Hall of Fame coach Bill Cowher: Detroit Lions' Dan Campbell 'reminds me a lot of myself'
LAS VEGAS — Hall of Fame coach Bill Cowher sees a little bit of himself in Detroit Lions head coach Dan Campbell.
"Love Dan," Cowher said Tuesday ahead of the weekend's Super Bowl 58 matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers. "He’s just, you could tell he was just in the locker room. He’ll ask them to give no more than what he’s willing to give, and I speak from the heart. He put his heart and soul into it, and when you lose something, it hurts. It hurts because you were fully invested. He hurts every time they lose. How can you not play for a guy like that? So he reminds me a lot of myself."
Cowher, like Campbell, had an unheralded NFL career as a player before getting into coaching, where he cut an imposing figure on the sideline.
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Cowher played six seasons as a linebacker for the Philadelphia Eagles and Cleveland Browns and bounced around the Midwest as an assistant for nearly a decade before returning to his home state of Pennsylvania to coach the Pittsburgh Steelers, for whom he went 161-99-1 in 15 seasons, winning eight division titles and Super Bowl 40 (held in Detroit in 2006).
Campbell spent 11 NFL seasons with four teams as a player, then led the Lions to the NFC championship game in his third season as head coach.
"He wears his emotions on the sleeve, and I hope like myself, he continues to grow as a coach," Cowher said. "You learn from every experience. You don’t let the same experience happen twice when it’s not a good one, so you ask your players to do the same thing and you have to continue to do that as a coach."
In Pittsburgh, Cowher led the Steelers to six AFC championship games in 10 playoff appearances. The Steelers went 2-4 in those games, including a loss in Cowher's first trip to the AFC title game in 1994, when they blew a 10-point third quarter lead and lost to the San Diego Chargers on a late touchdown.
The Lions lost to the 49ers in similar fashion in the NFC championship game, blowing a 17-point halftime lead.
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Cowher was not overly critical of Campbell's decisions in that game, including passing on two second-half field goals to try and convert fourth downs.
"I understand that’s what got them there," he said.
But he said he would have tried at least one field goal, on the Lions' opening possession of the third quarter after the 49ers pulled within 14 points. The Lions failed to convert on fourth down. The 49ers scored a touchdown five plays later to turn momentum their way and tied the game at 24 on their next possession.
"Hindsight’s 20-20 so you can always say that," Cowher said. "And it’s something that I talk about with him. I do believe there’s a certain way you coach with the lead and there’s a certain way you coach to get a lead.
"My record speaks for itself from the standpoint of having a lead of 11 points or more — 106-1-1 — 'cause I believe that you coach a certain way to get the lead. when you get a lead, your, the clock becomes your ally. So I coach a different way with the lead. And he says, well, you don’t change when you get a lead. I go, yeah, you do, because there’s a finite time and there’s only so many possessions they have, so I’m going to take away the possessions by taking away the time, where now I’m going to put the pressure on you that now you’re going to start calling plays differently because you’re running out of time. You work hard to get it, and I always said when I want to get it, I'm going to make sure I don’t lose it."
The Steelers reached the Super Bowl in Cowher's fourth season as coach, after winning in their second straight trip to the conference championship game.
They did not win a Super Bowl until Cowher's second-to-last season in the NFL, and the CBS analyst said his four losses in conference championship games stung more than his one defeat in the Super Bowl.
"I had to live there for two weeks and watch the team that beat me, and every one of those games I could say we could have won and I could point back to whatever it could have been, maybe a decision I made or a ball that bounced the wrong way. Or a play that was made," he said. "But for two weeks, I got to sit there and watch that team talk about how they’re great, stories, all the story lines that go into it, you can’t get away from it and it’s hard. It brings back that painful memory of how close you were. This week, you lose this game, there’s finality after Sunday anyway. We’re all watching basketball next week. There’s no more football games. So that to me is the difference."
Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Lions coach Dan Campbell reminds Bill Cowher 'a lot of myself'
