Foxsports: Dungy stepping down

Indy will regret the day they agreed for Caldwell to be the coach in waiting.

Caldwell is a classy guy, but consider his 26-63 record while at Wake Forest, his last stint as a head coach.

Especially with a Mike Shannahan now sitting around with nothing to do, I'd be more inclined to at least talk to him.

As for Dungy, I'm glad he went out on his terms. And he has said over and over again that once he steps away from coaching, that is it for him. I think he's about as solid a human being as there is.

And one thing I always admired about him: when I listened to him talk, I never got the impression that football was a matter of life and death like it is with so many other coaches in the NFL.

Could he have won more games? Sure. Could he have won more Super Bowls with his teams? Maybe.

But he got one. That is more than a lot of other coaches have had a chance to do.

 

Wake is a difficult situation at which to sustain in football, but the point is well-taken.

In any event, it's hard to envision any sustained near-term upside for Caldwell in that spot, with a rapidly-aging team team built around an admittedly-superior QB.

 

Aside from the plodding offenses, Dungy's Bucs teams flamed out because they weren't good enough to get the bye and had to fight their asses off just to get in.

All but the '99 team were cooked by the time they got to the playoffs. They usually went as far as they were intended to go.

Dungy's a good man, but the memorials I've seen for most of the day are silly.

 

Wake Forest is not an easy-win situation ... part of why what Jim Grobe has done there is justbarelyshort of a miracle.

Jim Caldwell will be fine. Like Tony Dungy, he'll be smart enough to let Tom Moore and Peyton Manning do their thing on offense. His biggest job will be to continue to find stopgaps to work with Dwight Freeney, Bob Sanders and Co.

And I echo completely what shockey said. No reason to keep Tony Dungy out of Canton, but what separates him from the others is that football was simply one thing he did in life, not all about who he was.

 

I can't argue with any of that.

Greek myths were invoked the week before and after Dungy returned to Raymond James in '03. There were many hard at work on his legacy, even before his son took his own life. Gruden finally lost his patience with it when somebody asked him for the 10,000th time about Dungy, and whether it was "sad," or something stupid like that.

Ted Marchibroda was a lovely guy, too. But he never hoisted a Lombardi.

 

I always liked Dungy. Real class act. Consistent winner. Super Bowl titles are overrated. You get a team to the playoffs and the rest is something of a crap-shoot in a single-elimination format. A couple of turnovers, a bad call, a key injury, lots of stuff can happen.

Dungy won consistently in both Tampa and Indianapolis. He won with mediocre offenses and mediocre defenses. He always won --- and lost --- with dignity and class.

11 years is a LOOOONG time to be a head coach in the NFL in these days. The job just takes sooo much out of a person and their family. He's getting out while he's young enough and healthy enough to do whatever else he wants to do in life.

Good for him.

 

Given that Tomlin, Lovie Smith, Herm Edwards and and Jim Caldwell all have connections to Dungy, that's no small feat, and it's certainly a nice legacy to what he did beyond the Xs and Os.

 

And there's Leslie Frazier, head-coach-in-waiting.

 

Only thing players and coaches are immortalized by.

And Dungy is immortalized.

 

All I'll say to this is that bad things happen less frequently to dedicated franchises
operated by egomaniacal owners who will go to every possible extent (fiscal, and otherwise) to gain every possible advantage . . . the highflying 49ers were the classic example, and the pre-Jethro Cowboys will also serve. For a dynasty, you really have to want it, and you need more than a few mean, nasty bastards on the field.

Dungy won a Super Bowl because he was fortunate enough to be up against Rex Grossman. Otherwise, he was ticketed to be the even-keel kind of coach (hellooo,
Bud Grant) who rung up many significant accomplishments, and was good enough to get there, but not good enough to win. May he find peace.

 

The last three games the Colts played in that season's playoffs were against the AFC's No. 2 seed, the AFC's No. 1 seed and the NFC's No. 1 seed.

Yep, they really backed into that title.