Marv Levy was a head coach most remembered for his character, integrity, and how he built his football teams. He believed in only bringing on high-character players and lived by the mantra, “Ability without character will lose.”
Levy attended Coe College in Iowa and played football and ran track. He also attended Harvard, earning his Masters’s in English and Literature. But football was his passion.
Levy began in the college ranks from 1953-1968 and was the youngest coach in college football then. In 1969, he joined the Philadelphia Eagles as a kicking coach before moving to Southern California, where he joined George Allen as an assistant coach for the Los Angeles Rams.
In 1971, he followed Allen to Washington for two seasons before heading to the Great White North for his first Head Coaching job in the Canadian Football League for the Montreal Alouettes. Levy spent five seasons in the CFL and won two Grey Cup championships in Montreal before returning to the NFL as the head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs in 1978.
The Chiefs were coming off of a franchise-worst 2-12 season the year before, but by 1981, Kansas City finished with its first winning season in ten years while under Levy’s leadership. The following season, however, Kansas City finished the strike-shortened season with a 3-6 record and was relieved of his head coaching duties.
Levy took a hiatus from the NFL in 1983. He became the head coach for the Chicago Blitz of the United States Football League for the 1984 season before taking another year away from coaching in 1985.
In 1986, Levy returned to the NFL as the head coach of the Buffalo Bills, where he’d spend the next twelve seasons. 1990-1993, Buffalo ruled the AFC with four consecutive conference titles but never took home a Lombardi Trophy. Levy remained the Bills coach until 1997 when he retired from coaching the following season. In 2006, Levy returned to Buffalo as the club’s general manager, but the stint lasted until 2007 before he left football for good.
After 17 NFL seasons as a coach, Levy finished with a 154-120 record and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2001.
In 2021, Levy became the third PFHOF inductee enshrined into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame, joining Warren Moon and Bud Grant.
