For most head coaches, the thought of hiring their potential replacement is enough to avoid certain experienced candidates when filling out their staff. Bob Dyce has a different philosophy.
The leader of the Ottawa Redblacks went in the opposite direction when he hired his former boss, Rick Campbell, as special teams coordinator for the 2025 season. The move brought the most successful head coach in franchise history back to the city where he won a Grey Cup in 2016 and raised plenty of eyebrows in the process.
While Dyce managed to lift himself off the hot seat by ending a five-year playoff drought in 2024, his 14-25-1 record over two-and-a-half seasons at the helm of the Redblacks has made him far from untouchable. And yet, he has no discomfort with having the top head coaching candidate on the market staring over his shoulder.
“Rick brought me here into Ottawa. He and I obviously have a relationship. For me, the biggest thing is that my mandate is for this team to win a Grey Cup, and I’m going to surround myself with the best people possible,” Dyce told the media this week. “I don’t worry about situations of, ‘Well, he could do this’ or ‘He could do that.’ That’s not how I live my life.”
Dyce and Campbell first worked together as members of Mike Kelly’s staff with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in 2009. When Campbell needed a special teams coordinator with Ottawa in 2016, he brought in Dyce and they won a Grey Cup together that first season. They spent four years together with the Redblacks before Campbell and the organization mutually agreed to part ways following the 2019 campaign.
The 54-year-old went on to join the B.C. Lions in the same role, where he eventually hired Dyce’s son, Trysten, as an assistant. Despite making the playoffs for the seventh time as a head coach in 2024, Campbell was fired after the team’s semi-final exit and hit the open market with an 82-92-2 all-time record. The former CFL Coach of the Year was initially linked to the job opening in Edmonton, where his father, Hugh, spent decades as a Hall of Fame coach and executive, but was passed over in favour of Mark Kilam.
That prompted a reunion with Dyce in Ottawa, with the two coaches essentially swapping roles from their previous time together. The 59-year-old kept his job with the Redblacks following Campbell’s departure in 2019 and took over as interim head coach when Paul LaPolice was fired towards the end of the 2022 season, with the promotion becoming permanent that off-season.
Having two of the ten-year-old franchise’s head coaches on the same staff might make for strange optics, but Dyce believes it will be beneficial for everybody involved.
“I believe in the men around me and that if we’re of one goal, we’re going to be successful. At the end of the day, when we are successful, it’s going to be good for Rick and it’s going to be good for me,” he insisted. “I don’t worry. If you think that way, you’re thinking that you’re scared. That’s not the way I live my life.”
The Redblacks went 9-8-1 last season, finishing third in the East Division. They open their 2025 campaign with a visit to the Saskatchewan Roughriders on Thursday, June 5.