The truth about Tony Dungy is finally emerging: He really isn’t too good to be true. What you see is what 29 other NFL teams could have had. It’s what the Tampa Bay Buccaneers got, a football coach so solid in his approach to life and to his sport that it’s as plain as the skin on his sincere face.
Nobody seemed to believe it. When Bucs General Manager Rich McKay interviewed him last year after first checking out Jimmy Johnson and Steve Spurrier, he believed Dungy had been passed over for numerous other jobs. After all, he was a defensive coordinator at age 28 in Pittsburgh back in 1984, heralded as a future coaching star, the one who would surely break through the barrier that was keeping African-Americans out of a circuit that routinely anointed younger white head coaches and shamelessly recycled older ones despite suspect qualifications.
Yet Dungy would bounce to Kansas City, where he coached three Pro Bowl defensive backs, then to Minnesota, where he coordinated the No. 1 defense in the league. And all he got were three interviews–twice in Philadelphia, once in Jacksonville.
“Rich asked me that. He thought I’d been considered for 10 or 15 jobs,” Dungy said. “I said, `I’ve only been interviewed for three.’ He said, `Oh, that can’t be.’ “
But it was, and now the Bucs are 8-3 and tied for first place in the NFC Central, the story of the year in the NFL. Dungy has won 13 of his last 18 games for one of the worst franchises in the history of pro sports. Their victory over Super Bowl runner-up New England last Sunday was the team’s most impressive in years, and the town is beside itself celebrating the first non-losing season since 1982. Phones rang constantly Monday in offices selling tickets for a new stadium to open next year.
To acknowledge the euphoria, Dungy just smiled. Not in front of his team, mind you. There, he quietly warned his players that too much would be made of an eighth victory and that .500 was no one’s goal. The contrast to NFL Films footage of Mike Ditka in the New Orleans locker room Sunday was fascinating. There, Ditka hoarsely screamed that his 4-7 Saints “became a team” in beating the Seattle Seahawks. The gum popped from his mouth as the emotion poured from his heart, a telling difference in style, a perfect example of why Dungy had been perceived as being too low-key for such a volatile business.
“I can see why Tony would not be a guy certain people would hire,” McKay said. “Tony wouldn’t come to a job interview trying to get the job. He would tell you what he’s about, a highly principled guy, tell you about the assistant coaches he would try to hire. He’s not rah-rah. He’s not going to stand up and say, `I can get my players to run through a wall.’ “
Dungy is not vindictive. But now that the wall is tumbling down in Tampa, Dungy admits he feels good about it. Vindication is too Old Testament for Dungy to allow it to dominate his strong Christian values, and yet Dungy is too human not to enjoy justification.
Earlier in the season, Dungy said vindication might come if he reached the playoffs. While preparing his team for this week’s game with the Bears at Soldier Field, Dungy explained: “Having a respectable team or getting to .500, you’re supposed to do that, but if we can go on and become a playoff team and be a perennial playoff team, maybe you can say, `Hey, maybe some of those people five years ago, maybe they should have taken a look.’ “
So vindication is a real feeling?
“Yeah, I think as a competitor, you . . . feel like, `I want to show people we’ve got a good system and it works, that we are an upper-echelon organization,’ ” he said. “I wouldn’t call it vindication. Maybe an I-told-you-so type thing.”
Dungy, Minnesota’s Dennis Green and Philadelphia’s Ray Rhodes are the only three African-American head coaches in the NFL. The first of the modern era, Oakland’s Art Shell, was fired in 1995 with a 56-41 record and is now offensive line coach for Atlanta, awaiting phone calls.
“Art is the last coach to take the Raiders to the playoffs,” Dungy said. “Denny went to the playoffs four out of five years. Ray went his first two years. I will feel good to join that group of black coaches who end up becoming not just black head coaches, but winning coaches and playoff coaches.”
There were 11 coaching changes before this season, but no blacks were seriously considered.
“So many owners and general managers are guys who grew up when there was nothing but white head coaches,” Dungy said. “In their minds, when they think, `What am I looking for in a head coach?’ they list all the qualifications but they still have this picture of Paul Brown or Weeb Ewbank or Don Shula. Hopefully, we’ll have that role model and have that visualization that, `Yeah, I can think of Dennis Green just like I think of Paul Brown.’ “
McKay said race played no role in Tampa’s decision.
“I think we’re past that,” he said. “I think in the ’90s, even in the South, we didn’t view that as an issue.”
Dungy’s father, Dr. Wilbur Dungy, teaches surgical anatomy at Delta Community College in Michigan. His mother, Cleomae, taught high school English and speech for years. He has a sister who is a nurse, a sister who is a doctor and a brother who is a dentist. Yet pro football made Tony Dungy pay dues until he was 41, still relatively young for a head coach but neither as young nor as inexperienced as Bill Cowher, Dave Wannstedt, Jeff Fisher, David Shula, Mike Shanahan (in Oakland) and June Jones were when they were hired.
“Football is probably no different from any other avenue in life,” Dungy said. “My dad went through it, teaching at segregated schools when he first started and not having the equipment the predominantly white schools had. He was a scientist having to deal with that, so maybe football is just like life–you have to keep pushing and keep working and eventually good things happen.”
McKay said he discussed discipline with three former coaching associates and three former players under Dungy. Dungy’s sideline demeanor is stoic, more reminiscent of Chuck Noll or Bud Grant or Tom Landry than Ditka or Cowher or Jimmy Johnson. Dungy believes it’s best to “coach during the week and let the players play on Sunday.” Still, there were questions about a mild-mannered man controlling ill-mannered players, even though Dungy pointed out, “Most of the coaches I played for, I kind of liked. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with that.”
“I don’t think anyone on our team would call Tony a disciplinarian,” McKay said. “By the same token, you look at our football team and say we’re very disciplined.”
The Bucs are the least-penalized team in the league and rank among league leaders in fewest turnovers.
“Tony lets you know exactly what he expects and draws a line with very heavy, bright paint,” McKay said.
When linebacker Hardy Nickerson, the Buc with the most Pro Bowl experience, got in a training-camp fight with Brian Mitchell of the Redskins, Dungy immediately sat Nickerson down.
“He was very angry,” McKay said. “I could see by the look on his face and the pace he was walking. When he got there, I’ve never see a guy more calm and diplomatic. He said, `This is not how we’re going to conduct ourselves.’ “
Defensive tackle Warren Sapp calls Dungy “the calmest guy I’ve been around. We all feed off him. If he’s calm, we’re calm, and he’s calm 100 percent of the time.
“He’s unchanging no matter what happens the day before. He’s a coach who is always looking forward.”
When the Bucs started out 0-5 and 1-8 last year, when they lost three in a row this season after a 5-0 start, Dungy’s reaction was so predictable it was almost surprising.
“Stayed the course. Same guy. One thing is we really cut back on a lot of stuff and got back to basic fundamentals,” Nickerson said.
Dungy acknowledges a “fear of failure” motivation, but not in the conventional sense.
“You fear failure not when you’re 0-5 or 0-3 but just overall when you come into a situation,” he said. “I’ve been around enough of that with Chuck Noll and in Bill Walsh’s first year (with the 49ers) when we were 2-14. Seeing those turn around, you know that six months or six games or one year is not really going to tell the story. I knew we had good, young defensive players and we could be in a lot of games here.”
McKay wondered how Dungy might handle the inevitable adversity.
“What would his style be in trying to rally the troops? I was surprised to learn that his style was to do everything the same and it will take care of itself. Quite impressive.”
It’s Dungy’s philosophy of life. He not only had to wait for a break, he also ended up with the worst team in football as a reward for his patience.
“I don’t look at it as any other thing but this is the right place and the right time and it’s working out great,” he said. “If I had gone someplace else earlier, it might not have worked out that way.”
Is it too good to be true? Are the Bucs–gasp–in danger of letting success get to their brand new logo skulls? With trips to Chicago and to New York twice, plus a home game against the world champion Packers in the next month, Tampa is headed straight for the blinding bright lights.
“This team has a lot of character,” quarterback Trent Dilfer said. “It all stems from the head coach. He won’t let it go to our heads.”
Because it certainly hasn’t gone to Dungy’s head.
“Most guys in this business seek some type of notoriety or ego gratification because they need some type of payback for the stress level,” McKay said. “Tony absolutely doesn’t seek it and almost seeks to avoid it. It gets back to his priorities. His profession is up there, but not No. 1 or 2. People say that but it’s hard to live that way. Tony lives that way.”
Practice is the key. Dungy said he didn’t discourage the hype that followed the 5-0 start because it would be good practice for better things to come.
“I wanted to maybe have our focus distracted because this time around, we’ll understand we’ve got to prepare and practice and play a certain way to be successful,” he said. “The hype is good. You want the recognition. But the key for us is to do our job from 9 to 5.”
