Speaking of the Super Bowl, here’s a Super Bowl champion coach comparing Bengals wide receivers coach Troy Walters, the keeper of the keys, to one of the head coaches in Sunday’s Super Bowl.

“I absolutely see him as a head coach. He’s one of the guys who’ll be under the radar. He reminds me of Mike Macdonald,” said NBC’s Tony Dungy this week as he powered through Super Bowl Radio Row much like his Colts did to the Bears 20 big games ago in Miami.

“Somebody is going to see that and say, ‘You know what? This guy is special. Look at what he’s done for his guys. And can I get that to transfer into my team?’ His future is so bright.”

For Walters, 49, that future continues to shine in Cincinnati. As long as we’re talking Super Bowl, Walters believes the Bengals are on the verge of winning the next one, and that’s a big reason he politely declined Bears head coach Ben Johnson’s offer to interview for his offensive coordinator job.

It certainly had nothing to do with Johnson, a highly-regarded figure around Paycor Stadium as Bengals head coach Zac Taylor’s brainy colleague with the Dolphins. And, all you had to do was sit in the Paycor surround sound for an excruciating three hours back on Nov. 2 to know how good the Bears are going to be.

“I had a good talk with Ben. Very grateful for the opportunity. And I have tremendous respect for him, what he’s done, what he’s doing there,” Walters says. “They have great coaches on the staff, but it was really what I believe is going to take place here in Cincinnati. I’m excited about what we’re going to do this year, and really want to finish it off the right way here in Cincinnati and try to go win a Super Bowl here.

“Guys would go through the interview process and get that experience. But we talked, and I told him I didn’t want to waste his time with my heart in Cincinnati.”

During his six seasons here, which began with the drafting of Tee Higgins and through this week’s joint appearance of Higgins and Ja’Marr Chase in the Pro Bowl, Walters’ steady stewardship is the keel of one of the NFL’s most prolific and deepest wide receiver rooms of the decade.

That’s another reason Walters passed on the Bears. In his run here for all of the 2020s, only three teams have caught more touchdowns than the Bengals, and Walters can see a moment where he’s passing around the Lombardi Trophy with Chase and Higgins.

When Walters tuned into the Pro Bowl Tuesday night, the day the news broke about him and the Bears, he saw why he chose to stay as Joe Burrow and Joe Flacco went to his guys early and often among the stars.

“They were having fun. They were having fun with Burrow and Flacco out there,” Walters says. “It looked like Joe (Burrow) was completely healthy. Burrow was running around, having a good time.

“I was watching those guys smile and have a great time, and that’s why I love being around them. Love being their coach because they bring that positive energy every day. It’s fun to be here. They’re fun to be around. And I think the sky’s the limit on what they can accomplish.”

Walters calls it “a privilege” to coach them, and the feeling is mutual.

Good news, Higgins said Tuesday as he walked into his first Pro Bowl. “That shows you what he thinks of us. A player’s coach, first and foremost.”

If you want to know why his receivers respond to him so well, just listen to how Walters has tried to emulate Dungy. Walters backed up Pro Bowlers Marvin Harrison and Reggie Wayne for four years on Dungy’s first great Indianapolis teams, the longest he played for anyone during his NFL career that spanned the first eight seasons of the century.

“I think the biggest thing is just consistency, and I think that’s important as the leader when guys look at you. He was never too high, never too low,” Walters says. “Every day, you knew what he was going to bring to the table. You knew who he was. It kind of showed in a team that was really consistent. I don’t think we ever had three-, four-, five-game losing streaks. We never got too low. One year we started 13-0, and we never got too high and conceited, and thought we had made it. He built that consistent culture of who he was.”

Walters has inherited Dungy’s serene spirituality that meshes with a hard-nosed player who spent his career on the edges of the NFL. While Walters backed up five Pro Football Hall of Famers (Larry Fitzgerald became the fifth Thursday night), Dungy, a college quarterback, learned the game from the Steel Curtain Steelers as an extra defensive back for three years.

“Troy Walters was one of those guys who was just an overachiever,” Dungy said. “A guy who made plays because he was being smart and having tremendous effort, tremendous hustle.”

They also share faith-based values summed up in the title of Dungy’s autobiography, “Quiet Strength.”

“Faith was number one. That’s the same for me, and it all stems from that,” Walters says. “Faith, family, then football, and so just a great role model, and really someone I try to emulate my coaching style after because it made such an impact on myself, and I know everyone who played for him, and I want to do the same.”

So Walters isn’t wrapped up in a crusade to be a head coach or even an offensive coordinator. Since he’s been here, he’s had two interviews to be an OC, both with first-year head coaches DeMeco Ryans in Houston and Jonathan Gannon in Arizona.

“I take it year by year. I know there’s a lot on a head coach’s plate,” Walters says. I have four kids, and I look at the demands of a head coach, sometimes. Right now, I love being a receiver coach with the guys I’ve got, and I love developing.”

Walters has had the touch, from the draft’s fifth pick in Chase to a practice-squad retread in Mitchell Tinsley. Besides developing a stacked room that includes the red-zone antics of sixth-rounder Andrei Iosivas, Walters is part of Taylor’s best-and-brightest braintrust that has included a future NFL head coach in Brian Callahan and a current offensive coordinator in Dan Pitcher, who interviewed for Cleveland’s top job last month.

Taylor makes sure his offensive assistants share the responsibilities of a coordinator. In his first season, Walters was in charge of game management, and then moved into red zone situations for a couple of seasons. Now he’s been charged with managing first- and second-down base passes.

“We all have our area of expertise, and they rely on everybody in terms of game plan, input, and so on,” Walters says. “I’ve learned a lot from Zac, Cali when he was here, and Pitch, on how to do things. If that ever comes my way, being a coordinator, then you kind of take the good of what we’ve done here and go from there.”

His old coach certainly believes he’s got what it takes. It was news to him Walters decided not to interview in Chicago. But not breaking news.

“That’s him” Dungy said. “He loves working for Coach Taylor. He loves his receivers … He believes in what he’s doing. He loves his guys. They’ve got something special going.”

That’s why, speaking of the next Super Bowl, Walters is still a Bengal.

“Right now, I want to be a part of this. The receiver room, and it’s part of the Cincinnati Bengals,” Walters says. “I feel like we’re going to do something special this upcoming season, and I want to be a part of it.”