Average nERD: -0.09 (34th)
Average Win Differential: 1.11 (27th)
The head coach who defeated Parcells in his final Super Bowl appearance finds himself at the next slot on our list. Mike Holmgren earned his first head coaching job with the Green Bay Packers in 1992, receiving a lovely gift from his new general manager, Ron Wolf, of soon-to-be franchise passer Brett Favre. The Packers would appear in back-to-back Super Bowls (winning XXXI) and would make the playoffs in six of the seven years he was head coach, never finishing with a losing record.
But that wouldn’t be the case when he became the head coach of the Seahawks in 1999, running them through 2008. Sure the ‘Hawks made six playoff appearances in that decade, including a place in Super Bowl XL, but they were the model of inconsistency. During this span of time, they had just three seasons with a losing record but four seasons with a negative nERD. In fact, Holmgren’s Seahawks had nERD scores below -5.00 in both 2000 and 2008 and had only one year even above 3.00. Holmgren had an inflated win total in the Emerald City that his teams’ on-field value never matched.