Will The Pattern Continue?

In 1959 Vince Lombardi was hired to coach the Green Bay Packers, and he led them to the NFL championship five times during the 1960s. In 1969 the Pittsburgh Steelers hired Chuck Noll, and they won four Super Bowls under his direction in the '70s. In 1979 Bill Walsh took over the 49ers and won three Super Bowls in the '80s; he resigned after the 1988 season, but the team he built repeated as NFL champion the following season.

All of which leads to the fact that Jimmy Johnson replaced Tom Landry as coach of the Cowboys in 1989, and, eerily, he is on the same path as the master coaches of the past three decades. He's in the midst of transforming a downtrodden team into potentially the dominant club of the '90s.

Here is a comparison of the turnarounds of these four teams, all of which were achieved within four seasons of the hiring of the coach.