Is Tony Dungy a Hall of Famer?

His finest hour came amidst his team’s lowest point. Tony Dungy’s Indianapolis Colts defense was gashed that day, pummeled, embarrassed. They’d given up 375 rushing yards in Jacksonville late in the 2006 season – 375! – and the Jaguars would’ve run for 500, maybe 600, our columnist wrote, “but the end zone kept getting in their way.”

It was bad. Really bad. The Colts had been laughed off the field. Super Bowl contenders? No. This team was crumbling. Speaking to a bewildered media contingent after the game, a group wondering what in the hell had just happened, the Colts coach remained undaunted. He was calm. Composed. Stunningly stoic.

“We’re not changing our scheme,” Dungy said, voice steady, resolve unbending. “We’re not changing our people. We’ll get it fixed. We’ll play better.”

In this moment, he sounded borderline delusional.

He wasn’t. He was right. Seven weeks later he was hoisting the Lombardi Trophy in the rain in Miami, coach of the world champions. That defense – once gashed, pummeled, embarrassed – had stiffened. Magically. It had yielded 331 rushing yards in four playoff games – 44 fewer than that one day in Jacksonville. The scheme hadn’t changed. The players hadn’t changed. All that had was their belief. That defense had become the backbone of the city’s first Super Bowl triumph.

“That was a Hall of Fame coaching job,” Colts owner Jim Irsay told WISH-8 this week. “To walk out of that locker room in Jacksonville after giving up 375 yards on the ground, there was one man that could’ve pulled that off. That was beyond a Hall of Fame job.”

Dungy will find out Saturday night if his former boss is correct. The former Buccaneers and Colts coach is among 15 modern-day finalists, along with three of his former players – ex-Colts Marvin Harrison and Edgerrin James and John Lynch, whom Dungy coached in Tampa Bay – for the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s Class of 2016.

Arrive at the topic with Dungy, now 60, and he is happy to campaign for Harrison and James and Lynch. What the man will not do is endorse his own candidacy.

It’s a lesson steeled in Dungy long ago. He revisits the words of the coach he most admired during his playing days, Steelers legend Chuck Noll.

“I’ll never forget what coach Noll once told me,” Dungy said last week. “A coach’s job is to make his players better. My only hope is that all three of those guys get in. I’d be happier if all three of them got in rather than me getting in.”

Dungy’s candidacy speaks for itself. He coached 13 NFL seasons; his teams made the playoffs 11 times. In their 20 years of existence before Dungy took over, the Buccaneers reached eight wins all of twice; in his six seasons, they did so five times. He arrived in Indianapolis in 2002 and lifted the Colts from disappointment to dominance: They won 12 or more games in six straight seasons (2003-08), a feat unrivaled until Bill Belichick and the Patriots matched them this year.

His .668 winning percentage is ninth among NFL coaches with a minimum of 100 games. It’s higher than the winning percentages of Belichick, Bill Cowher, Joe Gibbs and Bill Walsh. Seven of the eight coaches with higher winning percentages are Hall of Famers, their names synonymous with their sport: John Madden, Vince Lombardi, George Allen, Ray Flaherty, George Halas, Don Shula and Paul Brown.

Dungy’s teams reached the playoffs 10 straight seasons – no other coach can say the same – and in February 2006 he cemented his name in history, becoming the first African-American coach to win the Super Bowl. He walked away at the top of his profession in 2009, conceding a salary of $5 million a year, to give back — to work with prison inmates, to speak on fatherhood, to preach his Christian faith.

He was, his former boss Irsay likes to say, “America’s coach,” revered by players, coaches, even rivals, a man of faith and conviction, a refreshing beacon of calm amidst the tough-guy football culture. Tony Dungy always represented the best of the Colts, the best of the NFL, the best of professional sports. Like his quarterback, Peyton Manning, Indianapolis was lucky to have him.

And to think, in the hours after he was fired in Tampa Bay after the 2001 season, Dungy was packing up his office, wondering whether he’d ever get another shot to lead a team. Then Irsay called. The next day, Dungy and Bill Polian, Irsay’s team president, sat in a Tampa hotel room for six hours and talked football. Strategy. Scheme. Personnel.

Polian left the meeting and immediately called Irsay.

“We have to hire him,” he said. “He’s our guy.”

Dungy had also been weighing the possibility of becoming the Carolina Panthers’ next coach, but when Irsay and Polian pressed, he decided to come to Indianapolis. Good thing he did.

What followed was the winningest era this city’s ever seen. Even through years of playoff disappointment, Dungy never wavered. He wasn’t going to during his greatest test as a coach.

Five weeks after his defense had given up those 375 rushing yards to the Jaguars, his team sat in a silent locker room, trailing rival New England 21-6 at halftime of the AFC Championship Game. The Patriots had bullied the Colts out of the playoffs twice in the previous three years. This felt like a third. This felt like another opportunity wasted.

Dungy wouldn’t have it. His message was succinct, his tone measured.

“It’s our time,” he told his team. “It’s our time.”

They would be the three words that roused a champion.

Hours later the confetti was falling inside the RCA Dome, and the Colts were reveling in the most improbable of wins: a 38-34 victory that sent them to their first Super Bowl in the Indianapolis era. From the calamity of Jacksonville, to the disastrous first half against the Patriots, to the Super Bowl. Dungy was right.

It was their time.

Two weeks later, the players lifted him on their shoulders in the rain in Miami. Champions, at last.

“As they once wrote about Joe Louis, he’s a credit to his race — the human race,” our columnist wrote that night.

Is Tony Dungy a Hall of Famer?

He’ll find out Saturday night. But in a lot of ways, he already is.

Call IndyStar reporter Zak Keefer at (317) 444-6134. Follow him on Twitter: @zkeefer.