Colts’ Jim Caldwell doesn’t mess with success

Dallas Clark stands in the middle of an otherwise empty locker room and shakes his head at the memory.

The Indianapolis Colts tight end had never played a down in the NFL for a coach other than Tony Dungy. So when Dungy stepped down in January, Clark remembers bracing for the worst.

“A new guy wants to come in and [say], ‘This is how I do it. This is how we did it back then,’ ” Clark said. “And they want to do that.”

But 11 months into the Jim Caldwell era in Indianapolis, Clark admits nothing has changed -- especially not the winning. In fact, if anything, that’s gotten better. After averaging 12 victories in each of Dungy’s last six seasons, the Colts head into Sunday’s home contest against Denver unbeaten in a dozen games under Caldwell.

“He’s doing a great job of really just doing what needs to be done and not trying to force any issues,” Clark said. “Not trying to do too much, not doing too little.

“Jim’s a very smart, intelligent man that knows he’s got a good thing here. The less adjustments players have to make, I think, the better. And it’s been the easiest transition you could ever ask for.”

For Caldwell too. Dungy’s hand-picked successor, Caldwell didn’t even have to buy a new house since he has been with the Colts since 2002, first as quarterbacks coach, then as assistant head coach and finally as associate head coach last season.

“There’s nothing more to say. We’re 12-0,” linebacker Clint Session said. “Obviously, he’s doing great things. Our record reflects a lot what he’s doing, what he’s instilling in us.”

One thing he’s instilling is humility. In a game where egos dominate, especially at the head coaching position, Caldwell stands out for the way he blends in.

And his team has adopted that approach.

After Sunday’s dismantling of the Tennessee Titans -- a victory that extended the Colts’ regular-season winning streak to a record-tying 21 games (New England, 2003-04) and made Caldwell the first NFL coach to win his first 12 games -- there was no celebrating. Not with Indianapolis’ ultimate goal, a Super Bowl title, still two months away.

“I think they’re starting to believe a bit like I do, in the sense that we’ll tally them up when the season’s over,” Caldwell said. “We still have a lot of work to do.”

Hard work has never frightened Caldwell, 54, who was born in the small southern Wisconsin town of Beloit. His mother, Mary, worked long hours as a geriatric nurse and his father Willie spent 35 years at General Motors. From them he learned the solid, middle-American values that would come to define his coaching career.

“I never heard him complain, never heard him make any excuses,” Caldwell said of his father on the day he replaced Dungy. “[My parents] set a great example for me to live by: hard work, determination and resilience after disappointment along with strong Christian values.”

It’s a blue-collar approach Caldwell went on to hone in the 24 years it took him to work his way from graduate assistant at the University of Iowa, where he was a four-year starter at defensive back, to the NFL. After eight years as head coach at Wake Forest -- the first African American head coach in Atlantic Coast Conference history -- he joined Dungy’s staff in Tampa Bay in 2001 as quarterbacks coach before following Dungy to the Colts a year later.

Along the way he worked under coaching legends such as Joe Paterno at Penn State, Howard Schnellenberger at Louisville and Bill McCartney at Colorado. But it’s his time with Dungy that left the deepest mark.

Soft-spoken and polite, Caldwell rarely loses his cool on the sidelines, preferring to motivate through the strength of his character rather than the strength of his voice. In many ways it’s the same quiet, unassuming approach that Dungy took, another factor that has helped make the coaching transition seamless.

“Ultimately as a head coach, I’m sure that the main goal ought to be to get your players to play harder for you,” said quarterback Peyton Manning, who has won three most-valuable-player awards under Caldwell. “I feel like our players are really playing hard for Coach Caldwell.”

But Caldwell, who is highly adept at deflecting praise, won’t even take credit for that. If the Colts lose a game, it will be as a team. So when they win, they do that as a team too.

“This team really belongs to a lot of people,” he said. “I think we’re building upon what we’ve already had here, in terms of how we do things and the way we do them.

“We have a great organization from top to bottom and great players. And an outstanding coaching staff as well. So I would attribute the great majority of the success we’ve had to them.”

So what changes will Caldwell claim? Well, according to linebacker Freddy Keiaho, the most popular innovation he has brought is “no pads Wednesdays,” in which the team is allowed to practice without pads midweek if they win Sunday.

“The team is learning about him and he is learning about our team,” said Manning, who has played for two other head coaches, Dungy and Jim Mora, in his pro career. “I knew him as my quarterbacks coach . . . [but] I am learning about him in the head coaching role. And any time you have a new head coach, I think it’s your job to try to earn his respect and buy into his philosophies.”

In a game that often takes itself too seriously, that’s a simplistic approach. But it also has been a successful one.

“He’s just doing a great job of keeping the team fresh, keeping a good sense of the morale, the tempo and just kind of getting a good feel for that,” Clark said of Caldwell. “And that’s what makes him special.”

kevin.baxter@latimes.com