FLOWERY BRANCH – As players packed up their belongings, signed jerseys for each other and said their goodbyes after a season that resulted in the dismissal of head coach Arthur Smith, the Falcons could celebrate at least one bit of good news on Monday. Defensive lineman, team sack leader and elder statesman Calais Campbell said that he was leaning toward returning for a 17th NFL season. At the age of 37, Campbell logged the second-most snaps among the team’s defensive linemen at 712, just shy of Bud Dupree’s 725, according to Pro Football Focus.
“I don’t see myself just wanting to walk away,” Campbell said at his corner of the locker room. “I’m not opposed to it, either. There’s a part of me thinking, ‘Could this game have been good enough to be the last one?’”
Against the Saints Sunday, Campbell produced five tackles and raised his career sack total to 105.5, chasing down quarterback Taysom Hill, diving and swiping at his feet to trip him up. He celebrated with the Dirty Bird dance. It certainly looked good enough.
“I think I can still be dominant at it,” Campbell said. “We’ll see what happens.”
It was typical Campbell – thoughtful and insightful – qualities that have made him among the most revered players in the league. It’s also part of the reason why Falcons owner Arthur Blank, as he readies for his sixth head-coaching search following his early Monday dismissal of Smith, ought to strongly consider including Campbell in the search process as much as the former NFL Man of the Year feels comfortable contributing.
It’s not the norm. Head-coaching searches are typically conducted by team executives and within a tight circle. And even when the possibility of acting as a resource and even sitting in on interviews was brought up to Campbell, he was reluctant.
“I wouldn’t want that responsibility,” Campbell told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
But here’s why it makes sense (at least to me) in this case. This isn’t a case of the franchise player having say-so on who his head coach is going to be, and that coach then becoming beholden to the star. Indeed, his initial response confirmed it.
Campbell’s qualifications go well past his 16 NFL seasons. This is an intelligent player in the twilight of his career who was signed by the Falcons to be a team leader. He has a feel for what the team needs, has played for two Super Bowl-winning coaches (Bruce Arians and John Harbaugh) and could be trusted to approach whatever responsibilities with the organization’s best interests, and not his own, in mind. This isn’t someone who would lord whatever power he gained from being a part of the search over a new coach. And, to whatever degree his influence in the process might affect the team, he’s likely not going to be with the Falcons past the 2024 season.
There is a lot of insight and wisdom that Campbell has gained in his career that could inform the search that Blank, CEO Rich McKay and general manager Terry Fontenot don’t have. He has been with four different teams and five different coaches, including Smith. He has played the game at the highest level, being named defensive player of the year in 2017. He has seen and experienced a lot of the NFL.
When a candidate explained his vision for training camp, Campbell would know far better than Blank, McKay or Fontenot how it would be received by players. If a candidate offered up his potential coaching staff, Campbell would know more than the team’s brass what players in the league think of those coaches. There are likely questions that Campbell would think to ask that the team executives would not and answers that he would absorb differently.
His nuanced response to a question about what the team needs in a new head coach was indicative of his understanding of the job. The first priority, he said, is to hire a leader who can communicate the culture and vision and processes. He recognized that sometimes the head coach can also be the play-caller and other times that coordinators are hired for that job. But, he added, sometimes to hold onto a top coordinator, sometimes they need to be the coach.
“As far as the coach, though, as long as they’re good leaders and they come in with a ‘Work, but make work fun’ type of environment, this place is ready to take off,” he said. “I think there’s a lot of talent here, a lot of guys who are hungry, a lot of guys who are talented. It can be a special team.”
After Campbell first rebuffed my suggestion that he take part, I explained his potential value and he relented a little bit.
“If Mr. Blank asked me to sit down and just talk ball with him and talk about just the nature of the team and stuff, I would do that,” Campbell said. “But those guys, they’re qualified and know how to find the right guy.”
With all due respect, those guys (at least Blank and McKay) hired a coach who just finished a 21-30 tenure, not to mention, lest we forget, Bobby Petrino. Maybe they’re not as qualified as Campbell thinks.
Tight end Jonnu Smith, a seven-year NFL veteran, unsurprisingly saw the value of including a player (or players) in the process.
“Especially not just veteran players, but veteran players who have been around winning teams,” he said. “You kind of know what you want in a head coach, of course. It’d be great if we were able to put our input on that, but at the end of the day, we understand that that’s not our position.”
As for Campbell?
“Calais has been around this game for a long time,” he said. “He’s been playing this game since some of these guys were babies. He’s got a lot of knowledge and wisdom, and we’ll see what happens.”
This is an unusual opportunity for Blank, to have such a trustworthy and intelligent resource on his roster. As he starts his sixth head-coach search, still in search of an elusive Super Bowl trophy, is there anything to lose?
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