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Clark will be
enshrined in the Colts' Ring of Honor at halftime of Sunday's game against the
Miami Dolphins at Lucas Oil Stadium.
JJ Stankevitz
Oct 17, 2024 at 04:07 PM
As the
Colts prepare to unveil Dallas Clark as the newest member of their Ring of
Honor at halftime on Sunday, those who were with him during his nine seasons in
Indianapolis see his legacy defined by a few things.
He
modernized how tight ends were viewed in the NFL, yet he was a throwback kind
of football player. He was the sort of teammate who could
ingratiate himself with wide receivers like Reggie Wayne and Marvin Harrison
while being adopted by Jeff Saturday and Tarik Glenn as an honorary offensive
lineman. He was intensely competitive and took his work seriously, yet he was a
goofy, fun-loving guy who was always up to join in on a Peyton Manning training
camp prank. His intensity never wavered, whether it was a preseason game or the
AFC Championship.
And as
good of a player as Clark was, he was an even better guy to be around. All
these years later, call up anyone who was around him and they'll gush about
everything that brought "Ol' Dal" to this point, where he'll take his
deserving spot among franchise legends.
"It
was a real honor and privilege to be his teammate all those years with the
Colts," Manning said.
"Dallas
is my favorite teammate," Wayne said.
"Just
a great teammate, man," Glenn said.
"I
just think of energy, of fun, of enjoying a good time and being a great
teammate – those are my memories of Dallas," Tony Dungy said.
"Whatever it takes to elevate everybody's play and to be the best he could
be. Great on the practice field, great in the meeting rooms, always upbeat,
just a really fun person to be around. So forget about
the great athlete and competitiveness and all that, he made the game fun."
"I'm
so happy for him," Saturday said. "I can't wait to be up there and be
standing on that field watching him get that jacket put on him, because he
deserves it."
***
Dungy first met Clark in a cramped hotel room
at the Holiday Inn in downtown Indianapolis in 2003. Clark was going through
his car wash of 15-minute interviews at the NFL Combine, where he was generally
peppered with questions about football – his favorite plays from his collegiate
career at Iowa, what the strengths and weaknesses of his game were, etc.
Dungy went down a different path when Clark
sat down, asking him about who he was as a person. The Colts were looked for a
great player with their first-round pick, of course, but what Dungy, general
manager Bill Polian and Owner and CEO Jim Irsay really wanted was a great fit
for the team's culture. That on-and-off-the-field combination led the Colts to
select Dwight Freeney in the first round of the 2002 NFL Draft, and a year
later, it was leading them toward this Iowa farm kid-turned-Hawkeye standout.
Clark left the room thinking the Colts wanted
him. Two months later, after he arrived in Indianapolis as the 24th overall
pick in the 2003 NFL Draft, he explained to Dungy why.
"'Coach, you really fooled me,'"
Dungy recalled Clark telling him, "'because I didn't think you were
interested. In our combine conversation, you asked me about my family, you
asked me about growing up, you asked me about my life, my school, my degree,
what I want to do. You didn't talk to me about football at all. I thought you
were just blowing me off, and I had no idea you guys were interested."
Dungy, of course, came away with a different
impression.
"It was so refreshing to me to hear his
answers," Dungy said. "I said, 'this is the guy we need.'"
As soon as Clark arrived, he assimilated
himself into a culture established by guys like Manning, Glenn, Saturday,
Harrison and Edgerrin James. Dungy's instincts were spot on.
"He
just fit right in," Manning said. "I think Jim
and Bill and Tony had a criteria for the kind of players they wanted to bring
in. It seems like all the guys they were bringing in, that was the criteria — do they truly love football, are
they unselfish, is it more about the team than the individual. And when
you get a bunch of players like that, you have a chance to be successful. And Dallas was just the perfect
example of all those things, so he fit right in."
"Dallas was just one of the guys right
away," Glenn said. "I think his work ethic and his ability to
relationally connect with the team was really authentic and natural to his
personality."
"He fit because he worked hard and he
didn't care what was asked, he was going to give it everything he had,"
Saturday said. "There were a lot of pieces and parts in place, but you
always need to add good people and good players, and that's what we added with
him in that draft."
***
It's 1 o'clock in the morning on Jan.
22, 2007, and Dungy is with his family at Palomino in downtown Indianapolis
basking in the afterglow of winning the AFC Championship. As he reflects on the
run he and his team were on, his mind drifted to three years prior.
Just after Thanksgiving, Clark broke
his leg against the Patriots, ending his rookie season. Two weeks before his
injury, he caught five passes for 100 yards against the Jets. He was coming on
strong before abrupt end to Year 1.
The Colts went on to reach the AFC
Championship, where they again met Tom Brady's Patriots, losing 24-14 in
Foxborough. Dungy thought back to that night in Massachusetts, then to what he
just witnessed in Indianapolis.
"Man," Dungy thought, amid
all the celebrating, "if we had Dallas in 2003, we might've been in the
same situation (as AFC champions)."
That's
how important Clark was to the Colts' offense from the moment he stepped on the
field.
"The
way I describe Dallas is, the defense, they had to spend time having a
conversation about Dallas," Manning said. "'How are we going to treat
him? Are we going to put a linebacker on him, are we going to put a safety or a
cornerback on him?' And whatever they did, there was something that they were
going to be vulnerable to. You put a linebacker on him, they probably can't cover him.
They put a defensive back on him, okay, what's that defensive back going to do
if we run the ball.
"It's
just nice having a player on your team the defense has to spend some time
having a conversation about, and I was glad we had Dallas on our team."
Clark's
ability as someone who could dig out defensive backs in the run game and blow
by linebackers in the passing game was a special sauce for a Colts' offense
that had some of the best players in the NFL, but needed the ability to pivot to
pass-centric or run-centric game plans based on the competition.
"When we had that type of
versatility in a player, it takes your offense to a whole other level,"
Glenn said. "We scored a lot of points and we were able to create a lot of
mismatches on offense, and it just brought a dynamic and excitement to our
offense that we didn't have before Dallas got there."
The
Colts had a top-three offense in points scored every year from 2003-2007, and
won at least 12 games every year from 2003-2009. The defining stretch for
Clark, though, came in the 2006 playoffs.
With wide receiver Brandon Stokley out
with an injury, the Colts' offense morphed into a super-charged version of 12
personnel (one running back, two tight ends, two wide receivers). Clark would
usually play in-line on first and second down, lining up with his hand in the
dirt next to the offensive line. On third down, Clark would shift into the
slot, replacing Stokley in those situations.
Clark – who sustained an injury late in
the regular season and narrowly avoided season-ending injured reserve – caught
21 passes for 317 yards, and 16 of his receptions accounted for a first down. The only tight end in NFL
history who's had more receiving yards in a single postseason is Travis Kelce
(2020, 2023).
"Technically
we were two tight ends on first down, second down, third down, but on third
down, Dallas was really playing wide receiver," Manning said. "But
the defense didn't know that. The defense had to honor the fact that you might
do your two tight ends plays. That speaks to his versatility. I think that's
what we liked out of him coming out of Iowa, that he could run but yet he
played tight end so he was going to be able to block. It was a real credit to
him just how versatile he was."
"He
had just a dominant, dominant playoffs," Dungy said. "And we
certainly would not have gone to the Super Bowl without it."
***
Nowadays, plenty of tight ends have the
sort of positional versatility Clark had. That wasn't the case two decades ago – Clark was a rare player in the
mid-2000s, when few tight ends had the skillset to both line up in-line and in
the slot. Clark, then, was on the cutting edge of what tight ends could be
asked to do in the NFL.
"Of course, Tony Gonzalez was
doing his thing, Antonio Gates — those guys got a lot of attention,"
Manning said. "But you ask any defensive player that was playing against
us during that time, and Dallas was a real force."
Yet for as modern a tight end as Clark
was, he played like a throwback from a bygone era.
"No matter what the weather was,
cold, sleet, snow, it just didn't matter. No gloves," Wayne said. "A
lot of people didn't think he was a big time blocker, but he surprised a lot of
people. Man, he's a he's one of those guys that don't mind getting his hands
dirty and going to get after you."
Clark
earned the respect of receivers like Wayne and Harrison for the time he spent
working on routes with them. And he earned the respect of the Colts' offensive
line for his dedication to the sort of dirty work that often goes unnoticed by
the general public.
"The majority of the guys that
play the tight end position, typically they love the glamour and notoriety of
being able to catch the ball and catch touchdowns," Glenn said. "But
Dallas was pretty old school in the sense of — not a whole lot of celebration.
He was really about bringing his lunch box to work, being physical and trying
to create a reputation of just being a football player."
Clark
was so genuinely respected by the Colts' offensive line that they considered
him to be one of them.
"Let
me tell you, that's hard to get in – that's a hard, hard group to get in,"
Saturday said. "We work way too freaking hard and don't get near the
attention we should. And so if you're an attention-getter, which as a skill
position player in the Colts' offense, you were going to get it – he was still
one of us. That meant the world to us."
From
Manning's perch under center, the care Clark put into working with both the
Colts' receivers and offensive line was another reason why he was such an
outstanding fit for his team's culture.
"I
just appreciated his professionalism, the way he worked at his craft — his
blocking, his route-running," Manning said. "He would finish some of
his tight end blocking drills and he would come down or throw routes or
one-on-one with the receivers. He'd talk to Marvin and Reggie about how to run
a certain route out wide as a receiver."
Clark
wasn't just a tireless worker – his positive attitude had a major impact on the
Colts, too. When players made a mistake or hit a rough patch, Clark was
the first guy to talk to them, offering words of encouragement to go get the
next play.
"The
ultimate teammate," Wayne said. "He never had a bad day. He kept
everybody together. ... He was the glue that kept us all together when we were
in difficult times."
"He just had a great attitude
every single day," Manning said. "He was always upbeat, whether it
was in the dog days of training camp or after a long conditioning session,
throwing, he was always just upbeat. He loved everything about it, and those
were the kind of guys that I enjoyed playing with, they were going to give you
everything that they had. I don't think it ever felt like work to Dallas."
"You'd
want 100 guys like him in a locker room," Saturday said.
***
The
Colts have inducted plenty of members of those great 2000s teams into their
Ring of Honor in recent years – Harrison, James, Saturday, Manning, Wayne,
Freeney, Robert Mathis and Glenn have all gone up at Lucas Oil Stadium in the
last decade or so. Every time that group gets together to honor another name
permanently going up at Lucas Oil Stadium, they reflect on that person's
legacy, and how they contributed to such a successful era of Colts football.
On
Sunday, when those guys all get back together in Indianapolis, they'll think
back to everything No. 44 did on and off the field – and how Dallas Clark
belongs next to their names among the greatest players in franchise history.
