This exempts the worst manager in Yankee history, statistically speaking, Harry Wolverton, who managed them for just 1 season, 1912, and went 50-102. Say this for George Steinbrenner: Of all the guys he hired and fired as manager, he didn't allow any of them to stay long enough to do serious damage.
It also exempts, though hardly absolves, Hal Chase, whose fixing of games as Yankee 1st baseman in 1910 led manager George Stallings to tell the owners, "Either he goes, or I go." Since Chase was easily the team's best and most popular player, Stallings was treated like an NBA coach who'd run afoul of the local prima donna player, and sent packing. And Prince Hal was named manager, for the end of 1910 and all of 1911.
Some great players, such as Rogers Hornsby and Lou Boudreau, were a lot better as managers when they had themselves as players. Chase the manager didn't do very well with Chase the player, and was fired, for Wolverton. It would be 1917 before new ownership hired Miller Huggins as the first successful Yankee manager.
Note that these are not necessarily managers (in baseball) or head coaches (in the other sports) who put up losing seasons, but the list also includes those who had presumably good teams that blew it late in the regular season or in the postseason.
Note also that, since they won with the Yankees, Torre and Casey Stengel are excused for their awful performances managing National League teams in New York (both with the Mets, Casey also with the Dodgers).
I'm also limiting this to the 4 major league sports, which means college coaches, the leaders of the WNBA's Liberty and pro soccer's Cosmos, Arrows and MetroStars/Red Bulls are off the hook. (Terry Shea, Craig Littlepage, Mike Jarvis, Pat Coyle, and Juan Carlos Osorio, you can all thank me later.) And expansion-team coaches (such as Casey with the Mets, and those of the early Titans/Jets, Nets, Islanders and Devils) get a free pass, because of the odds being stacked against them.
I could find no Devils coach who lasted long enough to have more than one significant postseason failure without also winning a Stanley Cup, unless you want to count Lou Lamoriello himself, who was a really good coach at Providence College but not at the NHL level.
Although I have said on a number of occasions that Rex Ryan failed as Jet coach, he got them to 2 AFC Championship Games. And, theoretically, he could turn it around.
Furthermore, let's exempt the 9 current coaches:
* Luis Rojas of the Mets, Joe Judge of the Giants and Lindy Ruff of the Devils are all newly hired, so we have nothing to go on. (Ruff is the only one of these who's ever been a top man anywhere before, and he got the Buffalo Sabres to the 1999 Stanley Cup Finals -- but that was 21 years ago.)
* Mike Miller of the Knicks and Jacque Vaughn of the Nets are still, officially, interim head coaches. "Caretaker managers," as they would say in English soccer. Vaughn might still be head coach of the Nets whenever the 2020-21 NBA season begins, but the Knicks are already publicly looking for a replacement for Miller.
* Adam Gase of the Jets is about to enter his 2nd season, and, given what he had to work with in his 1st season, 7-9 was not bad at all.
* David Quinn of the Rangers and Barry Trotz of the Islanders are each in their 2nd season with their current team, and they had them playing well before the Coronavirus shutdown hit. Both will be in the expanded NHL Playoffs about to begin.
* Aaron Boone of the Yankees has had 2 seasons, and has made the Playoffs both times. He could be doing better, but he's certainly \not doing badly.
So here's the Top 10 -- or the Bottom 10, if you prefer:
10. Allie Sherman, Giants, 1961-68. 57-51-4, .528. Doesn't look like such a bad record, does it? Well, in 1961, he inherited a team that had already been to 3 of the last 5 NFL Championship Games, and had won the title in 1956.
He got them back to the title game in each of his first 3 seasons. He lost the 1961 title game to the Green Bay Packers, 37-0 in the snow at Lambeau Field. He lost the 1962 title game to the Packers, 16-7 on a frozen field at Yankee Stadium. The Packers were 13-1 that season. He lost the 1963 title game to the Chicago Bears, 14-10 on a frozen surface at Wrigley Field, with quarterback Y.A. Tittle injured during the game. Can't fault him for any of those losses.
Allie was a rare lefthanded quarterback, getting the Philadelphia Eagles to a 2nd place finish in 1944, but he was relegated to backup duty in 1947, and it was Tommy Thompson who, starting that year, got them to 3 straight title games, winning in '48 and '49, neither of which Allie was involved in, because he'd been cut after '47.
Allie's replacement was Alex Webster. He had been a very good player, once the G-Men's all-time leading rusher. But, as coach, he didn't have a whole lot to work with, and ended up going 29-40-1 from 1969 to 1973.
The truth is, no Giant coach has lasted particularly long with a bad record. Bill Arnsparger, hailed as a genius for building the Miami Dolphins' "No-Name Defense" that reached 3 Super Bowls and won 2, replaced Webster as Giant coach from 1974 to 1976, and had the worst record in team history, 7-28. But he had even less to work with by that point, and also had the chaotic stadium situation to deal with.
Ray Handley went 8-8 his 1st season, and 6-10 the next, but he was only there for 2 seasons, not long enough to truly do some damage, so he doesn't get on this list. Nor does the other "Must Go" guy, Joe Walton of the 1983-89 Jets: He got them to the Playoffs twice, despite being in the same division at the same time as the Don Shula & Dan Marino Miami Dolphins and a pretty good New England Patriots team coached by Raymond Berry. It was the rise of Marv Levy's Buffalo Bills that really doomed Walton.
More recent Giant coaches? Ben McAdoo went 13-15 in 2016 and '17, and Pat Shurmur went 9-23 in 2018 and '19. But they were dealing with an aging team and a front office that wasn't really with it. I can't put either of them on this list. And even Jet coaches like Eric "Mangenius" Mangini and Rex Ryan weren't bad enough to make this list. Disappointing, certainly. Bad, no.
9. Phil Watson, Rangers, 1955-59. 119-124-52, .492. Through the 2020 season, he remains the only man to coach the Rangers at least 4 full seasons with an overall losing record. He did, however, win 2 Stanley Cups as a player, with the 1940 Rangers and the 1944 Montreal Canadiens.
Watson as a Ranger player
8. John Hynes, Devils, 2015-19. He had a good goalie in Cory Schneider, a Hart Trophy winner in Taylor Hall, a legend in Patrik Elias, and decent players like Travis Zajac, Adam Henrique, Andy Greene, Kyle Palmieri, Jordin Tootoo, Eric Gelinas, Michael Cammalleri, Miles Wood, Sami Vatanen, Brian Boyle...
And he made the Playoffs once in 4 seasons, and left the Devils worse off than when he arrived, going 150-159-45 -- and, since you should really count those 45 overtime and/or shootout losses as losses, that's actually 150-203, for a percentage of .425. Pathetic.
. Mike Milbury, Islanders, 2 terms between 1995 and 1999. 57-112-24, .358. Perhaps his biggest problem was that, at the time, the Atlantic Division had very strong teams in New Jersey, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Washington, and, sometimes, Madison Square Garden.
Or, perhaps, his biggest problem was Islander ownership not having money to spend on good players. Or, perhaps, his biggest problem was that his general manager was an idiot. Who was his general manager? Mike Milbury.
6. Isiah Thomas, Knicks, 2006-08. 56-108, .341. Only 2 seasons, so I can't rank him higher. (Or would that be "lower"?) And, let's face it, like Milbury, he had an idiot for a general manager. Of course, like Milbury, his general manager was himself. But, although he was a true all-time great as a player with the Detroit Pistons, as Knick boss, he was an embarrassment, on the basketball court, in civil court, and in the court of public opinion.
The true problem was that, as long as Charles Dolan had a job, James Dolan had a job; as long as James had a job, Isiah the GM had a job; and as long as Isiah the GM had a job, Isiah the coach had a job. Finally, James -- with prodding from Charles, perhaps? -- fired Isiah from both roles.
5. Eddie Donovan, Knicks, 1961-65. 84-194, .302. He was just 43 years old when he left the head coach's post, and never coached another game in the NBA. However, let the record show that, at the time, the NBA's Eastern Division was dominated by Red Auerbach's Boston Celtics and Wilt Chamberlain's Philadelphia Warriors.
4. Bill Fitch, Nets, 1989-92. 83-163, .337. He won 944 games in NBA regular-season play, which is 8th all-time. He got the Cleveland Cavaliers to their 1st-ever Eastern Conference Finals in 1976, won a World Championship with the Boston Celtics in 1981, and got the Houston Rockets to the Finals in 1986, and if the Celtics didn't have one of the best teams ever that season he might've won another title.
But he also lost 1,106 regular-season games, more than any coach before him, and the last 2 NBA teams who thought he could be trusted were the Nets and the Los Angeles Clippers, the 2 "little brother teams." Only in his last season with the Nets did he get close to .500, 40-42. (Lenny Wilkens now has more losses, but Lenny also once had the most wins, and, like Don Nelson who has surpassed him in that regard, is well over .500.)
* 1951: The Dodgers led the National League by 13 games on August 11. They blew it, and faced their arch-rivals, the New York Giants, in a best 2-out-of-3 playoff. We all know how that ended: Bobby Thomson hits one out off Ralph Branca, and "The Giants win the Pennant!"
Dressen had Branca and Carl Erskine in his bullpen. Erskine had a great curve, but Dressen brought in Branca, who had only a fastball, to face Thomson, who couldn't hit anything but a fastball, and who had already homered off Branca in the first game of the playoff. Branca didn't lose that Pennant, Dressen did.
* 1952: The Dodgers won the Pennant, but lost the World Series to the Yankees in 7 games. True, the Dodgers were without their best pitcher, Don Newcombe, who was serving in the Korean War -- but so was the Yankees' best pitcher, Whitey Ford. And Dressen trusted Billy Loes twice, with disastrous results.
* 1953: The Dodgers won 104 games, tying a franchise record that still stands, and ran away with the Pennant. Again, they lost to the World Series to the Yankees. Dressen still didn't have Newcombe, and the Yankees had Ford back (but then, Ford was serving in '51 and Newcombe hadn't yet been drafted), and Dressen trusted Johnny Podres 2 years too soon in Game 5, where he got rocked, and trusted Erskine too little in Game 6, and pulled him too early and the Yanks clinched.
Still, as my Grandma, an old Dodger fan from Queens would say, "Oh, that Dressen! He was so
stupid!" I tried to tell her Bobby Valentine, who managed the Mets from 1996 to 2002, was dumber. She wouldn't buy it. She was right: Bobby V made his share of mistakes, but never got the chance to make as many big ones as Dressen. (However, if I were making this list for Boston, Bobby V would be on the list, even if he did manage there for only 1 season.)
1. Rich Kotite, Jets, 1995-96. Here we go, the one we cannot top. Or "bottom," as the case may be. Born in Brooklyn, grew up on Staten Island, went to that Borough's Wagner College, played tight end for the Giants from 1967 to 1972, not at all a bad player. But he did play for 2 guys on this list, Sherman and Webster. And he was an assistant coach under Joe "Must Go" Walton. Were these bad omens?
In 1991 and '92, he got the Philadelphia Eagles into the Playoffs. In 1993, 8-8 wasn't enough to get in. In 1994, he got the Eagles off to a 7-2 start. Then, trailing the Dallas Cowboys by 17 points in the 4th quarter on a soggy afternoon, James Joseph scored a touchdown to pull the Eagles within 24-13. Kotite decided to go for the two-point conversion. Huh? Going for 1 would've gotten them within 10, just a touchdown and a field goal from a tie; going for 2 would've gotten them within 9, but the touchdown they still needed could've been the time to go for 2. The Eagles didn't get it, and lost.
During the post-game press conference, Kotite went the Milli Vanilli route, and blamed it on the rain: "I must have read my chart wrong. It must have gotten wet." You mean you knew it was raining, and didn't have a protective sheet over the chart to keep it dry? How about this: Don't rely on the chart, dumbass! Down by 15, maybe you go for 2; down by 11, no way!
The Eagles lost all their remaining games, finished 7-9, missed the Playoffs, and Kotite was fired. Crap like this is what makes people in Philly go up to cops and say, "Officer, I want to report a crime: The Eagles are killing me!"
On January 4, 1995, a date which lives in infamy, Jets owner Leon Hess announced that he had hired Kotite to be the team's head coach and, effectively, also its GM. Why Kotite? Well, he was a local guy, and a blue-collar guy who could appeal to local fans. But Hess knew that Kotite had led the Eagles to a couple of Playoff berths. Words that Hess should have guessed would outlive him: "I'm 80 years old. I want results now!"
He got results, all right. In 1995, the Jets went 3-13. One of those losses was the 1st win in franchise history for the expansion Carolina Panthers. (While the Panthers did reach the NFC Championship Game the next season, that 1st year, they were only 4-12.)
Miami dropped 52 points on them; Oakland, 47. They got held to 7 points by New England, 3 points by Atlanta, and in their last 2 games of the season, they got held to 6 points by Houston and shut out at home by New Orleans. They only drew 28,885 for that game. Don't tell me that it was Christmas Eve, and the day after the Giants' "Snowball Bowl": NFL fans will sit through anything. Not once all season did the Jets get a home attendance over 69,000.
In 1996, the Jets had the worst season in the history of Tri-State Area football, 1-15. The only win came in Week 9, October 27, 31-21 away to Arizona. They didn't give up more than 36 points in any game, but gave up at least 31 points in 10 games. They got held to 6 points by the Giants and Denver, and 7 by Indianapolis.
On the one hand, it wasn't as bad as it looked: They only lost to Philadelphia by 1, Buffalo and Miami by 3 each, Jacksonville and New England by 4 each, Indianapolis by 5, and the Giants by 7. On the other hand, that means they had a legitimate chance to go 8-8, and couldn't get the job done.
Two days before the team's '96 finale, GM Kotite fired coach Kotite. The last 2 home games before this, the Jets drew 21,731 and 29,176; knowing that it was his last game, they came out 49,933 strong for the finale.
Owner Hess then hired Bill Parcells, and got much better results, although Hess died before Parcells could get the ultimate result for the Jets, like he did twice for the Giants.
Kotite was just 54 years old when he left Weeb Ewbank Hall, but has never again even been hired as an assistant coach. Anywhere. Not the pros, not college, not even in high school. However, at age 77, he has been a contributor to various NFL Network broadcasts.
In 2004, in a book titled The Great Philadelphia Sports Debate, co-authors Glen Macnow and Angelo Cataldi, both hosts on Philly's sports-talk radio station WIP, took the question of who was the worst coach in Philadelphia sports history. Macnow said it was Doug Moe, who'd been a good coach with the Denver Nuggets, but was a disaster in his half-season with the 76ers. After Macnow's 2 pages detailing this choice, Cataldi said, "No, the worst coach in Philadelphia sports history was Rich Kotite," and then provided an explanation that any prosecutor would love to have thought of for his closing argument.
Think about this: The worst team in the history of Philadelphia sports was the Quakers, who played one season in the NHL, 1930-31, and finished 4-36-4, for a "winning" percentage of .136 that makes the decades of ineptitude of the Phillies (pre-Charlie Manuel), A's and Eagles look brilliant by comparison. The worst single-season team in that city was the 1972-73 76ers, 9-73, .110.
In his last 39 games as an NFL head coach, with 2 different sets of players, Rich Kotite was 4-35. That's a percentage of .103. In neither case, of the '94 Eagles or the '95 and '96 Jets, could he use the excuse of leading an expansion team, or not having a lot of money to spend. (Eagles owner Jeff Lurie was a Hollywood studio head, Hess was an oilman, both were billionaires, and, besides, the NFL has a salary cap, which means you can't spend like the Yankees or Manchester City.)
Nor were his Eagles and his Jets beset by long-term injuries to multiple key players. Nor was there trouble in the locker rooms: The Jets may have had Keyshawn Johnson in '96, but he wasn't causing trouble at the time. And blaming the media or the fans doesn't change the fact that Kotite put himself in position to get ripped by the media and booed by the fans.
There is no viable excuse to explain it: Rich Kotite is the worst head coach in the sports histories of both Philadelphia and New York.
