Introducing Oregon State's New Coaches

Later in the off-season I plan to put out some e-books on the other teams in the PAC-12. In most cases, the coaching staffs at other schools are staying the same, so the breakdowns are easier to do. Oregon State's new staff is cobbled together from several different places, however, and so my breakdown of them will be a little more complicated. As a result, I'm putting together a three part preview of what we can expect from Gary Andersen's Beavers. This post, on the coaching staff and its background, is installment one.

Head Coach Gary Andersen

It's said that a program takes on the personality and priorities of its head coach, and under former coach Mike Riley that was certainly true for the Beavers. Riley was a defensive guy originally, starting with his playing time as a DB at Alabama under Bear Bryant.  Oregon State has always had tough defenses, and has produced some fantastic players that seemingly came out of nowhere to win all-conference honors. I'm talking about guys like Stephen Paea, Victor Butler, Scott Crichton, and Keenan Lewis, along with a host of other guys who didn't make it quite as far but were a major thorn in the sides of PAC-10/12 offenses.

That's the program that Riley is leaving, and Gary Andersen is a great fit for that kind of personality. He was a member of Utah's staff for all but one season from 1997 (DT/SDE coach) to 2008 (AHC/DC/DL) before getting his first head coaching job at Utah State. At Utah, his first HC was Ron McBride, who revived a program that hadn't been to a bowl in 28 years. Andersen was the AHC/DL/ST coach of the Utah team that beat USC in the Las Vegas Bowl in 2001, and was the DL coach for Urban Meyer's 2004 Utes. His last four years as an assistant coach were under current Utah HC Kyle Whittingham, who had also been Andersen's DC from 1997-2004. So, Oregon State's giving a Riley-built program to a coach who's built his career on Utah's defensive principles. Not a bad idea.

As a Head Coach at Utah State, Andersen started slowly, taking over a program that hadn't had a winning season since 1997 and building it up to an 11-win season in 2012. His only two losses (both by a FG or less) came against BYU and Wisconsin in that season. Notably for Cal fans, one of those eleven wins came in a 48-41 OT thriller against Sonny Dykes' Louisiana Tech team. At Wisconsin, he won 19 games in two seasons (13-3 in conference), and his Badgers ended the 2014 season ranked #13 nationally.

Over the course of his career, Andersen has shown three traits that are important for any Oregon State head coach. First, he's shown re-building skills with Utah State, and also coached under the guy who rebuilt Utah's program. Oregon State has had a few down years recently, but the program isn't nearly as weak as Utah and Utah State were. Second, he's spent most of his career, both as an assistant and as a head coach, over-achieving at solid mid-major programs. As we saw with Mike Riley, this is important if you have to recruit to Corvallis. Finally, in his time at Wisconsin he showed that he's not out of his element coaching in a P5 conference week in and week out. If those three traits come together in Corvallis, the Beavers will continue to be as tough as they have been for the last two decades.

Defensive Coaches

On the defensive side of the ball, Andersen knows what he wants to run and who he wants to coach with. Dave Aranda, his long-time DC, stayed on at Wisconsin, but Andersen filled his position with Kalani Sitake. Andersen actually gave Sitake is first assistant coaching job at Southern Utah in 2003, hiring him as a RB/TE coach. When Andersen was DC at Utah, Sitake was his LB coach from 2005-2008, and when Andersen left to coach Utah State, Sitake replaced him as DC of the Utes, a position that he held until getting hired at OSU. In 2008, Andersen and Sitake worked together on a Utah team that beat Oregon State, TCU, BYU, and Alabama. Sitake's defenses took a step back nationally when Utah moved to the PAC-12, but to some extent that's expected. They didn't have the talent across the board that other PAC-12 teams did, but his 2014 defense did have two players in the top-20 nationally in sacks. They're going to be multiple, and they're going to come after you with under-rated guys who have a chip on their shoulder. Sound familiar?

This familiarity holds across the defensive staff. OSU's new DL coach is Chad Kauha'aha'a, who coached DL for Andersen at Utah State in 2009-2010 before getting hired away by Utah in 2011. Once Andersen moved to Wisconsin, he hired Kauha'aha'a back away from Utah, and has kept him on at OSU, so this is clearly Andersen's guy. The DB coach is Derrick Odum, who was the DB coach at SMU from 2008-2014, but was the safeties coach at Utah with Andersen and Sitake from 2005-2007. The only coach who doesn't have much experience at his job is Ilaisa Tuiaki, OSU's new LB/ST coach. Tuiaki has actually never coached LB, and he didn't even play LB in college. He played RB for Andersen at Southern Utah in 2003, and then became a defensive GA at Utah in 2008, so he worked with Andersen and Sitake during that outstanding 2008 season. After that he was a RB/ST coach at Utah State under Andersen from 2009-2011 before getting hired away as a FB/TE coach by Utah in 2012. In 2013 he replaced Kauha'aha'a as Utah's DL coach, so he's been working with Sitake on the defensive side of the ball for the last two years and knows the system. Presumably Sitake, who was a LB coach under Andersen, will work with Tuiaki on his transition. Both Sitake and Tuiaki seem to have been key players in Utah's recruiting efforts.

Graduate Assistants do a lot more work than people realize in preliminary scouting, game-planning, position coaching, and recruiting (think Jacob Peeler or Tosh Lupoi before they got their assistant coach jobs), and so to wrap up the defensive side of the ball I should note a few familiar names on staff for the Beavers. One of their defensive grad assistants is Andrew Seumalo, who played on OSU's DL from 2009-2012, earning all-conference honorable mention and being named a team captain in his senior year. The other is Kamaron Yancy, who actually signed with Cal in 2008 but ended up playing DB at Utah from 2009-2010. OSU also has defensive quality control assistant Dorian Smith, who was a first team all-PAC-10 DE for the Beavers in 2007. He has the fifth most sacks in school history with 15.

Offensive Coaches:

The offensive staff is a little more cobbled together, as you might expect from a defensive coach. The OC/TE coach is Dave Baldwin, who is a very experienced coordinator. Most recently he was the OC/QB coach at Colorado State, where he just put QB Garrett Grayson into the third round of the NFL draft ahead of guys like Petty, Hundley, and Mannion. I'll know a lot more about him when I do my scheme breakdown, but for now I know that he's implementing some kind of spread, which will be a significant departure from Mike Riley's pro-style offense. He's a lifer and has been around forever, serving as the OC at Utah State (2009-2011), New Mexico (2007-2008), Michigan State (2003-2006), Baylor (2002), and Cincinnati (2001). He was SJSU's HC from 1997-2000, and even spent some time as a position coach at Stanford back in the 80's. He's one of those wily, adaptable coaches who's managed to stay in the game for decades in a bunch of different capacities.

Another guy who's known Andersen and Baldwin for a while is OL coach T.J. Woods, who coached the OL at Wisconsin (2013-2014) and Utah State (2011-2012). He was Utah State's TE/ST coach in 2009-2010 as well, so he's had three years working in Baldwin's system. After that, the hires are a lot less cohesive. QB coach Kevin McGiven coached for Andersen and Baldwin for one year in 2009 before taking a step down to coach at an awful Memphis program and then Montana State. He was OC at Utah State most recently under a different HC, but took a demotion to coach QB's with the Beavers. The WR coach is former UCLA WR Brent Brennan, who joined the Beavers' staff in 2011 after coaching a bunch of different things (OC, WR, TE, OL) at different times for SJSU from 2005-2010. He's the only hold-out from Riley's staff. Finally, the RB coach is Telly Lockette. He was a 1-AA all-american LB at Idaho St. when Andersen was the DL coach there. After that he was a great HS coach at his alma mater Miami Northwestern, where he's been the head coach for two 6A state championship teams and an assistant for a third. In 2013 and 2014 he was the RB coach for an awful USF team, so who knows if he has what it takes to coach RB's in the PAC-12. Maybe he can get a Florida pipeline going for the Beavers?

As for ancillary staff, one of their GA's is Gary Andersen's son Keegan. Another is Brian Wozniak, who was a mild contributor at TE for Wisconsin through 2013. Former Beaver QB Lyle Moevao is an offensive quality control assistant, and everyone probably remembers him pretty well. Other than that, their QC coaches aren't that interesting from a football perspective.

Conclusions:

The really striking thing about this staff is how much the defensive and offensive hires differ from each other. On defense, the Beavers' new staff really should hit the ground running. That said, graduation is going to kill them for 2015. Eight of their top-10 tacklers graduated, including 18.5 of their 29 sacks from 2014, along with every single one of their INT's. They lose their top-3 DB's, top-3 LB's, and top-3 DL's. On top of that, they'll be changing systems (more on that in post two). Still, though, all of these coaches have worked together extensively, they all know the system, they've had success with it in the past, and they appear to have some firepower when it comes to evaluating and recruiting their kinds of guys. Even when they haven't been working directly together, they've all been working within the Whittingham defensive coaching tree for the last decade with the exception of the DB coach. If there's any staff that can find some JC transfers to get this thing going by 2016, it's these guys.

The offense is the opposite situation. They have guys returning at WR and RB and should be set to field a good spread team, and the offensive line also returns a lot. True the schemes will be significantly different, but it's easier to go from a pro-style offense to the spread than the other way around. QB is the one place where a replacement will be key, and potentially hard to come by. The big concern here is that they're implementing these changes with coaches who are way less cohesive than those on the defensive side of the ball. The OC and OL coach know each other well, but the WR coach has been coaching under Riley's pro-style system and has no real experience with anyone on staff, and the QB coach and RB coach have limited FBS experience in any form, and certainly not many wins at that level. My guess is that they'll have a lot of kinks to iron out in 2015 before we can even begin to evaluate how they work as a staff.