Jim Caldwell lands interview with Texans
Former Detroit Lions head coach Jim Caldwell could be back coaching in the AFC South. Caldwell, who reportedly interviewed with the Houston Texans on Monday, is looking to get back into coaching in the National Football League.
He hasn’t been a head coach since the 2017 season, when he was fired by former Lions general manager Bob Quinn.
“Here’s the thing that’s always kind of driven my entire philosophy in terms of coaching,” Caldwell said on Adam Schefter’s podcast. “You have to adapt your offense to your personnel, Okay? You, hopefully, will get the kind of guy you want, but you have to adjust. For example, when we went into Detroit, there was a pretty good nucleus of players there. So why would I come in and change the nucleus? You’ve got Ndamu
kong Suh, who is a force, right, on the inside who has been playing in that particular position in the 4- 3. We had come from Baltimore, (defensive coordinator) Teryl Austin and I, and Teryl had been running that kind of 3- 4 mix that Baltimore does. And so I said, ‘Hey, listen. We’re not going to do that. We’re going to change that, and we’re going to make certain that we run 4-3 and use the personnel we have that suits us.’ We had Stephen Tulloch. We had so many guys running around there doing a great job, and all we needed to do was give them a little direction.
“So, the point is I’m going to adapt to the individuals we have access to, and I think that’s what you have to do. Oftentimes, you have coaches who are trying to fit a round peg and
a square hole, which to me is you waste a whole lot of time. And not only that, you’re going to get yourself fired in a very short period of time. It’s a winnow league.”
Caldwell, 65, has a record of 62- 50 as a head coach.
He was able to secure 36 victories with Detroit from 2014-17, and even secured two playoff berths during his tenure.
Detroit has not been back to the postseason since Caldwell’s 2016 team made the playoffs, eventually losing to the Seattle Seahawks.
The veteran head coach had an assistant head coaching position in Miami following his time in Detroit, but was forced to take a leave of absence to address a myriad of health issues.