TAMPA — Taking over a team from a Super Bowl champion head coach with a future Hall of Fame quarterback comes with expectations that are almost impossible to fulfill.
So when Jim Caldwell inherited the Colts — still armed with Peyton Manning — from Tony Dungy, he didn’t try to walk in anyone’s footsteps.
“I remember in my press conference, they asked me how I was going to fill Tony’s shoes,” Caldwell said. “And I said, ‘First of all, I don’t have to do it alone. Secondly, there’s only one Tony Dungy and I feel pretty comfortable in these size elevens I wear.’”
Caldwell knew exactly what Todd Bowles was feeling last week when he was named the Bucs head coach after Bruce Arians stepped aside to take a position in the front office. The announcement came three weeks after Tom Brady ended his retirement.
Dungy won Super Bowl 41 over the Bears and coached two more seasons trying to defend the title.
Like Arians and Bowles, Caldwell and Dungy had a long history together. They first competed in the Big Ten. Dungy was the quarterback at Minnesota, Caldwell was a four-year starter at defensive back at Iowa.
In 2001, Dungy hired Caldwell as a quarterbacks coach with the Bucs.
Four years later, the Colts turned to Caldwell as the interim head coach after Dungy’s 18-year-old son, James, died. The succession plan was in place when Dungy retired following the 2008 season.
“Without question, it was great that Bruce was able to get one of the guys on his staff to take over after he stepped down,” Caldwell said. “That’s because he has a number of good people that were very capable and obviously Todd had experience being a head coach in the NFL. So I think that was a natural choice.
“Oftentimes you find guys who have been in that position before. I had been a head coach in college, so I’d been there and having had a sense of who I was and my relationship style and all that kind of stuff, that helps you in that journey because oftentimes you find guys are searching for that. They may have a pretty good team but they’re searching for who they are and how they lead and those kinds of things. It can become a little tricky.”
Continuity is the key to success in the NFL. The teams that thrive are the ones that don’t change schemes and quarterbacks every other season.
From that standpoint, the Bucs will benefit because players already know Bowles. It doesn’t mean there won’t be some tweaks on both sides of the ball. Under Caldwell, the Colts used more man-to-man coverage, more blitzing and less two-deep zone.
Bowles will continue to call the defense. But offensively, even though Byron Leftwich remains the offensive coordinator, fans may see more of a commitment to the run game.
Bowles has named Kacy Rodgers and Larry Foote as co-defensive coordinators, enabling him to spend more time with Brady and on the offensive side of the football.
“Now you have to look at it from a global point of view and make decisions not just on your side of the ball,” Caldwell said. “Obviously, what you have to do is learn how to change your perspective and oftentimes there’s an allure that draws you in and that’s one of the things you have to battle but Todd has done it (as head coach of the Jets).”
Caldwell thrived immediately after taking over for Dungy. The Colts started 14-0 and may have made a run for a perfect season had he not decided to rest his starters for two weeks in a row with nothing to play for.
The parallels to Bowles’ situation are not lost on quarterbacks coach Clyde Christensen. He and offensive special assistant Tom Moore served on Caldwell’s staff in Indianapolis.
“It’s very similar,” Christensen said. “Jim was sort of a protégé of Tony’s the way Todd is for Bruce. They both wanted to leave the team in the best possible situation for their guys to have success. I think that was very important to both of them while keeping the coaching staff together. From that standpoint, both Tony and Bruce were very unselfish.”
Caldwell’s first Colts team went 14-2 and won the AFC before losing to the Saints in Super Bowl 44. The next year they went 10-6 and lost in the first round of the playoffs. Manning missed all of the 2011 season (neck), the Colts won two games and Caldwell, who later coached the Lions for four seasons, was dismissed.
The promotion of minorities and women in the NFL is Arians’ true legacy, according to Caldwell.
“Bruce has been out in the forefront of everything when it comes to social justice and equality when it comes to positions,” Caldwell said. “It’s the way he’s always lived his life. ... Nobody has had an African American offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator and special teams coordinator. That didn’t happen. He not only did it but they also won. It is an outstanding staff.
“Kudos to him, and all of us in the profession appreciate what he has done and the opportunity he’s provided for men of color and women.”
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