Head coach Andy Reid of the Kansas City Chiefs and defensive analyst Dom Capers of the Carolina Panthers talk. Capers is joining the Cleveland Browns.
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Head coach Andy Reid of the Kansas City Chiefs and defensive analyst Dom Capers of the Carolina Panthers talk. Capers is joining the Cleveland Browns.
Just when it appeared that the Cleveland Browns were set on their coaching staff after an offseason of wild swings and controversies that came with the firing of Kevin Stefanski and the hiring of Todd Monken to replace him, the team came up with one more surprise. According to ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler, the Browns will be adding former head coach and Super Bowl champion defensive coordinator Dom Capers to the staff.
Capers, at age 75, will be in a strictly consultant’s role.
Wrote Fowler on Twitter/X: “The Browns are adding longtime NFL coach Dom Capers to the coaching staff as a senior defensive assistant, per sources. Capers, 75, a two-time head coach, was last with the Carolina Panthers.”
Indeed, Capers has pretty much bounced around several teams as a “senior defensive assistant” in the last eight years. He was with Jacksonville, Detroit, Minnesota and Denver for one year in that role before spending the last three seasons with the Carolina Panthers. Now, he will join Mike Rutenberg, the new defensive coordinator for the Browns, in that role.
Dom Capers Helped Win a Super Bowl
While Capers was a head coach in the NFL for eight seasons, and led the Panthers to a 12-4 record back in 1996, he did not have a huge level of success as the top coach–in all, his record in Carolina and Houston was 48-80.
But he made his chops in the NFL as a defensive coordinator, when he was the first DC for the Steelers in the Bill Cowher era back in 1992. He held the same job for the Jaguars before striking out on his most successful venture–the DC for the Packers from 2009-2017, when he helped Green Bay and head coach Mike McCarthy to a Super Bowl title in the 2010 season.
While that team might be best remembered for Aaron Rodgers and the offense, the Packers were second in the NFL in points allowed that season, and fifth in yardage allowed.
Browns New Coaches Can Use a Veteran Resource
There is some overlap between Capers and Rutenberg, and for the Browns, that hopefully means a pretty seamless relationship between the two. Rutenberg was just getting started in his NFL coaching career, working his way up with the Jaguars and serving as the assistant linebackers coach for the team in 2019, when Capers was brought on as a special defensive assistant there.
And he is not coming in just to help Rutenberg with the defense–Capers also figures to be a resource for Monk, in his first stint as a head coach. In Carolina, Panthers coach Dave Canales said he leaned heavily on Capers in recent years.
“Dom and I have talked,” Canales said. “And it comes down to the same thing, it’s about the basics, being consistent. That’s been his biggest impact on me as the head coach is be consistent with your messaging and be consistent with the things that are most important to you, because you get what you emphasize, and you can’t emphasize everything, so you have to be very selective.
“And that’s how you build culture, that’s how you build identity, and coach Dom has been an amazing support for me.”