Introducing the Colts’ New Head Coach, Jim Caldwell
I’ve heard plenty of people give plenty of reasons why Jim Caldwell will never succeed as the head coach of the Indianapolis Colts, now that Tony Dungy has formally retired and turned the duties over to him. The main argument is Caldwell’s 26-63 record in his eight seasons at Wake Forest, his only experience as a head coach.
We had our differences, none of which had anything to do with Caldwell being a bad guy. Those who know him know that’s not so. He’s a very bright and impressive person. He was a coach who won 26 games and lost 63 and I was the guy assigned to cover him. So on the most fundamental level, I can chalk any differences we had up to cause and effect.
But I can give three good reasons why Caldwell may succeed with the Colts.
1) The NFL is a different game from college football. Success or failure in one guarantees nothing in the other.
2) Caldwell’s greatest shortcoming was his inability to compile and maintain a strong staff. He was hired off the staff of the legendary Joe Paterno at Penn State and who among the Nittany Lions assistants were going to leave Happy Valley to go with a rookie coach? And he had never built strong contacts in the college game. Consequently he had 18 assistants in his eight years, including five offensive coordinators (himself among them). As head coach of the Indianapolis Colts, assembling a staff should not be a problem.
3) Caldwell was 45 the day he coached his last game at Wake Forest. He’ll turn 54 on Friday. Anybody judging someone on a body of work from nine years ago knows nothing about the human capacity to grow and learn. Casey Stengel was 58 the day he was named manager of the Yankees, and he had failed utterly with both the Braves and Dodgers, never finishing in the first division. Some wise acre columnist wrote that day that the Yankees had been mathematically eliminated from the American League pennant. The Yankees won that pennant and seven of the next nine. One of the years he finished second, in 1954, the Yankees won 103 games and finished eight games back of the Indians.
I’m not ready to say that Jim Caldwell will be an outstanding NFL coach, if for no other reason I’m hardly an expert on pro football. But I know him well enough to not count him out. I also know him well enough to wish him luck.