Billy C is back as an HC… for now… in DC.
Former Nebraska head coach Bill Callahan was named Washington’s interim head coach Monday, the same day the team announced the firing of Jay Gruden after a 35-49-1 record and an 0-5 start in his sixth season.
Callahan had been Gruden’s assistant head coach and offensive line coach. It is the first time Callahan has assumed head coaching duties since the Huskers fired him following a tumultous four-season stint from 2004-07 in which he posted a 27-22 record and NU’s first two losing seasons since 1961.
Since then, Callahan — unpopular for most of his time in Lincoln and a sore subject still — has coached exclusively in the NFL as an assistant with the Jets (2008-11), Cowboys (2012-14), and in Washington since 2015. He was Dallas’s offensive coordinator and line coach during his time there.
Callahan’s only previous NFL head coaching stint came for two seasons in 2002-03 with the Oakland Raiders.
In his first season, he guided a team John Gruden had built for four seasons to a 12-4 record, only to lose to Tampa Bay — the team Gruden left to coach — in the Super Bowl.
The bottom dropped out for Callahan in 2003, when the Raiders faltered to 4-12, a season most famous for the Chicago native’s famous line following the latest in a string of losses:
“We have to be the dumbest team in America right now,” Callahan said.
Nebraskans best know “Billy C” as the panic hire made by athletics director Steve Pederson after firing Frank Solich, who had won 76 percent of his games while utilizing some of the sacred traditions and precepts established by predecessors in national champions Bob Devaney and Tom Osborne, including the use of an option attack on offense and a strong walk-on program.
Almost immediately, Pederson — an NU alumnus and former Osborne recruiting coordinator — and Callahan (who had no ties whatsoever to Nebraska) blew up much of that Devaney/Osborne/Solich identity in trying to enter a new era of offensive football.
Of course, it blew up in their faces.
Callahan’s most famous lines in Lincoln included:
– “It’s only one game, one season,” following a 2004 loss to Colorado to complete his first season with a 5-6 record, the first losing season at NU since 1961.
– “F*%#ing hillbillies,” toward Oklahoma fans as he flipped them off in a 31-3 loss in Norman in 2004. The fans had become incensed with Callahan for calling a timeout to attempt a field goal down 31-0 late in the fourth quarter to prevent a shutout.
That, along with a “throat slash” gesture at a referee one year later in 2005 and several blowout losses of epic proportion in 2007 prior to his firing — including 76-39 at Kansas and 65-51 at Colorado in his final game the day before athletics director Osborne canned him — are Callahan’s lasting legacies in Lincoln.
He did leave behind some prized recruits like defensive lineman Ndamukong Suh, cornerback Prince Amukamara, and running back Roy Helu to successor Bo Pelini.
