Jeff Fisher has been there. He understands the tumultuous situation Dan Campbell found himself in last week after Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross fired head coach Joe Philbin and promoted the 39-year-old Campbell to interim head coach.
Fisher himself was once a young, first-time head coach taking over a team midseason.
Which is why, shortly after Campbell took over the 1-3 Dolphins, Fisher could understand exactly what the new head coach was going through -- because it's not quite head coach. There's that pesky "interim" tag, the "It's Complicated" status symbol you have to carry around.
When the Houston Oilers offered to make the 36-year-old Fisher their interim head coach in 1994, Fisher demurred. He thought the "interim" tag was like a career dead end. Fisher was able to negotiate a longer-term contract to replace Jack Pardee that gave both sides an out after the '94 season. For Fisher, it was a worthwhile gamble. And in the years since, his opinion on the "interim" tag has changed. He appreciates how hard it is to take over another man's team and sees how, as in Campbell's case, it can be a good opportunity.
"This is unique to happen after four weeks, so in [the Dolphins'] case they have a 12-game season," said Fisher, now the St. Louis Rams' head coach. "That's a lot of time. And I think that's the most important thing to emphasize: 'We have 12 weeks. We can win eight out of these 12 games, and hey, look out, who knows what's going to happen?'
"But everybody's pulling for him, except the people in their division."
Since the start of the 2000 season, there have been 26 in-season coaching changes in the NFL, including Campbell. That doesn't include when Bruce Arians stepped in for Indianapolis head coach Chuck Pagano in 2012 during Pagano's leave of absence to fight leukemia. Of the 26 interim coaches, only eight went on to become their team's full-time head coach.
In other words, barely thirty percent get to stick around beyond the audition.
So what are the top five things Campbell needs to do -- in addition to winning -- to maximize his opportunity in Miami? ESPN.com surveyed those in and around the league to find out.
1. Don't worry about what you can't control. Taking over a head-coaching job midseason is hard enough. The coaching staff, the system of football and the personnel all fall under someone else's blueprint. It didn't work. Now you must take that blueprint and change the results.
"It's an exceedingly difficult job," ESPN analyst and former NFL executive Bill Polian said.
Polian was with the Buffalo Bills in 1985, when Hank Bullough replaced Kay Stephenson four games into the season. Polian was also the one who decided a year later to replace Bullough with Marv Levy nine games into the season.
At the Bills' first team meeting under Levy, who'd been working in broadcasting when Polian coaxed him back into coaching, the former Kansas City Chiefs head coach told his new team he didn't have a lot to say. Polian remembers the meeting well.
"We're going to protect the football," Levy told the players, according to Polian. "We're not going to turn it over. We're going to play smart. That's how you win football games."
And then Levy told the players he didn't have many rules.
"Here they are," Levy said. "Be on time. Give me 100 percent all the time. One hundred percent effort is the price of admission. OK, let's go beat the Pittsburgh Steelers."
Polian said, "The room applauded and started to cheer and whistle. I'd never had a day like it. The players were so enthused. I knew he would do it, but I just didn't think he would go about it that way. ... When Marv came in, being who he is, he wasn't going to change to [please the] coaching staff. He wasn't going to try and change the system. He just wanted to change the players' outlook and how they approached the game."
2. Change things up. Campbell certainly has embraced this idea already when it comes to his coaching staff. After getting the Dolphins job, Campbell hired veteran coach Al Saunders to be a senior offensive assistant. He also fired defensive coordinator Kevin Coyle, replacing him with defensive backs coach Lou Anarumo. To replace Anarumo, Campbell promoted defensive assistant Jeff Burris to assistant defensive backs coach working with the cornerbacks and assigned assistant defensive backs coach Blue Adams to work with the safeties.
When Fisher took over the Oilers 10 games into the 1994 season, he made a radical change to the offense, switching from a run 'n' shoot, four-wide receiver offense to a conventional formation. The Oilers lost their first game under Fisher to the New York Giants 13-10, and their next four, but the tone was set.
"We got a lot of work done during the week to where we started building to the future," Fisher said. "And that's the most important thing ... to build for the future and get better. But in order to do that, the players need to see and feel change, whether it's subtle change to the practice schedule, the game schedule or the daily schedule. They need to sense and feel change because they respond to that."
3. Get the assistant coaches on the same page. With the exception of Saunders, Miami's assistant coaches were brought together by Philbin. They're his guys. And there certainly could be some hurt feelings among those who might feel like they should have been named the interim.
After all, Campbell has never been a coordinator in the NFL. Six years ago, he was a coaching intern for the Dolphins.
"You've got a staff in flux right now," said ESPN NFL analyst Herm Edwards, who spent nearly two decades as an NFL scout, assistant and head coach. "Some guys are going to buy into what Coach Campbell is saying. Some guys have already emotionally tried to figure out, 'Where's going to be my landing spot after this?'
"First thing he's got to do is get all the assistant coaches in the same foxhole because generally in a case like this there's a divide, and it's that, 'Who's going to be here, who's not going to be here?' That's a problem because now coaches, they can view that and that reflects in the meeting room and the players start figuring it out. If coaches are wondering, 'Well, he's a young guy, and all of a sudden they make him the head coach,' there are coaches on the staff saying, 'Why didn't they make me the head coach?' So you've got to deal with all that."
4. Get the players to play hard. This might seem like a no-brainer, but given the talent on the Dolphins' roster and the team's record, the players haven't been playing hard enough. Ross didn't make Ndamukong Suh the highest-paid defensive player in NFL history so the line could produce just a single sack in the first quarter of the season.
Denver defensive coordinator Wade Phillips has been an interim head coach three times: in New Orleans in 1985, in Atlanta in 2003 and in Houston in 2013. Each time, he became the interim in December.
Given his vast experience -- he never turned a stint as a team's interim into a head-coaching job, although he has been a full-time head coach for three teams -- Phillips is not a fan of in-season coaching changes, especially late in the year.
"If it's early like this, you can do a lot of things," Phillips said. "If it's the last three games of the season then, I mean, that's a lot tougher. If you've got a bye week like (the Dolphins did last week), it can help some.
"But it's still basically not your team. You didn't go through training camp and implement this thing and the team plays the way you want them to play. As a head coach, that's what you'd like to have."
But with 12 games left in the season, Campbell can sell optimism and resurrection -- if the players buy in and play hard.
"There needs to be an element of unpredictability. In Dan's case, they think he's maybe a little bit crazy." Jeff Fisher
"Keep the players playing hard," Phillips said. "Keep them focused on doing their job and doing it well. You have a little help because if they think you might be there [long term], they're going to play hard. But if they think you're not going to be there, it's a lot tougher that way."
5. Be unpredictable. Campbell was just that last week. For his first practice, Campbell split the team into offense and defense and then had the players run the Oklahoma drill, which is meant to test players' toughness.
Campbell also has mixed things up by re-assigning lockers during the bye week.
"There needs to be an element of unpredictability," Fisher said. "In Dan's case, they think he's maybe a little bit crazy."
To take over a team In the middle of the season, Campbell has to be a little bit crazy, no maybe about it.
ESPN.com Denver Broncos reporter Jeff Legwold contributed to this story.