Giants head coach Brian Daboll had an epic story about interviewing Dan Campbell, and naturally the Lions head coach has a sligthly different recollection of it.
This week, as the Detroit Lions and New York Giants prepared to play each other, Giants head coach Brian Daboll had a totally believable story about interviewing Lions head coach Dan Campbell for the Miami Dolphins’ tight end coach position back in 2011. Then-Dolphins head coach Tony Sparano recommended Daboll, the offensive coordinator, interview Campbell.
"Tony said, ‘Hey, I got this guy that I think would be good. Why don’t we interview him? You take care of the interview.’ So, I interviewed Dan, and it was a great interview,” “He’s slamming chairs on the ground and hitting walls and going through all these drills. You guys know him. He’s a fantastic person, great family. It was an entertaining interview. [He] knew a lot. Obviously, he was very passionate, tough as nails, you could tell. He was out of breath in half that interview with the stuff he was doing. Yeah, great guy.”"
Dan Campbell has slightly different recollection of interview with Brian Daboll
During his Friday press conference, Campbell was of course asked for his recollection of the interview with Daboll.
Via Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press:
"Daboll, he tells that story to everybody,” Campbell said Friday. “He tells it to me every time I see him, we talk, he brings it up again. And I don’t remember throwing chairs through the walls or anything. That didn’t happen. But I did demo on chairs. But, yeah, he definitely exaggerated it. But I was sweating and I was out of breath, and I did use the chair.”"
Why was Campbell out of breath? Demonstrating how he would coach tight ends, of course.
"It was an hour of technique work, talking through things, then he’d give me scenarios, and, ‘How do you handle this? What do you do on this coverage? What if it’s this front?’” Campbell said. “So I just did the whole thing. That was the best way for me to go through it all.”"
The only part of Daboll’s story Campbell refuted was throwing chairs, and the Giants’ head coach didn’t exactly say that happened, “Hitting walls” could have been with a chair, but based on the quotes it’s not clear if that’s what Daboll meant.
In any case, details exaggerated or not, what appears to have been Campbell’s first interview for a full-time NFL coaching position was the first display of exactly who he’d be as a coach.