Jim Bob Cooter’s Second Chance as a Coordinator Could Revive His Head Coaching Prospects

The Colts’ new offensive coordinator has yet to turn 40, but he’s already seen how quickly someone’s reputation in the NFL can change.

We’ve got a quicker-hitting MAQB for this last week before the offseason starts heating up, with the NFL converging on Indianapolis seven days from now …

• Jim Bob Cooter’s career arc provides the perfect example of how fickle coaching stocks can be—and why so many guys feel the need to strike when the iron’s hot.

In 2016, Jim Caldwell promoted the then-32-year-old Cooter, who’d been a close confidant of Peyton Manning’s as a Denver quality-control assistant, to offensive coordinator in Detroit. He did it, in large part, because over the two previous years, Cooter had earned Matthew Stafford’s trust in building the sort of offense that had worked for Manning. And so, everyone figured, it couldn’t be long until Cooter got his shot to be a head coach.

Two years later, Caldwell was fired. Still, Cooter was well-regarded enough to be retained by Matt Patricia. That lasted a year. From there, Cooter went to be Adam Gase’s running backs coach with the Jets and, after Gase was fired, served as a consultant in Philly for first-year head coach Nick Sirianni in 2021.

That connection to Sirianni, of course, now looks pretty significant, with new Colts coach Shane Steichen having plucked the Jags’ passing-game coordinator to be his new OC over a solid list of other qualified candidates.

Cooter will have another shot to boost his head coaching résumé with the Colts after his tenure as the Lions’ offensive coordinator fizzled out :: Mark J. Rebilas/USA TODAY Sports

And, again, this is why it’s really hard for any coach to say no to what people might call a “bad” head coaching job. There are only 32 of them and, really, you may not have much control over when your next shot comes. As Cooter’s case shows, he hit a couple of tough sets of circumstances and basically wound up back at square one. So good for him, for climbing off the mat like this. He’s still the bright offensive mind he was seven years ago.

• In the morning column, we went through a bunch of influences in Jonathan Gannon’s coaching life, and didn’t have space for someone you might not expect—Chargers coach Brandon Staley.

The two have a mutual mentor in Josh McDaniels (they were actually on McDaniels’s preferred staff list as co-defensive coordinators when he interviewed for the Browns job in 2020), and mutual roots in northeast Ohio. And as Gannon sees it, Staley’s provided a nice pipeline into Vic Fangio philosophy for the new Cardinals coach.

So here’s how Gannon explained their information sharing to me.

“What Brandon would tell you on, Why are you convicted about how you play defense? It's because I sat in my office and f---ing studied,” he said. “He says that was the difference between me and him. He says, You were around Zim [Mike Zimmer], you were fed a certain way and this knowledge came to you that was probably, well obviously, really, really good.' He had to search that out.

“But then it flipped, because Brandon was searching it out and then he got with Vic and that was given to him. I was the other way, I was given the knowledge of Zim and then I had to go seek the answers to fill in the other holes.”

Which, obviously, benefited both guys.

• We mentioned in the morning column how Trey Smith got his draft call not from an owner or coach or GM, but Chiefs team doctor Mike Monaco. The reason, obviously, was Monaco was integral in Kansas City taking him—with Smith’s blood clots having prompted most teams to take him off the draft board. Monaco was 90% sure Smith could come off medication that was preventing him from practicing at Tennessee, which, in turn, hurt his performance his last year as a Vol.

That assurance led to the Chiefs taking Smith in the sixth round to set up one heck of a story with Smith emerging as one of the team’s bright young stars. And the story goes even deeper when Smith explains how he handled all of it.

“When I was 15, my mom got seriously ill, and before she got ill, she told me, Keep your eyes on God. No matter what happens, he's gonna be there for you. He's gonna carry you through,” Smith said. “My mom ends up passing away that same year, but that message resonated and stuck with me this entire time. And I know going to college, first year, [I] commit to the University of Tennessee, have an excellent freshman year—excellent freshman year. Make All-American everything, and then that offseason, with the coaching change, ended up being diagnosed with blood clots.

“I've never dealt with anything from a health standpoint in my life. I was going from being able to run miles to, O.K., I can't do a sit-up in the weight room without breathing. For me, that was super hard. Football almost got taken away then. I worked five months to come back, they think I have it again, football gets taken away. And the second time, they're like, O.K., you're definitely done this time. You're not playing anymore.'

“And so just through faith, just, O.K., I'm gonna stay steady. I'm gonna stay firm—[I’ve] been able to come back, able to come back to do what I do, and here I am, 2023, a Super Bowl champion. It's nothing short of amazing, but the only person I can really give credit to is God for carrying me through this, because not every path I've taken has been easy. But I can't really say I'm surprised because here I am standing. Nothing's been able to take me down. So I'm just thankful for the opportunity. I'm thankful and blessed to be here.”

Really great.

• One bonus to the Dolphins’ hire of Vic Fangio, now that it’s official—it’s easy to see where this could be a long-term thing for Miami. Fangio’s 64, and despite being a wizard on defense, he’s probably not getting another head-coaching shot. And now he gets to make almost $5 million per year and live in south Florida.

Chances are, if the Dolphins defend like most of Fangio’s other teams have, Mike McDaniel won’t have to replace him anytime soon.

• Underrated development—Gannon holding on to well-respected special teams coordinator Jeff Rodgers. Remember, when Kliff Kingsbury got COVID a couple of years back, the Cardinals turned to Rodgers and Vance Joseph to take his place in the interim. Also, when I heard Rodgers was one of the assistants Arizona blocked from leaving during its head-coaching search, one thing that was apparent was Rodgers was in no hurry to leave.

So this one worked out for everyone.

• The Eagles’ DC search should be winding down. There was some thought that Philly would try and keep Nick Rallis on board—he was hired by Gannon in Arizona as DC—but maybe not as a coordinator. The team’s passing-game coordinator/DBs coach Dennard Wilson has been well-positioned all along to land the job, and Joseph, who interviewed on Monday with the Eagles, gives them an intriguing outside name to consider. It’s a big hire for Sirianni, moreso than the OC hire, since the head coach’s roots are on the offensive side.

(My guess is Brian Johnson will get the OC job soon, for what it’s worth.)

• And that’ll be it for this week. Like I said, a little shorter version since I just got to Vermont for ski week. But don’t worry, you’ll get the MMQB a week from today, and more content than you can shake a stick at once we get to Indianapolis.