No, Jim Caldwell didn’t turn down an interview with the Vikings

Source: Jim Caldwell

Thus far, the Minnesota Vikings have interviewed seven candidates for their vacant head coaching position. On Friday, reports had surfaced that another candidate turned down a request from the purple to interview for the job, but it turns out that wasn’t true.

The report was that former Detroit Lions’ head coach Jim Caldwell had turned down opportunities to interview with both the Vikings and the Las Vegas Raiders about their head coaching vacancies. Caldwell took to social media personally on Saturday to debunk those claims.

His statement reads, in full:

I would like to correct an erroneous report that I turned down opportunities to interview for the head coaching job with Minnesota and Las Vegas. Those reports are not true.

I have profound respect for both organizations and for the Wilf and Davis families and I did not decline any opportunity to interview with them.

-Coach Jim Caldwell

Caldwell is currently out of coaching, with his last job being with the Miami Dolphins as their quarterbacks coach in 2019. He was the head coach of the Lions from 2014 to 2017, and also served as head coach of the Indianapolis Colts from 2009 to 2011, among various other coaching positions.

I don’t know if the Vikings actually had an interest in Caldwell to come in and be their head coach, but if they had called him for an interview I would have a hard time believing that he would shoot them down. As it turns out, no such sequence of events occurred.