TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Passing It On

ADVERTISEMENT

By ROY CUMMINGS, The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 7, 2007

Updated: 10/06/2007 11:55 pm

INDIANAPOLIS - The letter comes every summer - standard mail. Derrick Brooks waits for it with the anticipation of a 5-year-old waiting for Christmas. The contents, though, are not always pleasant.

Take the letter Brooks received this past summer. It contained some extremely harsh words. That's what Brooks liked about it. He liked the honesty. That's the thing about Tony Dungy. He's always honest.

Whether it's a letter to a former player breaking down the parts of his game that need to be improved, or the advice he gives you on how to live your life away from the field, Dungy always gives it to you straight.

'He's never been afraid to criticize me when he feels I'm not playing up to par,' Brooks said. 'Like that letter this year. There was a lot of fact in what he was saying in terms of me needing to play better.'

Dungy has that ability to tell you what he's really feeling, to give it to you from the heart. It's what Brooks likes most about his former head coach. It's why he'll finish his career some day with Dungy at or near the top of the list of people who helped mold him into the player - and person - he has been and still is.

'He set the example for me,' Brooks said. 'Way back when he first got here, he would tell us about becoming the character and the foundation that the league would stand on.

'He believed that as long as you have those goals and they remained important to you, it would carry over into what you do on the field and off the field, and that has been huge in my life.'

Dungy has been huge factor in a lot of lives. Bucs cornerback Ronde Barber will tell you he's 'part of who I am.' Of course, that's part of what the former Bucs and current Colts coach has always strived to do - impact lives.

Even as he stood in the center ring of the circus that is the Super Bowl in February, Dungy used his platform to tell his brethren that placing equal emphasis on character and talent doesn't preclude you from winning.

He also used it to tell his fellow coaches that while working hard is indeed a prerequisite for success, you don't necessarily have to live in your offices and ignore your families to coach a winning team.

Whether it was the messages themselves or the passion Dungy showed in delivering them, they certainly caught Cato June's attention. So has the way Dungy has maintained his lifestyle in the demanding world of the NFL.

Dungy still manages to help get his kids off to school in the morning and have dinner with them in the evening; he still makes it to church on Sunday morning and wins football games on Sunday afternoon. In the NFL, that's a rare breed.

'Especially in this business, it's hard for a man to live his life the way he does,' June said of Dungy. 'I look at that and say, 'Man, someday I want to be like that.' I want to be able to live and practice what I preach.'

It's not just life lessons that Dungy preaches. He also can deliver quite a dissertation on the intricacies of tackling a running back or bumping a wide receiver at the line of scrimmage. He has that Super Bowl victory, of course, a career record of 118-62 and a career winning percentage of .656 that is fifth-best among NFL coaches with 100 victories.

Now in his 12th year as a head coach, he has one losing season. That was in 1996, his first year as coach of the Bucs. But those Bucs finished strong that year because of a defensive concept Dungy adopted years before, winning five of their last seven games.

The concept is a simple one, really. It calls for players to be fast and smart, to hustle and chase after the ball carrier and to execute the fundamentals with precision. It's a combination of philosophies he learned while working for former Steelers coach Chuck Noll and developed while serving as the defensive coordinator with the Minnesota Vikings.

Monte Kiffin, who is in his 12th season as Bucs defensive coordinator, was Dungy's linebackers coach in Minnesota. He also was the coach Dungy pegged to run his defense after Dungy was named Bucs coach in 1996.

'I obviously owe a lot to Tony,' Kiffin said. 'I mean, there's no telling where I'd be right now were it not for him. I can tell you this; we wouldn't have had the same success we've had here were it not for him.

'I mean, that was his scheme. But he left us to run it - me and Lovie Smith and Herm Edwards and Rod Marinelli. That was the great thing about him. He just let us do it.'

Another great thing about Dungy was his refusal to waver when things didn't appear to be working out. And in the early going, things were not working out for Dungy. His first Bucs team started 0-5 and bottomed out at 1-8. It was about that time that many were beginning to second-guess Dungy's approach, but he refused to alter it.

'We were 0-5 and then 1-and-whatever and we couldn't find the 'A' gap for the 'B' gap and we had guys asking, 'Are you sure this system works?'' Kiffin said. 'Those were tough times. But Tony never budged. I remember it was the game against Chicago in 1996, the last game of the year, it was sort of like the light went on for everybody that day. Then we made the playoffs in 1997.

'By then, of course, everybody was buying into the system, but Tony was no different then than he was when we were 0-5, and I think that's why players respect him so much. It doesn't matter if you're 0-5 or 1-7 or 11-5, he's the same person. He's always very calm, telling you everything's going to be all right, and that's a calming influence.'

That factor helped Dungy become the winningest coach in Bucs history. The problem was that his teams didn't win enough when it really counted - in the playoffs. They didn't win enough to please his bosses anyway.

To this day, though, Dungy still thanks the Glazer family for taking a chance on him, for giving him the opportunity to be a head coach and for allowing him to work with the likes of Kiffin and Brooks.

'That was a great time in my life,' Dungy said. 'The guys that were there from the very beginning, like Derrick, we just went through so much to get things going there. That's always going to be a special group to me.

'Brian Kelly and Ronde came in afterward and grew up there, and you watched them grow as players and men. To see the impact they've had on their team and their city, it makes you proud to have been a part of that.'

Those who are most proud are Brooks, Barber and Kiffin, and all the others Dungy has touched through his years of coaching football and delivering lessons on life.

'I look at the things I've learned from him, the way he's dealt with adversity and things and the character he's showed in those times, and it's great,' June said. 'You can't help but be proud.'

Reporter Roy Cummings can be reached at (813) 259-7979 or at rcummings@tampatrib.com.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT