Coaching professional football teams is a job that has seen its share of changes over the years. As a franchise the Bills have also seen their share of change in the head coaching role.
Buffalo has had 14 head coaches in their 50-year history, but only three of them made the list of nominees for the 50th Season All-Time Team.
One head coach won a pair of league titles, another turned a moribund team into a division winner and a third is on the Bills Wall of Fame and a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
We break down the careers of the three most successful head coaches in Buffalo's 50-year history.
Chuck Knox (1978-1982)
Hired in 1978 to pull a Bills team out of a two-year funk in which they won a combined five games (1976-1977), Knox managed a 5-11 record in his first year and then reversed it two seasons later leading Buffalo to their first NFL division title in 1980 as the team went 11-5.
Knox followed that up with a 10-6 campaign and a second straight playoff berth in 1981. The Bills won their Wild Card matchup with the Jets, but were ousted in the Divisional round by Cincinnati. The strike shortened 1982 season proved to be Knox's last.
Knox's winning percentage with the Bills was just over .500 (37-36, .507).
Marv Levy (1986-1997)
The winningest head coach in Bills history, Levy was brought on board in the midst of the franchise's run of five consecutive non-winning seasons midway through the 1986 season.
Levy quickly fashioned the Bills into a contender with the breakthrough season coming in 1988, when the Bills won the first of five AFC East crowns in six years.
Under Levy's tutelage, the Bills became the first team in NFL history to appear in four consecutive Super Bowls as Buffalo won four straight AFC titles (1990-1993).
He was named NFL Coach of the Year in 1988 and AFC Coach of the Year in 1988, 1993, and 1995.
A member of the Bills Wall of Fame, Levy was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2001.
Lou Saban (1962-1965, 1972-1976)The no-nonsense head coach provided the Bills with their first run of real success lifting the Bills to a share of the AFL Eastern division title in just his second season (1963) before leading Buffalo to back-to-back AFL Championships in 1964 and 1965.
For his efforts Saban was named AFL Coach of the Year in both of Buffalo's championship campaigns.
Saban returned for a second stint with the Bills in 1972 as he helped to return Buffalo to respectability inheriting a team that went 1-13 and turning them into a club that went 9-5 in back-to-back seasons two years later.
A member of the AFL Hall of Fame, Saban's winning percentage with the Bills (.602) is second best in team annals.
