The jilted Lions, meanwhile, have reportedly set their sights on Ravens offensive coordinator Jim Caldwell and, in the way that jilted partners often find their way to exes, former Titans head coach Mike Munchak. Neither coach seems like a particularly exciting option. Munchak’s relatively anonymous tenure in Tennessee was built around clichés and platitudes with little backing when Munchak actually needed his team to act like those talking points. Caldwell is a better candidate in some ways, but his career seems to offer little suggestion that he’s a viable head coach.
Caldwell has received glowing endorsements from former Colts colleagues Tony Dungy and Peyton Manning, but he was their handpicked choice to take over for Dungy in 2009, and while the Colts went 14-2 and made it to the Super Bowl during his first year at the helm, things fell apart quickly. Caldwell was a horrific in-game coach, infamously taking a timeout in the following year’s playoff loss to the Jets that beggared belief. The next year, with Manning injured, the Colts fell to 2-14 behind a dismal season from Curtis Painter, leading to Caldwell’s firing after the season. He took over as Baltimore’s offensive coordinator late in the 2012 season and helped lead it to a shocking Super Bowl victory, with the offense — notably, Joe Flacco — taking a huge step forward in the process.
In his first full year at the helm for the Ravens, Caldwell’s offense fell apart; the Ravens were 25th in points scored, 30th in DVOA, and nearly became one of the few teams since the merger to average fewer than 3.0 yards per carry. Flacco, who had put together an astounding 11-touchdown, zero-interception Super Bowl run, threw 22 interceptions in his worst season as a pro. The basis for hiring Caldwell comes down to his two seasons as a head coach with the greatest quarterback in the history of football under center. In a way, he’s not that much different from Whisenhunt, who looked great with Warner and exhibited little else without him. Sure seems like the path to a great head coach travels through finding a great quarterback first.
