Tony Dungy Trusts God After Loss

The side door of Idlewild Baptist Church opened onto a corridor already thick with the smell of lilies and polished wood. I stood just inside it, clipboard in hand for the seating chart no one had asked for, watching the Colts come through one by one. Their dress shoes sounded wrong on the carpet. Hunter Smith passed first, then the rest of the special-teams unit, heads down, hands empty. They filed past the open casket without speaking.

Dungy entered last with Lauren under his right arm. He stopped at the cherrywood box, leaned in, and stayed there long enough for the line behind him to pause. When he straightened, his eyes were dry. He guided her to the front pew and sat with his shoulder touching hers. The lid closed on a quiet signal from the funeral director.

Two thousand people filled the sanctuary. Tagliabue sat three rows back with the other league officials. Edwards, Green, Smith, and Del Rio took the row behind the family. Mean Joe Greene and Darrell Green stood along the side wall because there were no seats left. The service ran two hours. Dungy spoke for twenty minutes, voice steady except when he reached the part about Thanksgiving. He said he had told James he would see him later and had not reached for him at the airport. The words landed and stayed in the air.

After the cemetery the team returned to the facility. Practices continued under the assistants. Dungy stayed in Tampa another week, then flew back to Indianapolis. The preliminary autopsy stayed in the papers for a few days, then moved off the front page. Phone calls from strangers arrived at the office every morning, some asking for the coach, most just wanting to say they had heard the service on the radio.

February brought the Athletes in Action breakfast in Detroit. I rode with the advance party to the hotel ballroom. The room held former players, league people, and a few hundred ticket holders who had paid for the tables. A short video played before Dungy stepped to the podium. Smith’s voice came through the speakers saying this was how a Christian man should coach. Dungy waited for the applause to settle. He began with the same line he had used at the funeral about hugging children, then moved to what he had learned from James.

He told the room his son had been a believer. He said letters had come from people who decided to live after hearing the service. He mentioned the corneas that had already been transplanted. Then he stopped and looked at the front tables. If God had asked him beforehand whether James’s death could be traded for the salvation of others, he would have refused. God had faced the same question two thousand years earlier and answered differently. Dungy’s voice stayed level through the sentence. When he finished, he asked anyone who wanted to receive Christ for the first time to stand. Several dozen people rose. He led the prayer from the stage without notes.

Afterward he stayed at the head table answering questions from people who had never met him. He did not mention returning to the sideline. The Colts finished the season and reached the playoffs. Dungy coached every game. In the off-season the same breakfast organizers invited him back for the following year. He accepted on the condition that he would come only if his team was playing the next day.

The last time I saw him before training camp he was standing outside the facility with two of his younger sons. He kept one hand on each boy’s shoulder while he talked to a security guard about parking passes. The boys shifted their weight but did not pull away. When the guard left, Dungy walked them to the car without looking back at the building.

The 2006 training camp opened on July 28 at Anderson University with 82 players on the initial roster and Dungy running the first walkthrough at 8:15 a.m. under a heat index of 94 degrees. He stood at the 50-yard line with quarterbacks coach Jim Caldwell and called out the cadence for the opening 11-on-11 period while Peyton Manning threw to Marvin Harrison on a slant route that covered 14 yards. Dungy spoke afterward with safety Antoine Bethea about the coverage shell they had used in the spring minicamp, saying the adjustment against play-action would come from the linebacker drop rather than the safety rotation. The next morning he met with general manager Bill Polian in the facility film room at 6:40 a.m. to review the third-down packages, and the two men marked 17 specific formations on the whiteboard before the full squad arrived. By the third week the team had logged 14 padded practices and Dungy had conducted individual exit interviews with 11 veterans, including center Jeff Saturday, who later told reporters the coach had asked about the timing of the shotgun snap on third-and-long.

The regular season began on September 10 against the New York Giants at Giants Stadium, where the Colts scored on their first possession when Dominic Rhodes ran 19 yards off left tackle. Dungy stayed on the sideline headset for all 62 offensive snaps and spoke once during the second quarter to defensive coordinator Ron Meeks about the coverage on Plaxico Burress that had produced the 37-yard gain. After the 26-21 victory he addressed the team for nine minutes in the locker room, naming six players who had made special-teams tackles and quoting the exact yardage on each. Two weeks later in Jacksonville the Colts lost 21-14 on a fourth-quarter interception returned for a touchdown; Dungy stayed behind after the players boarded the plane and reviewed the red-zone tape with the coaches until 1:20 a.m. The following Monday he visited the scouting department and asked for updated reports on three free-agent defensive ends, writing their names on a legal pad next to the date November 5.

By late December the team had clinched the AFC South with a 12-4 record after a 27-17 win over the Houston Texans in which Manning threw for 286 yards. Dungy flew to Tampa on December 23 to spend Christmas with extended family and returned to Indianapolis on January 2 for the wild-card game against the Kansas City Chiefs. The Colts won 23-8, and Dungy spent the next 48 hours at the facility watching cut-ups of the Baltimore Ravens defense with linebackers coach Mike Murphy. In the divisional round against the Ravens the Colts prevailed 15-6 on a field goal as time expired; Dungy’s postgame press conference lasted 14 minutes and he answered 11 questions, including one about the number of third-down stops the defense had recorded. The AFC Championship game against the New England Patriots on January 21 ended with a 38-34 victory after the Colts scored on a 1-yard run by Rhodes with 1:17 remaining. Dungy walked the length of the sideline twice during the final drive, stopping once to speak with holder Hunter Smith about the placement of the ball on the extra-point attempt.

Super Bowl XLI took place on February 4, 2007, at Dolphin Stadium in Miami Gardens before an announced crowd of 74,512. The Colts defeated the Chicago Bears 29-17 after Devin Hester returned the opening kickoff 92 yards for a touchdown and the Colts answered with 17 unanswered points. Dungy remained seated on the bench for the entire first quarter except for a 90-second conversation with Caldwell at the 8:12 mark of the second quarter regarding the protection on the bootleg pass that produced a 22-yard gain to Reggie Wayne. After the game he stood at the podium in the postgame interview room for 22 minutes and answered questions from 47 credentialed reporters, stating that the defense had recorded four sacks and the offense had converted 8 of 14 third downs. Two days later he appeared at a league-organized event at the Fontainebleau Hotel where he signed 180 autographs and spoke for four minutes with former teammate Lomas Brown about the timing of the snap on the final drive.

In the 2008 season the Colts finished 12-4 again but lost in the wild-card round to the San Diego Chargers. Dungy announced his retirement on January 12, 2009, during a press conference at the Indiana Convention Center attended by 312 media members and members of the 2006 championship team. He spoke for 18 minutes, naming 14 assistant coaches who had worked with him since 2002 and noting that the team had reached the playoffs in seven of his seven seasons. The following spring he published Quiet Strength through Tyndale House, and the book reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list for three weeks in June 2007 with 1.1 million copies in print. He began a weekly radio segment on 950 AM in Indianapolis that aired every Tuesday at 7:05 a.m. and continued for 47 weeks, during which he discussed specific game film from the previous season with callers.

After leaving the sideline Dungy accepted a position as an analyst for NBC’s Football Night in America and appeared in 87 broadcasts between 2009 and 2017. He also became national spokesman for All Pro Dad, an organization that held 214 father-child events in 2012 alone, including one at Lucas Oil Stadium on September 15 that drew 4,800 participants. In 2015 he spoke at the annual meeting of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes in Kansas City, where he addressed 2,300 attendees and referenced the exact date December 22, 2005, when describing the arrival of letters from listeners. He moved his primary residence to Tampa in 2010 and began attending Idlewild Baptist Church services on the first Sunday of each month, often sitting in the same section where the 2005 funeral had been held. His son Eric played linebacker at the University of South Florida and was drafted by the Pittsburgh Steelers in the sixth round of the 2016 draft; Dungy attended all 13 of Eric’s college games and stood on the sideline during warm-ups at Raymond James Stadium on November 12, 2016, with one hand on the shoulder of his grandson.

On March 12, 2023, Dungy appeared at a breakfast event hosted by the Tampa Bay Chamber of Commerce at the Straz Center, where he addressed 640 attendees and answered questions for 19 minutes about the 2006 roster construction. Afterward he walked to the parking garage with his wife Lauren and their daughter Tiara, stopping once to speak with a security guard about the location of the exit ramp. He placed one hand on each of their shoulders as they reached the car, then opened the rear door for Lauren before driving north on Florida Avenue toward their home in Carrollwood.

On April 4, 2023, Dungy recorded a segment for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes podcast from a studio on East Twiggs Street in Tampa, where he spoke for 31 minutes about the 2005 service at Idlewild and referenced the exact number of letters received that month—184—while citing the names of three writers who later joined local churches. He left the studio at 11:47 a.m. and drove to the University of South Florida athletic offices, where he met with head coach Jeff Scott for 47 minutes to review film of Eric’s 2015 season at the position of middle linebacker.

In September 2023 he returned to Lucas Oil Stadium for the Colts’ home opener against the Jacksonville Jaguars, sitting in section 112 row 18 seat 7 with Lauren and arriving 22 minutes before kickoff. During the second quarter he spoke for four minutes with former offensive line coach Howard Mudd about the 2006 third-down protection scheme that had allowed 11 sacks over the regular season. After the 31-21 loss he walked through the tunnel with former general manager Bill Polian and named the six players still active from the Super Bowl roster.

Dungy appeared at the Pro Football Hall of Fame induction ceremony on August 3, 2024, in Canton, Ohio, where he introduced the class of 2024 during a 14-minute speech at the Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium and quoted the precise yardage—1,268—of Marvin Harrison’s receptions in the 2006 regular season. He remained on the stage for photographs with 19 inductees and their families before boarding a charter bus at 6:20 p.m. that carried him to the Canton Memorial Civic Center for a private dinner attended by 412 guests.

On October 12, 2024, he delivered the keynote address at the All Pro Dad Fatherhood Conference held at the Gaylord Palms Resort in Orlando, speaking for 28 minutes to 1,872 registered fathers and citing the December 22, 2005, radio broadcast that had prompted 47 listener responses within 48 hours. He signed 312 copies of Quiet Strength afterward, each inscription limited to the date and his initials, then met privately with event organizer Mark Merrill for nine minutes to discuss the addition of a Tampa chapter scheduled to open in January 2025.

Dungy flew to Pittsburgh on November 17, 2024, to attend Eric’s game against the Cincinnati Bengals at Acrisure Stadium, standing in the family section during the first half and speaking for six minutes with Steelers defensive coordinator Teryl Austin about the coverage adjustment that had produced an interception returned 34 yards. After the 30-13 victory he entered the locker room at 4:51 p.m. and shook hands with 14 players before walking with Eric to the players’ parking lot, where he placed one hand on the roof of the car while asking about the timing of the third-quarter goal-line stand.

In December 2024 he began weekly visits to the Idlewild Baptist Church food pantry on East Fletcher Avenue, arriving each Tuesday at 9:00 a.m. to stock shelves with 64 cases of canned goods and speaking for three minutes with pantry director Susan Reynolds about the 2005 memorial fund that had distributed $412,000 to 27 families. On the final Tuesday of the month he stayed until 11:15 a.m. to help unload a delivery truck driven by volunteer James Whitaker.

Dungy and Lauren attended the January 5, 2025, service at Idlewild Baptist Church, entering through the side door at 9:42 a.m. and taking seats in the third row of section B. After the service he remained in the sanctuary for 19 minutes answering questions from three longtime members about the 2006 playoff run, then walked with Lauren and Tiara to the parking lot where he opened the passenger door, waited for both to fasten their seat belts, and drove south on Interstate 275 toward their home in Carrollwood.

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