Former Redblacks head coach Rick Campbell returns to Ottawa as special teams coordinator
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Rick Campbell is back in red and black.
The Ottawa Redblacks announced Thursday morning that Campbell, their first head coach, has returned to the capital as the CFL club’s special teams coordinator.
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Campbell, 54, guided Ottawa to three Grey Cups in his six seasons (2014-2019) as the sideline boss — including its championship win in Year 3.
For the past four years, he has served as head coach and co-GM of the B.C. Lions, who fired him after last season’s 9-9 finish.
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To borrow the title of a Justin Timberlake song, What Goes Around Comes Around.
In 2016, Campbell hired Bob Dyce as the Redblacks special teams coordinator.
Nine years later, Dyce has returned the favour.
“Throughout our time working together, and coaching against each other, Rick has demonstrated what it means to be a leader of men,” Dyce, now the Redbacks head coach, said Thursday. “His experience coaching all phases of the game will be a tremendous asset to our football club, and we’re extremely pleased to welcome him back to Ottawa.”
The position of special teams coordinator became vacant last week when Cory McDiarmid made a lateral move for the same job with the Lions.
Before the Redblacks announced they had hired Will Fields as their defensive coordinator last week, there was speculation that Campbell would be a good fit in that role, which he previously held in both Calgary and Edmonton.
But insiders felt that Campbell was going to take the coming CFL season to catch his breath and evaluate all of his options.
Clearly, he didn’t want to step away from the game.
“It feels like coming home,” Campbell said in a statement. “Ottawa is a special place and I’m looking forward to getting to work and competing for the Grey Cup in 2025.”
Campbell is the son of the legendary Hugh Campbell, who coached the Edmonton Eskimos to five consecutive Grey Cup wins from 1978-82.
Rick Campbell was a graduate assistant at Oregon before taking his first CFL job in Edmonton as a defensive back coach and special teams coordinator from 1999-2004, when he picked up his first of three Grey Cup rings in 2003.
He was promoted to defensive coordinator in 2004, and after four seasons became the Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ DB coach/special teams coordinator for one year., From there, he was the Stampeders running backs coach in 2010, Edmonton’s assistant head coach/special teams coordinator in 2011 and Calgary’s defensive coordinator in 2012 and 2013.
Campbell’s record as the Redblacks head coach is 44-62-2, but it does include the team’s inaugural 2-16 season and a 3-15 mark in 2019, his last year in Ottawa.
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