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Originally Posted by Peter King
Dan Campbell is not a shy man.
Dolphins interim coach Dan Campbell was near the end of a 30-minute conversation with me on Saturday. I felt like I was being coached for about half of it, with Campbell sometimes lapsing into coach-speak, like I was one of his players: We gotta get off to better starts! We gotta get manageable second downs! But then, at the end, I asked him what he wanted Dolphins fans to know about this perennially disappointing franchise, and what the Campbell regime, however long it lasts, had planned.
Pause. Two, three seconds.
“I would say this,” Campbell, 39, said ominously. “We’re about to wake the sleeping giant.”
Pause. Then nothing.
Okay, Dan. Have a good day! End of interview.
The man is serious. He sounds nothing like an interim coach. In 30 minutes, you got the feeling that the matter of taking over a team in October after a pitiful 1-3 start was a trifling inconvenience—he was the head coach of the Miami Dolphins, and just because he took over now instead of January didn’t really matter. He had every intention of taking advantage of this chance and turning Miami around this year, instead of just keeping the seat warm for the next, more established head man. Odd. He’d never coached anywhere other than Miami, working as a coaching intern in 2010 and then as the tight ends coach since 2011. Never a coordinator, anywhere. Never a head coach, anywhere.
Campbell, a Texan, was a tight end for four teams over 10 seasons, and never thought he’d want to be a coach until he left the game. And he thought, What do I love? Football. And competing, and physical and mental toughness. “I am the guy who loves challenges,” Campbell said. “There’s plenty of people out there who look at my inexperience, who look at whether I deserve this, and that gives me motivation. That is when I rise to the top. Whether you’re a player or a coach it’s all about being competitive. As coaches and players in the last four weeks, we’ve all underachieved. And my message to the team is going to be: We’re going to get back to the basics. And we’re going to be competitive.”
That word kept coming up—competitive. I brought up to him how incredible it is and how much an indictment of the talent-laden team it was that, after four games, Miami has been outscored 37-3 in the first quarter.
“I addressed that with our team in our first meeting,” Campbell said. “Thirty-seven to three. I said, ‘Somebody tell me what that is.’ Nobody knew. I said, ‘That’s the score in the first quarter of our games. That’s the first thing we gotta look at. How can you win games when you’re always playing from behind so fast!’”
Dan Campbell is not a shy man.
Dolphins interim coach Dan Campbell was near the end of a 30-minute conversation with me on Saturday. I felt like I was being coached for about half of it, with Campbell sometimes lapsing into coach-speak, like I was one of his players: We gotta get off to better starts! We gotta get manageable second downs! But then, at the end, I asked him what he wanted Dolphins fans to know about this perennially disappointing franchise, and what the Campbell regime, however long it lasts, had planned.
Pause. Two, three seconds.
“I would say this,” Campbell, 39, said ominously. “We’re about to wake the sleeping giant.”
Pause. Then nothing.
Okay, Dan. Have a good day! End of interview.
The man is serious. He sounds nothing like an interim coach. In 30 minutes, you got the feeling that the matter of taking over a team in October after a pitiful 1-3 start was a trifling inconvenience—he was the head coach of the Miami Dolphins, and just because he took over now instead of January didn’t really matter. He had every intention of taking advantage of this chance and turning Miami around this year, instead of just keeping the seat warm for the next, more established head man. Odd. He’d never coached anywhere other than Miami, working as a coaching intern in 2010 and then as the tight ends coach since 2011. Never a coordinator, anywhere. Never a head coach, anywhere.
Campbell, a Texan, was a tight end for four teams over 10 seasons, and never thought he’d want to be a coach until he left the game. And he thought, What do I love? Football. And competing, and physical and mental toughness. “I am the guy who loves challenges,” Campbell said. “There’s plenty of people out there who look at my inexperience, who look at whether I deserve this, and that gives me motivation. That is when I rise to the top. Whether you’re a player or a coach it’s all about being competitive. As coaches and players in the last four weeks, we’ve all underachieved. And my message to the team is going to be: We’re going to get back to the basics. And we’re going to be competitive.”
That word kept coming up—competitive. I brought up to him how incredible it is and how much an indictment of the talent-laden team it was that, after four games, Miami has been outscored 37-3 in the first quarter.
“I addressed that with our team in our first meeting,” Campbell said. “Thirty-seven to three. I said, ‘Somebody tell me what that is.’ Nobody knew. I said, ‘That’s the score in the first quarter of our games. That’s the first thing we gotta look at. How can you win games when you’re always playing from behind so fast!’”
Here's a PBP post with some good stuff as well. http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/sp...ell-as-/nnzLy/
37-3 is a message he's hammering into the team... Poor reflection on the defense and the offense.
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