The player-coach is one of the wonderful oddities in sport, happening at those rare times when a team decides that not only is an athlete their best option on the field/court, but the best one off of it as well. Pete Rose, Bill Russell, Ty Cobb … all legends who not only played on the field but coached the team at the same time.
Sadly, we don’t see it at all anymore. The last MLB player-coach was Rose. The last in the NBA was in 1971. We haven’t seen an official player-coach in the NFL since the 1920s, though Dan Reeves was both a player and an assistant for the Cowboys in the 1970s.