One of the best possible candidates to replace Jay Hill as defensive coordinator at BYU is the man who taught Hill a lot of what he knows. Were it to actually happen, it’d be like the master taking the place of the student at the head of the class. And the best part of that, for consistency and continuity and convenience, is the master is already sitting in the classroom.
At present, he’s the Cougars’ consigliere.
There are those who say Gary Andersen doesn’t want to have a front-and-center role in football, not anymore. He doesn’t want to be a coordinator of any kind. He doesn’t want to be a standard coach. He just sort of wants to hang out and be what he is — a consultant, a counselor, a confidante. Yeah, the consigliere.
He wants to pipe in now and again, but not as the star protagonist. He’s been there and done that before. He now wants to work backstage. He prefers the dark corners of anonymity, where he can make a difference without drawing the spotlight, without stealing the show.
It’s not just “those” who say that. Andersen himself says it. He told Scotty and Hans on their radio show on Friday that he will be staying at BYU, but he doesn’t seek to be defensive coordinator.
“It’s a great spot for me,” he said. … [You have to ask]: ‘Are you happy where you’re at?’ I’m 100 percent happy where I’m at. I don’t want to do more. I want to be an analyst. I want to help coaches grow. I want to help kids grow. I want to be the best grandpa in the country.”
A subsequent question: Couldn’t he do all of those things as the leader of BYU’s defense?
He answered that with a number of varying declarative statements, one that brought another question.
• “We have a sound foundation defensively.”
• “It’s a special group.”
• “Jay and I were on the same page. … We had a great game plan together. Now, it’s the next D coordinator up.”
• “This year I’ll be around the defense as a whole … whatever Kalani wants me to do.”
But …
What if Kalani Sitake wants him at the tip of the spear, straight running his defense? What if he needs him to do that? What if he closes the door behind Andersen, looks him straight in the eye, one on one, and says, “Brother, I need you to do this. You’re my guy. You’re the one.”
What happens then?
Gary, you going to turn the $9-million-man away?
Who knows? It’s a mystery.
Andersen’s unusual career path underscores that last point. It highlights another word: unpredictability. We’ll get to that in a moment.
But it should be said right from jump that Gary Andersen is more qualified to lead BYU’s defense than anyone else inside or likely outside the program. Far more qualified.
He’s been wandering the halls in Provo for a couple of years now. You can find his name on a register of football staff on BYU’s website, listed 12th among personnel, just above the names of assistants to the assistants, holding down, as he mentioned, the position of “senior analyst.”
If there’s ever been a more seasoned and savvy underling humbly toiling behind the scenes in a football program, it’s Andersen now and in his previous job, doing the exact same thing at Weber State.
Counseling. Advising. Guiding. Present almost everywhere on the inside, nearly invisible from the outside.
Folks who have forgotten about or were never aware of Andersen’s coaching resume likely aren’t or never were serious college football observers. In brief form, that resume, prior to his last two stops from 2021-present, in reverse order reads like this: Utah State head coach (2019-20), Utah associate head coach (2018), Oregon State head coach (2015-17), Wisconsin head coach (2013-14), Utah State head coach (2009-12), Utah defensive coordinator (2005-08), Utah defensive line coach (2004), Southern Utah head coach (2003), Utah assistant head coach (2001-03) … and there’s more, 12 years of coaching prior to that.
You may have noticed some peculiarities in that timeline.
Some long and some brief stops en route from nyah-to-nyah, some depressions of the clutch and changes of gears that never have been fully explained or understood. Andersen has left millions of dollars on the table as he’s mashed through those gears, leaping from place to place. For instance, why did he bolt from top dawg at Wisconsin to top dawg at Oregon State, and, thereafter, from top dawg at Oregon State to an assistant, again, at Utah? Why did he suddenly drop away from the helm at Utah State after just a few games in 2020? Why would he be happy to be a consultant at Weber State, of all places, and after that at BYU?
Only Andersen knows all the circumstances, all the reasons, be they professional or personal.
Those of us who knew the man as a fierce up-and-comer when he was working for Kyle Whittingham at Utah before moving to Logan the first time, where he had tremendous success leading the Aggies, including a 12-2 season, recognized him as the kind of hungry coach who was going to conquer the world. He was paid a lot of money to jump to Madison to do battle in the Big Ten before essentially vanishing to the Pac-12’s hinterlands of Corvallis. He disappeared again after his second stint in Logan.
What was up? What was down? What was all around?
Beats me.
But one thing there is no question about is this: Andersen knows how to coach and coordinate a defense. One of the guys who learned for a time under his tutelage was and is … uh-huh, Jay Hill, who coached with him when both were at Utah over those stretches in the first decade of the 2000s. Hill cites Andersen as one of his coaching influences and mentors.
If the mentor wants to be a grandpa, all good. He is 61 years young.
And since BYU seems to want to keep the defensive momentum going in the same flow that already exists, perhaps Sitake instead will call on Jernaro Gilford, who has done such fine work with the Cougar secondary. Or maybe he’ll go with Justin Ena, or Kelly Poppinga. If he reels in somebody from the outside, they’d best fit in all snug, without disruption, connecting with Andersen because if there is a disconnect, if there is a disruption, trouble will follow closely behind. Not to mention the wants and whims of successful athletes already in the fold who’ve liked the way the defense has been run. They don’t want some supposed genius coming in with a newfangled system with which they are unfamiliar.
So it is that if Andersen is not the pick as defensive coordinator, by Sitake’s choice or by his own, he’ll have a serious say in who gets the title.
“I want to help BYU football grow,” he said. “… My agenda is to help coaches, to help athletes. It’s an amazing spot for me to be in.”
Almost as amazing as if the consigliere actually became the coordinator. But in a career that, for whatever reasons, hasn’t always gone as expected, that might make entirely too much sense.