Overheating!!! One fan not working.. could it be why?

What is your question?

Had a little rattling noise for the last couple mos but was running great. Then it started overheating, filled it with coolant... No good. Tried to drive it to my buddy to look at it, and overheated, burst 3 hoses back to back.. we replaced them all and tried a new radiator cap and then noticed the fan (that we rigged to always stay on) was off... so my buddy got it back on, but then the other one stopped.. How? Is having only one working fan causing it to overheat?!