The 12 NFL Coaches With The Worst Winning Percentages Of All Time

More than 500 people have spent at least one game serving as the head coach of an NFL team, and some of them have obviously fared a bit better than others. Most fans are probably familiar with the legendary names who’ve managed to rack up the highest winning percentage, but that may not be the case for the guys at the other end of the spectrum.

It’s pretty hard to keep your job as the head coach of an NFL team if you’re not able to win on a consistent basis, and there are hundreds of guys who’ve only managed to stick around for a season or two before being forced to settle for a less prestigious gig.

However, there are also some skippers who probably got more time than they deserved to try to show they can turn things around, which includes the ones who ended up with the worst winning percentages in the history of the league while at the helm for at least 50 games.

Bert Bell: 10-46-2( .310)

Bert Bell earned a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame due to his work as the fifth commissioner of the NFL, and it’s pretty safe to assume he wouldn’t have gotten into Canton based on his coaching résumé.

Bell played college football at Penn before pivoting to coaching, and he decided he had what to took to call the shots on the sidelines when he purchased the Eagles ahead of their inaugural season in 1933.

That did not end up being the case, as Philadelphia went 1-11 that year, and they never finished above .500 during the five-year stretch where he went 10-44-2.

In 1940, Bell orchestrated a deal that made him a co-owner of the Steelers with Art Rooney before leaving Philly for Pittsburgh. He served as head coach for a grand total of two games but resigned at Rooney’s behest after losing both to finish his career at 10-46-2.

Hue Jackson: 11-44-1 (.205)

You probably knew it was only a matter of time until Hue Jackson showed up due to his infamously atrocious tenure as the head coach of the Browns.

Jackson got his first shot with the Raiders in 2011 but went 8-8 during his first and only season calling the Xs and Os in Oakland.

In 2016, he replaced Mike Pettine in Cleveland before ushering in the ill-fated era the Browns kicked off by going 1-15 that year. It seemed like they had nowhere to go but up, but that did not end up being the case when you consider they subsequently went 0-16 to join the Lions as the only team to lose that many games in a year.

The Browns gave him one more shot in 2018, but he was fired after getting off to a 2-5-1 start. He hasn’t coached an NFL game since and currently serves as the offensive coordinator at Georgia State.

Steve Spagnuolo: 11-41 (.212)

Steve Spagnuolo paid his dues with the Eagles and the Giants before the Rams hired him to take over in 2009.

He got off to a very inauspicious start after the team went 1-15, and while it seemed like things were trending in the right direction with a 7-9 showing the following year, they cratered in 2011 by going 2-14 before he was fired.

He coached four more games for the Giants after getting the interim label when Ben McAdoo was canned in 2017, but ended up going 1-3 to close out the season.

However, he’s done pretty well for himself since being named the defensive coordinator for the Chiefs in 2019, as he’s helped Kansas City win three Super Bowls.

Gus Bradley: 14-48 (.226)

Gus Bradley earned a reputation as a defensive guru as the coordinator for the Seahawks, but as was the case with Spags, that didn’t translate to success as a head coach.

The Jaguars learned that the hard way when he was hired in 2013. They went 4-12 during his first year, 3-13 in his second, improved to 5-11, but were sitting at 2-12 when he was kicked to the curb before the 2016 campaign came to an end.

He’s bounced around the league in diminished roles since then and was most recently hired to serve as an assistant for the 49ers.

Dave Shula: 19-52 (.268)

Don Shula is one of the most accomplished coaches in NFL history with a record 328 wins and a winning percentage of .677 that puts him in 11th place for the all-time best.

However, the apple fell pretty far from the tree as far as his son Dave was concerned.

The younger Shula was a wide receiver who played college football at Dartmouth and had a short-lived NFL career before following in his father’s footsteps by landing a gig with the Dolphins thanks to some good, old-fashioned nepotism.

He was 32 years old when the Bengals tapped him to become their head coach in 1992, but the 7-9 record he recorded in 1995 was the only time they came close to sniffing .500.

Cincinnati got off to a 1-6 start the following year before he was fired, and he left the NFL behind to turn his attention to his dad’s growing steakhouse empire.

He did eventually get back to football, as he’s been coaching WRs at his alma mater since 2018.

Pat Shurmur: 19-46 (.292)

Pat Shurmur got his first chance to serve as the coach of an NFL team with the Browns in 2012 but was let go after a two-year stint that saw them go 9-23.

He got to pad his stats with a win in the only game where he served as the interim coach for the Eagles after Chip Kelly was fired in 2015, and the Giants decided he was their best option after McAdoo was let go.

However, he once again went 9-23 over the course of two seasons before being fired following the conclusion of the 2023 campaign and has spent the past couple of years helping Deion Sanders run the offense in Colorado.

Dave McGinnis: 17-40 (.298)

The Cardinals got off to a 2-5 start in 2000 and opted to replace Vince Tobin with Dave McGinnis, who didn’t fare much better while going 1-8 in the interim role.

However, he was named the official successor, and the team improved to 7-9 under his watch during his first full year as head coach.

Unfortunately, things started to go downhill from there, as Arizona went 5-12 and 4-11 before the franchise decided to go in a new direction.

He subsequently spent some time with the Titans and Rams before pivoting to broadcasting and now makes a living imparting his knowledge while serving as a radio analyst for Tennessee’s games.

Joe Bugel: 24-56 (.300)

The team that was then known as the “Phoenix Cardinals” kicked off the 1990s with a new coach in the form of Joe Bugel, who played an instrumental role in shaping the offense that helped Washington win two of the three Super Bowls it secured in the previous decade.

However, this was yet another situation where skills as a disciplinary specialist failed to translate to competency as a head coach, as the Cardinals went 20-44 in the four seasons he lasted before they pulled the plug.

Bugel got one more shot with Oakland in 1997, but he only lasted a year before being shown the door following a 4-12 showing.

Marion Campbell: 34-80-1 (.300)

No one on this list managed to last longer as a head coach in the NFL than Marion Campbell, who held that job for a total of nine seasons before teams finally caught on.

Campbell played college football at Georgia and was a two-time Pro Bowler as a defensive end during an eight-year NFL career he kicked off in 1954.

He had two three-year stints as the head coach of the Falcons; the first began in 1974 and saw him go 6-19, while the second kicked off in 1987 and ended after he went 11-32.

Those sandwiched another three-year run with the Eagles that started in 1983 and finished after the 1985 season due to his underwhelming 17-29-1 record in Philly.

Darryl Rogers: 18-40 (.310)

Darryl Rogers initially made a name for himself as a college coach and fared much better at that level than he did in the NFL; he ended up with a 129-84-7 record while spending time at Cal State-Hayward, Fresno State, San Jose State, Michigan State, and Arizona State (he seemingly had a thing for schools with “State” in their name).

The Lions poached him from the Sun Devils in 1985 to kick off a pretty dismal stretch where he once uttered the words “What does a coach have to do around here to get fired?” while speaking with the media before finding out after Detroit fired him midway through his fourth season after starting a 2-9.

Harland Svare: 21-48-5 (.310)

This one is a throwback to the time when NFL coaches still wore suits on the sidelines, but that was basically lipstick on a pig when it came to covering up the deficiencies of Harland Svare.

Svare played eight years as a linebacker in the NFL before the Rams hired him as their head coach midway through the 1962 season. He went 0-5-1 that year and never came close to reaching .500 before being let go when the 1964 season wrapped with an overall record of 14-31-3.

The Chargers gave him another shot at the tail end of the 1971 campaign. He went 2-2, but his following season was his only full one in San Diego, as he was prematurely fired in 1975 after going 7-17-2.

Bill McPeak: 21-46-3 (.313)

We’re capping things off with one more throwback in the form of Bill McPeak, who played defensive end for the Steelers between 1949 and 1957 before taking a job with Washington as an assistant at the end of that decade.

However, he found himself thrust into the position of head coach and GM in 1961, but the team struggled to get things clicking under his watch while posting a 21-46-3 record prior to his dismissal in 1965.

With that said, he made some shrewd moves in the front office and helped secure a number of players who’d help the team turn things around once the 1970s came along.