Saturday morning, on SiriusXM NFL Radio, one of the hosts (can't remember who) said that the best NFL coaches are former NFL players. He was talking about DeMeco Ryans of Texas. He went on and on about it. I knew it was absurd, so I checked.

In the last 20 Super Bowls, the winning team was only coached by a former NFL player five times, and one of them (Sean Payton) only played three games as a replacement player during the strike. The losing team was only coached by a former NFL player four times.

That's a total of nine out of 40, or 22.5%. The most successful coaches during this era - Belichick, Reid, Tomlin, Holmgren, Shanahan, Coughlin, McVay - never played in the NFL.