The most prominent names at the top of this year’s NFL head coaching carousel are former New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton and current University of Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh, but there is another intriguing name that should get some serious consideration.
Former Indianapolis Colts and Detroit Lions head coach Jim Caldwell has already reportedly interviewed with the Carolina Panthers about their job opening.
The Panthers fired head coach Matt Rhule early in the season and replaced him with Steve Wilks on an interim basis. They went 6-6 with Wilks and climbed back into NFC South contention.
Caldwell has not been a head coach in the NFL since the 2017 season and most recently worked as a consultant for the Miami Dolphins through the end of the 2019 season. He interviewed for jobs with Chicago and Jacksonville prior to the 2022 season.
Even though he has been out of a head coaching position for a few years now and is not exactly the young, up-and-coming assistant that teams tend to go for in these hiring processes, he does boast a better NFL resume than you might realize.
In seven years leading the Colts and Lions, he compiled a 62-50 record, only finished with two losing records and went to the playoffs four times, including a Super Bowl run with the Colts during the 2009 season.
When you dig in to some further context with those records his resume looks even more impressive.
One of those two losing seasons was a nightmare 2-14 year with the Colts in 2011, his final year on the job. The important thing to keep in mind that year: That was the year Peyton Manning sat out the entire season with a neck injury, marking the beginning of his exit from Indianapolis. Caldwell had to try and compete with a trio of quarterbacks that included Curtis Painter, Dan Orlovsky and a 39-year-old Kerry Collins. Not many coaches were going to succeed under those circumstance, and despite going 26-10 over the previous two seasons (including playoffs, with a Super Bowl trip) the Colts fired him.
It would take him another three years to get a head coaching job with the Lions.
In four years with the Lions he went 36-28, finished with a winning record three times and made the playoffs twice.
Maybe that doesn’t stand out, but you have to consider the context of the Lions history and what that record meant. In the 14 years prior to Caldwell, the Lions made the playoffs just one time and finished with only two winning records. Caldwell topped all of that in four years.
In the five years after Caldwell, the Lions have had just one winning record (this year’s 9-8 mark), zero playoff appearances and a 25-54-1 overall record.
In other words, Caldwell took an historically bad franchise and made it very competitive every year.
He may not be the next up-and-coming assistant or the biggest name on the head coaching market, but everything about his resume says that he will get the most out of the talent he has.
