Tony Dungy retired this week with the eighth best winning percentage in NFL history (the all-time leaderboard is below).

 

His departure helps underscore a year that will largely go down as one that marked a changing of the guard among coaches: the Old Line was down and in many cases out this year, while a new generation of promising young sideline talent has emerged.

 

In fact, the 2008 season was, with the exception of Andy Reid in Philadelphia, a pretty sour year for old veteran coaches.

 

Dungy went 12-4 in the regular season, but his postseason ended in another disappointing one-and-done effort, for the sixth time in his 11 playoff appearances with Tampa and Indy.

 

New England's Bill Belichick climbed into the top 10 on the all-time coaching leaderboard, thanks to his team's 11-5 season. But he is forced to sit there and wonder what might have been following a year in which only one of the final four teams boasted a better regular-season record than his Patriots, who didn't even reach the playoffs.

 

Denver's old faithful Mike Shanahan was fired after an 8-8 season in which his career winning percentage fell from .606 to .599, and was then replaced by boy-faced former Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels.

 

Mike Holmgren entered his last season with Seattle as one of the 20 winningest coaches in NFL history. But the 4-12 campaign of 2008 was easily his worst as an NFL coach, and he tumbles all the way down to No. 24 on the all-time coaching leaderboard.

 

Wade Phillips barely clings to the leaderboard and barely kept his head above water with a disappointing 9-7 season in the Little D. He is forced to live yet another season of regret for the worst coaching decision of the last 50 years.

 

Only Reid clings to respectability for the Old Line NFL coaches this year. He's gone 11-6-1 this season, including his two postseason victories, and is fighting for a first Super Bowl championship to cement his legacy as a leading coach of his generation.

 

As of right now, Reid joins George Allen for a dubious distinction: they are the two winningest coaches in NFL history without a championship to their credit. "Great ... but" is never as easy to swallow as "Great. Period."

 

The fragile state of Old Line, and the changing of the coaching guard here in 2008-09, is evident in this year's final four: Reid, a 10-year veteran, boasts twice as much NFL head coaching experience as the other three final four coaches combined (Mike Tomlin, two; Ken Whisenhunt, two; John Harbaugh, one).

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