusher, Duce Staley, for the season in Game 5. Instead of whining about the loss, he reinvented the team's passing game. And while it wasn't always pretty, it worked.

"We have to continue to expand and evolve," he said as he headed into the playoffs. "We're going to do whatever it takes to score points. Sometimes, that may mean an unconventional play."

When he was hired from Green Bay two years ago, Eagles' fans wondered what the front office was doing. Reid, afterall, had no head coaching experience. He had never even been a coordinator.

For seven years, he worked under Green Bay Packers coach Mike Holmgren, serving as quarterbacks coach and tight ends/offensive line coach. It was his only NFL experience Before joining the Packers, he was offensive line coach at Missouri, Texas El-Paso, Northern Arizona and San Francisco State.

With that kind of resume, its understandable that w.hen he was named head coach of the Eagles, a headline in a Philadelphia paper asked, "Andy Who?"

No one in Philadelphia is asking that question now. They know the answer. He's the guy who turned the long underachieving Eagles into contenders in less than two years.

Jim Fassel
New York Giants
Regular season record: 12-4
NFC champs

Jim Fassel built a reputation, some might say a team, on gaurantees.

Frustrated after the New York Giants lost two home games in November, he gathered his players and told them he wouldn't accept anything less than a long ride through the post-season.

"I am shoving my chips right in the middle of the table. I am raising the ante," he told them. "Anybody who wants out can get out. This team is going to the playoffs."

With that fire under them, the Giants won every one of their next seven games, stopped only by the Baltimore Ravens at the Super Bowl.

But while the tact worked, Fassel didn't use it capriciously. For instance, he refused to be goaded into making a similar guarantee in the week before the big game in Tampa.

"Sometimes you can overdo something. You can try to be cute and funny," he told reporters. "I said that because I believed it 100 percent. I was angry and upset, and I had to get the focus going in a direction. I achieved that. Now, I don't have to be cute and funny and quotable."

And few would ever accuse Fassel of being cute and funny, although he is highly quotable.

Fassel, 51, is the kind of coach who figures out what needs to be done and then goes out and does it, without mincing words.

In 1997, for instance, he remolded the Giants into champions, taking them from last place to first in one seaon. However, at the beginning of the 2000 season, he knew he had his work cut out for him - again. He was coming off a 7-9 season with a deeply divided team.

To get back in the winning column, he knew he had to unify his players. So, he organized off-season boating trips, golf tournaments and bowling nights. He encouraged the stars to talk to each other and him. The formula, obviously, worked.

And while he fell short of his goal of winning the Super Bowl, he's again making gaurantees.

A day after the crushing loss to Baltimore, he said, "This team will be back to this game." Asked if that was a guarantee, he nodded.

Brian Billick
Baltimore Ravens
Regular season record: 12-4
Super Bowl champions

"You carry a spear, you go in screaming like a banshee, kick whatever doors in. If you go in any other way, you're going to lose."

Such was the way Brian Billick summed up his team's mindset after the Ravens beat Tennessee to advance in the playoffs.

That no-holds-barred approach, not to mention what many call one of the best defensive units in the history of the sport, clearly helped the once-vapid Ravens become Super Bowl champs.

While their failures early in the season now seem like ancient history, it's good to remember that the Ravens went the entire month of October without scoring a touchdown. Team owner Art Modell callled it the worst drought since the Oklahoma dust bowl, adding that it was unrivaled in his 40 years as an owner.

Credit Billick and his never-say-die approach with giving his team the mental muscle they needed not just to carry on, but excel. He did it by giving his players the tools they needed to win and showing them he was confident they would know how to use them.

His approach was best exemplified during the annual pre-Super Bowl hoopla. Rather than impose curfews and declare seedy parts of Tampa off-limits, he told his players to remember what they were in town to do and behave accordingly. Faced with that kind of trust, his players' behavior was exemplary - both off and on the field.

That Billick, 46, would win the Super Bowl two years after he arrived in Baltimore came as little surprise to those who watched him in Minnesota. He was the architect of a Viking offense that in 1998 shattered the NFL record for most points scored in a season. During his five full seasons as offensive coordinator, the Vikings had their top three offensive seasons and five of their top 10 in team history.

With that background, it's no surprise that the drought ended. It just took the right rainmaker - Billick.

Dave Wannstedt
Miami Dolphins
Regular season record: 11-5
AFC East Champions

When Dave Wannstedt was tapped to replace longtime mentor Jimmy Johnson, expectations in Miami were about as high as the elevation of Pro Player Stadium. When he decided Jay Fiedler, a largely untested Ivy Leaguer should replace legendary quarterback Dan Marino, those already sea level expectations sunk even further.

But by reinventing his coaching style - becoming a kinder, gentler version of his former self - Wannstedt led the team that was expected to finish at the bottom of its division to its first AFC East championship in six years.

Wannstedt, 48, denies that he had any kind of coaching epiphany. "As far as a coaching change or a philosophy change, I'm doing things the same way," he told CNN/Sports Illustrated's Vince Cellini in November after his team had compiled an improbable 8-3 record. "We're practicing hard, we're playing physical football, we're playing defense and running the ball."

But those who had watched him coach the Chicago Bears for six years, where he posted a 41-57 record and a reputation as an unbending taskmaster, said the Wannstedt that took the field in South Florida was a sunnier man than the bear who coached the Bears.

He took the team on two field trips to movie theaters to watch inspirational films, like Remember the Titans. He organized intrasquad softball games. He gave players days off. He let them sleep in. He didn't blast them after inexcusable losses, like the Oct. 23 game against the Jets when they blew a 30-7 fourth-quarter lead and lost the game 37-40. He told the players that the stunning defeat "wasn't even worth talking about."

Instead, he built a championship team out of non-championship-caliber players by treating them well and making them feel good about themselves. In the end, they performed admirably.

And so obviously did Wannstedt.