Inside The Huskies

51 Years Later, Former UW Grad Assistant Is Still Working

Dom Capers has gone from Don James staffer to long-winding NFL and college career.
Dan Raley|
Dom Capers is shown as the Green Bay Packers defensive coordinator.
Dom Capers is shown as the Green Bay Packers defensive coordinator. | Jeff Hanisch-Imagn Images

Just over a half century ago -- when Husky Stadium had a grass field, a running track encircling it and just one upper deck filled with fans, the University of Washington brought a new football coach on board in Don James.

He was from Kent State and not real well known across Seattle -- or at the UW, for that matter. When the coach and his wife Carol first drove up, a stadium reader board initially welcomed him as "Don Jones."

As he unpacked his bags in Montlake in 1975, James brought a handful of full-time coaches with him from the MAC school to rebuild the Huskies, among them offensive coordinator Dick Scesniak, quarterbacks coach Ray Dorr, wide-receivers coach Bob Stull and outside linebackers coach Skip Hall.

James also had a graduate assistant coach in tow named Dom Capers, an Ohio native who previously had joined him at Kent State three years earlier and now followed him to Seattle.

Today, everyone among those Huskies coaches back then has passed away or long since been retired and is in their eighties.

Capers, however, joined the Cleveland Browns on Tuesday as a senior defensive assistant, according to multiple reports. He's still working.

He's 75 and still sharing his footba;; wisdom, first gleaned from James, who died in 2013, two decades into his retirement.

Capers has been an NFL head coach for the Houston Texans and Carolina Panthers. He's worked in the USFL. He's coached at Ohio State, Tennessee, California, San Jose State and Hawaii.

The Browns are the 12th different NFL franchise to employ him.

Capers has been guided by James throughout his coaching lifetime that appears to have no end.

"I was very fortunate to work for Don James," he told USA Today in 1997. "With Don James, everything ran so efficiently. He prepared for everything. He considered everything. And it left an impact on me."

Same as James, Capers takes copious notes about details, about things he experienced, about things he needs to change. He made a practice of keeping diaries or journals to refer to as his coaching career took him all over the country.

Way back when, the legendary Husky coach could see plenty of potential in this then yearling coach named Capers.

"You get young graduate assistants and probably half of them you're not going to look at to be assistant coaches," James told the Seattle Times. "They aren't strong enough around the star-type players or they aren't committed to their work.

"Dom wanted to learn offense, he wanted to learn defense. He wanted to be involved in recruiting. He was a handsome young guy with personal qualities that would help him succeed."

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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