The most innovative, successful duos in NFL history

	Tom Brady and Bill Belichick have had great success over the last 100 games, winning 76 of them. AP
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Bill Belichick has been a head coach in the NFL for exactly 200 games. For the first 100 of them, somebody other than Tom Brady was his starting quarterback. Belichick went 42-58 in those games, for a winning percentage of .420, with one playoff berth in six seasons.

In Belichick's most recent 100 games, dating from the start of New England's Brady era in Week 3 of 2001, Belichick is 76-24 (.760), with three Super Bowl victories, four playoff berths, and a fifth postseason run in six years looking very likely.

It's a chicken or the egg question to determine who's responsible for whose success. But it's safe to say there's no more symbiotic relationship in the NFL than between a head coach and his starting quarterback, the position that most often impacts a team's won-loss record.

And if you don't believe us, just ask current head coaches Bill Parcells, Mike Shanahan, Joe Gibbs, Jack Del Rio, Tom Coughlin and Jim Mora, all of whom have learned anew this season about the direct correlation between success and failure and the guy they have under center.

Who are the 10 best coach-quarterback combinations in NFL history? Here's our list, and be assured it's not just a rote exercise in figuring out which tandems compiled the top winning percentages during their tenures. We were looking for impact and innovation, in addition to consistent bottom-line results.

As always with these types of debate, your results may vary:

1. Bill Walsh and Joe Montana -- In their 10 seasons together (1979-88) in San Francisco, they won three Super Bowls and made the playoffs seven times. But the best part of their partnership was how Walsh drafted Montana in the third round in 1979 and helped mold him from the ground up. Montana was already a clutch quarterback when he arrived from Notre Dame. Playing for Walsh, he became a great quarterback, and the game's preeminent performer in the 1980s.

2. Paul Brown and Otto Graham -- Going strictly by results, the pairing of Brown and Graham in Cleveland has no peers. They were together for 10 years in pro football (four in the AAFC, six in the NFL), and went to the championship game of their league every year, winning seven times (four in the AAFC, three in the NFL). Their 105-17-4 record in that decade seems unbreakable. Brown and Graham were products of another era, and they had much less competition to deal with, but their legacy includes being the first to prove that you could win championships by throwing the football.

3. Bill Belichick and Tom Brady -- Building a dynasty in the age of the NFL's salary cap, the Patriots have had these two as cornerstones. In so many ways, Brady is the perfect quarterback for the demanding Belichick, playing the role of his on-field alter ego, and in essence becoming a coach in uniform. Brady is both smart and instinctive, and says and does everything the way Belichick wants. Taking Brady in the sixth round of 2000 -- behind the likes of Giovanni Carmazzi, Chris Redman, Tee Martin and Spurgeon Wynn -- was the key move that made New England the NFL's model franchise.