(EDITOR’S NOTE: To listen to the Mike O’Hara interview, click on the following link: https://www.spreaker.com/user/fullpresscoverage/eyetest-ep95)
Now that the Pro Football Hall of Fame has its Class of 2022, one request for next year: Put Buddy Parker in Canton.
That’s not me talking, though I’ve pushed the former Lions’ and Steelers’ head coach in the past. It’s former Hall-of-Fame voter Mike O’Hara, who now works for DetroitLions.com and was a guest on this week’s “Eye Test for Two” podcast (fullpresscoverage.com).
“He’s not the only old-timer whose career warrants being in there (the Pro Football Hall),” O’Hara said of Parker, “but it’s not even close. It really isn’t. By any metric, any window, any logic. He belongs in the Hall of Fame.”
Now I know what you’re thinking: Well, of course, O’Hara’s pushing Parker. He works for the Lions’ website, covered the team for over 30 years and Parker was Detroit’s most decorated head coach. OK, I’ll give you that. But this goes far beyond impartiality. Those goes to the heart of what makes an NFL head coach Hall-of-Fame worthy: Success.
And Buddy Parker had it.
He won an NFL championship in 1952. Then he won another the next year. And he didn’t just beat anyone. He beat Paul Brown and the Cleveland Browns. Parker was 4-1 vs. Brown while with Detroit, taking the Lions to three consecutive NFL title games vs. Cleveland (1952-54) before leaving the Lions on the eve of the 1957 season.
That team won a championship, too, with the quarterback Parker acquired that summer: Tobin Rote.
Sound familiar? It should. Jimmy Johnson won two consecutive Super Bowls in Dallas and built the Cowboys’ team that won a third. Dallas hasn’t won another. Nor has it played in one. The same thing happened in Detroit.
Yet Johnson was one of two Centennial Class coaches named to the Hall. Buddy Parker was not the other. Bill Cowher was. Parker wasn’t the 2021 coaching finalist, either. Tom Flores was. Nor was he the 2022 coaching finalist. Dick Vermeil was.
But the record speaks for itself. Where Johnson won 80 regular-season games and Flores 97, Buddy Parker won 104. Where Johnson’s winning percentage was .556, Flores’ was .527 and Vermeil’s was .524, Buddy Parker went to the head of the class at .581.
Vermeil and Cowher each won one Super Bowl. Parker won two NFL championships and was behind a third. Then he moved on to Pittsburgh, a woebegone franchise without a winning season in seven previous years, and was 51-46-6.
And in the seven years after he left? Glad you asked. The Steelers were 25-70-3 and never had a winning season.
Enough already. I’ve been down this path too many times. The Pro Football Hall’s coaching category has two more years before the Hall’s board of directors revisits its future. So let’s not waste time. Do the right thing, and put Buddy Parker in.
Now. Because he belongs … and has for decades.
“Absolutely,” said O’Hara.
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February 12, 2022 at 11:43PM
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Looking Ahead to Hall's Class of 2023: The Time is Now to Elect Buddy Parker - Sports Illustrated
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