List of New England Patriots head coaches

Bill Belichick is the current head coach of the Patriots, and has led the team to six Super Bowl championship games, winning four of them.

The New England Patriots are a professional American football team based in Foxborough, Massachusetts. They are a member of the East Division of the American Football Conference (AFC) in the National Football League (NFL). The team began as the Boston Patriots in the American Football League, a league which merged with the National Football League before the 1970 season.^[1]

There have been 14 head coaches for the Patriots franchise. Lou Saban became the first coach of the Patriots in 1960, although he was fired part way through their second season.^[2] Bill Belichick, the current coach since 2000, has led the team for more regular season games (256), post-season games (31) and more complete seasons (16) than any other head coach. His 187 wins with the Patriots are far and away the most in franchise history, more than three times those of runner-up Mike Holovak. Belichick has also led the team to six of their eight Super Bowl appearances, winning four of them. Holovak, Raymond Berry and Bill Parcells all led the Patriots to league championship games, with only one coach failing to reach the Super Bowl. Five Patriots head coaches, Holovak, Chuck Fairbanks, Berry, Parcells, and Belichick, have been named coach of the year by at least one major news organization. Additionally, Raymond Berry is a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, having been inducted in 1973, eleven years before he became the Patriots' head coach.^[3]

Twice in Patriots history there were "interim" head coaches. In 1972, John Mazur resigned with five games left in the season.^[4] Phil Bengston was named as the interim head coach for the rest of the season, during which he only won one game, and he was not made the permanent coach the next year. In 1978, head coach Fairbanks secretly made a deal to leave the team to coach the University of Colorado Buffaloes while he was still coaching Patriots. Team owner Billy Sullivan suspended Fairbanks for the final game of the regular season, stating "You cannot serve two masters," and Ron Erhardt and Hank Bullough took co-head coaching responsibilities for that game.^[5] Fairbanks was reinstated when the team qualified for the playoffs, and he lost the first playoff game, his last for the Patriots.

Key

#	Number of coaches
GC	Games coached
W	Wins
L	Losses
T	Ties
Win%	Winning percentage
00†	Elected into the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a coach
00‡	Elected into the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a player
00*	Spent entire NFL head coaching career with the Patriots

Coaches

Note: Statistics are correct as of the end of the 2015 NFL season.

#	Name	Term	Regular season					Playoffs			Awards	Reference
			GC	W	L	T	Win%	GC	W	L
Boston Patriots
1	Lou Saban	1960–1961	19	7	12	0	.368	–	–	–		[6]
2	Mike Holovak	1961–1968	107	52	46	9	.528	2	1	1	UPI AFL Coach of the Year (1966)[7]	[8]
3	Clive Rush*	1969–1970	21	5	16	0	.238	–	–	–		[9]
4	John Mazur*	1970	7	1	6	0	.143	–	–	–		[4]
New England Patriots
—	John Mazur*	1971–1972	23	8	15	0	.348	–	–	–		[4]
5	Phil Bengtson	1972[10]	5	1	4	0	.200	–	–	–		[11]
6	Chuck Fairbanks*	1973–1978[12]	85	46	39	0	.541	2	0	2	UPI NFL Coach of the Year (1976)[13] Sporting News NFL Coach of the Year (1976)	[14]
7	Ron Erhardt	1979–1981[15]	49	21	28	0	.428	–	–	–		[16]
8	Ron Meyer	1982–1984	33	18	15	0	.545	1	0	1		[17]
9	Raymond Berry *‡	1984–1989*	87	48	39	0	.551	5	3	2	UPI NFL Coach of the Year (1985) AFC Championship (1985)	[18][19]
10	Rod Rust*	1990	16	1	15	0	.062	–	–	–		[20]
11	Dick MacPherson*	1991–1992	32	8	24	0	.250	–	–	–		[21]
12	Bill Parcells^†	1993–1996	64	32	32	0	.500	4	2	2	AP NFL Coach of the Year (1994) Pro Football Weekly NFL Coach of the Year (1994) Maxwell Football Club NFL Coach of the Year (1994) UPI NFL Coach of the Year (1994) AFC Championship (1996)	[22][23]
13	Pete Carroll	1997–1999	48	27	21	0	.562	3	1	2		[24]
14	Bill Belichick	2000–present	256	187	69	0	.730	31	22	9	AP NFL Coach of the Year (2003, 2007, 2010) Sporting News NFL Coach of the Year (2003) Pro Football Weekly NFL Coach of the Year (2003) Maxwell Football Club NFL Coach of the Year (2007) 4 Super Bowl Championships (2001, 2003, 2004, 2014) 6 AFC Championships (2001, 2003, 2004, 2007, 2011, 2014)	[25][26]

Notes and references

1. "Boston Patriots". Pro Football Hall of Fame. Retrieved 2008-05-13.
2. "Buffalo Bills". Pro Football Hall of Fame. Retrieved 2008-05-13.
3. "Raymond Berry profile". Pro Football Hall of Fame. Retrieved 2008-04-24.
4. Grossfeld, Stan (2005-12-01). "For Mazur, the scars remain". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 2008-05-14.
5. Borges, Ron. "Butt of jokes to last laugh". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 2008-04-26.
6. "Lou Saban". databaseSports.com. Retrieved 2008-04-23.
7. Gruver, Ed (1997). The American Football League: A Year-by-year History, 1960–1969. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company. p. 276. ISBN 0-7864-0399-3.
8. "Mike Holovak". databaseSports.com. Retrieved 2008-04-23.
9. "Clive Rush". databaseSports.com. Retrieved 2008-04-23.
10. Phil Bengtson was the interim head coach for five games during the 1972 season.
11. Phil Bengtson. "New England Patriots (1960–present)". sports e-cyclopedia. Retrieved 2008-05-14.
12. Chuck Fairbanks was suspended for the last game of the 1978 regular season. He was reinstated for the playoffs, and lost in the first round.
13. "Chuck Fairbanks Head Coach". New England Patriots. Retrieved 2008-04-24.
14. "Chuck Fairbanks". databaseSports.com. Retrieved 2008-04-23.
15. Ron Erhardt's record includes one game where he shared head coaching duties with Hank Bullough during Chuck Fairbanks 1978 suspension. His first official year as head coach of the Patriots was 1979.
16. "Ron Erhardt". databaseSports.com. Retrieved 2008-04-23.
17. "Ron Meyer". databaseSports.com. Retrieved 2008-04-23.
18. "Raymond Berry". databaseSports.com. Retrieved 2008-04-23.
19. "Raymond Berry". Pro-Football-Reference. Sports Reference LLC. Retrieved 2008-12-31.
20. "Rod Rust". databaseSports.com. Retrieved 2008-04-23.
21. "Dick MacPherson". databaseSports.com. Retrieved 2008-04-23.
22. "Bill Parcells". databaseSports.com. Retrieved 2008-04-23.
23. "Bill Parcells". Pro-Football-Reference. Sports Reference LLC. Retrieved 2008-12-31.
24. "Pete Carroll". databaseSports.com. Retrieved 2008-04-23.
25. "Bill Belichick". databaseSports.com. Retrieved 2008-04-23.
26. "Bill Belichick". Pro-Football-Reference. Sports Reference LLC. Retrieved 2008-12-31.