Dan Campbell's toughness reflects Parcells pedigree
Everything seemed routine for the Cowboys tight ends clustered together on a five-hour flight from Dallas to training camp in Oxnard, California, in 2005. A young Sean Ryan and Jason Witten were headed to what would be another brutal Bill Parcells summer with their long-haired, camouflage-coated sensei, Dan Campbell.
But after they checked in and put their bags down, Campbell wasn't at their first tight ends meeting. They looked around and wondered what might keep one of the NFL's most hardcore veterans -- and now the Miami Dolphins' interim head coach -- away from the thing he loved most.
"Guys," position coach Paul Pasqualoni said, "Dan's in the emergency room right now."
On that quiet flight out of Texas, Campbell's appendix exploded, an extremely painful and potentially life-threatening kick to the gut that would cause most men to double over onto the beverage cart. Campbell didn't make a sound. No one had a clue. He returned to practice in about a week and won the Ed Block Courage award that season.
That was the Dan Campbell everyone knew.
"It was to the point where they were trying to hold him off the field so the stitches would heal," Ryan told Around The NFL this week. "He was just itching to get back on the practice field. He's just a testament to the old-time tough guys."
During his first news conference as an interim head coach last week, Campbell promised a tougher Miami Dolphins team after the bye week. In just a five-day span, he reshuffled the offensive staff, fired the defensive coordinator and took his first full-padded practice as an opportunity to run the Oklahoma Drill and ram his players together for the heck of it -- a far cry from the cozier confines of most collective bargaining agreement-era practices."
The best teams I've been a part of -- during the week they go after each other," Campbell said. "It's heated, it's intense. You can't just turn it on on Sunday.
"I don't care if it's Ndamukong Suh, Koa Misi, Jarvis Landry -- they have to be pushed, they have to be worked, they have to be challenged. That's the first thing I'm going to change. I want them all to compete."
