2001 Coordinators of the Year

OFFENSE - MIKE BORICH, BYU

After more than two decades as one of college football’s most prolific passing and scoring teams under former coach LaVell Edwards, Brigham Young fans thought they had seen it all.

Then Gary Crowton and his new coaching staff arrived in town last year and redefined the meaning of “wide-open offense.”

“I think it’s to the stage now where we’ve got defenses and fans kind of scratching their heads and they don’t know exactly what we’re going to get,” says offensive coordinator Mike Borich, who also coached receivers for Crowton with Louisiana Tech and the Chicago Bears. “At Louisiana Tech we were primarily in four and five wideouts, and we rarely went to two-back or double-tight end sets. With the Bears we mixed things up a little more, but primarily used one back and a tight end.

“Now here, we’re really giving it a good blend and using the strengths of our team, which was the running backs and tight ends last fall. That’s a positive for us, because one of the things we like to do is look at the talent that we have and adjust. Our package is flexible enough to take advantage of those strengths, so we can be multiple and still use our available players and put them in the best possible spots.”

That flexibility helped a new coaching staff get off to an outstanding start in their first season at BYU. After the Cougars went 6-6 in 2000, they went 12-2 last fall, went undefeated in seven Mountain West Conference games and won the conference game, and returned to the bowl scene with a trip to the Liberty Bowl. Those achievements go a long toward explaining why Borich is the Division I-A offensive coordinator of the year for the 2001 season.

The offense led the way for the Cougars, leading the nation in scoring and total offense, with 46.77 points and 542.85 yards per game. BYU finished seventh in the nation in passing, with 325 yards per game, and 13th in rushing with 217.85 yards per game.

BYU has developed a long list of outstanding college quarterbacks over the past two decades, but the Cougars have never been known as Tailback U. That changed last fall when junior tailback Luke Staley rushed for 1,596 yards and led the nation with 24 touchdowns and 8.1 yards per game. In the process, he also earned All-America honors, as well as the Doak Walker Award that goes to the nation’s top college running back.

Staley entered the season with only 1,018 total rushing yards from his two previous injury-hampered season, but the new coaching staff quickly determined that he could be something special.

“People around here had some questions about Luke, but we knew right away he was a guy who was very talented,” Borich says. “So what we decided to was work on Luke’s strengths. We have a lot of offense in our package, so we started to push the things that Luke did well, especially on some of the perimeter runs when he showed he could turn the corner and get upfield.

“We knew we wanted to get the ball in his hands, so in the summer we started looking at ways to get him more involved in the passing game. We even had him running routes as a receiver, and even though he didn’t do a lot of that during the season it did start getting him active in the passing game and it gave our quarterback more confidence when we did things with him in the passing game.”

Finding the right quarterback was another important challenge the coahing staff had to face. Borich and quarterbacks coach Robbie Bosco, a former BYU quarterback himself and assistant coach with the Cougars for 13 seasons, started the spring with three unproven quarterbacks.

“We had a lot of questions going into the spring,” Borich said. “Along with that, on the positive side we felt like we had three guys who were very talented. It was a tough decision, but we what we decided to do was go with (senior) Brandon Doman. He wasn’t as talented as the other guys in terms of arm strength or athletic ability, but he’s a fierce competitor. By making him the starter early, right after the spring, that kind of played into Brandon’s strengths as a competitor. It helped him develop a lot of leadership over the summer.”

Doman responded with his best season at BYU. He entered the season with career totals of 96 attempts, 52 completions, 812 yards, two touchdowns and six interceptions, but blew those numbers out in the first few games of the season. He finished the nation ranked seventh in the nation in passing efficiency, with 261 completions on 408 attempts, 3,542 yards, 33 touchdowns and only eight interceptions.

The success of the season went a long way toward confirming Borich’s decision to leave the Bears and follow Crowton to Provo, Utah. Borich actually grew up in Bingham, Utah and played his first two seasons of college football at Snow Junior College, but started moving East when he completed his career and his education at Western Illinois.

Borich started his coaching career coaching receivers at New Hampshire in 1989, moved to Northeastern University where he coached tights and running backs, joined Crowton at Louisiana Tech in 1995 and moved to the NFL with the Bears in 1999.

After two years in the NFL, Borich had to decide whether to stay in the pros or return to college football. Ultimately, his Utah roots convinced him to choose BYU.

“I grew up here in Utah, but as a player I started getting a little farther away and ended up on the East coast,” Borich says. “As things started moving along, I was a relatively young and already coaching in the NFL and that kind of caught me off guard. I’m a goal-oriented guy, but I had to think about what I really wanted.

“It was a tough decision, but at the time it was the decision that was best for me - getting back home, getting back to where my family is from. Those were bigger factors than the level of ball or anything else. It’s been a good decision for me.”

DEFENSE - BUD FOSTER, Virginia Tech

With the loss of star quarterback Michael Vick, Virginia Tech defensive coordinator Bud Foster knew the defense would have to come up big last fall for the Hokies to have another outstanding season.

When the Hokies then lost star running back Lee Suggs in the first game of the season, Foster knew the pressure would only intensify for his defense.

But don’t think for a minute that any of those losses really bothered or worried Foster, Tech’s defensive coaching staff or key defensive players.

“We have high expectations every year,” Foster said. “That’s true whether Michael Vick’s at quarterback or not. When we played for the national championship in 1999, we lost 10 starters off that defense and it was a rebuilding process, but we still won 10 games in 2000.

“This year, we fully expected to be a better defense than the year before just because of experience, and because the kids were a little more mature and understood our expectations better. They knew what it took to be successful.”

Despite a series of offensive injuries, Tech still managed to go 8-3 and earn a Gator Bowl invitation with a defense that established a foundation for the entire team. That’s why Foster is American Football Monthly’s Division I-A defensive coordinator of the year for the second time in three years. Foster also won the award following the 1999 season after Tech’s 1999 defensive unit led Division I-A in scoring defense and ranked third in both total and rushing defense.

Foster is quick to point out that such an award is an honor that reflects on the whole program, the entire coaching staff and all the players who make coaches look good with their performance on the field.

Of course Foster is correct, but tough, aggressive, hard-nosed defense and outstanding special teams have provided the foundation of Tech’s success over the past decade. Last year’s team was no exception, with a defense that finished second in the nation in scoring (13.4 points per game), total defense (237.91 yards per game) and rushing defense (71.6 yards per game) and eighth in passing defense (166.27 yards per game).

“Record-wise, this year might not have been as good as we had the previous two years, but I enjoyed working with this group as much as the others,” Foster said. “They worked hard, they believed in each other, they came to work everyday and they really wanted to be the very best. That was their goal, to be the best defensive unit in the country. Stat-wise, we didn’t lead the country in any categories, but we were in the top few in every category.”

Foster, a 42-year-old native of Nokomis, Ill., played for Virginia Tech coach Frank Beamer at Murray State. Foster played strong safety and outside linebacker and Beamer was the defensive coordinator, and when Beamer became MSU’s head coach in 1981, Foster began his coaching career as a graduate assistant. Two years later Foster joined the staff as a full-time defensive assistant.

Foster moved to Tech with Beamer in 1987 and coached inside and outside linebackers and special teams at various times. He became Tech’s co-defensive coordinator in 1995 and took over as the defensive coordinator in ‘96. He continues to coach the inside linebackers.

“We’ve had success here, but it helps to have good players,” Foster said. “You can be one heck of a coach but if you don’t have good players you’ll look real average in a hurry.”

While those players come and go at the college level, Tech’s basic defensive philosophy remains intact and productive year after year. “We want to be an aggressive, attacking defense that has the perception of bringing pressure at all times,” Foster said. “We try to create chaos for the offense in their run game and their pass protection.”

The first priority, Foster said, is to stop the run and force the offense into a one-dimensional passing situation. A lot of teams pay lip service to that same principle, but the Hokies back it up with a multiple defense that makes a regular habit of playing eight players near the line of scrimmage.

“We’re basically an eight-man front and what we try to do is outnumber defenders to blockers and dictate to the offense instead of letting them dictate to us,” Foster said. “We do a lot of stemming with our fronts to hopefully create confusion up front and disrupt blocking schemes and protection.”

One of the basic principles of Tech’s defense is to study how the offense reacts to pressure. Then the Hokies attempt to take away the quick answer and make the quarterback beat the defense with his checks at the line of scrimmage, thus taking the game out of the hands of the opposing coaches.

“We want to attack the offense and force them to decide where they’re going to have to attack us and how they’re going to attack us,” Foster said. “In a way, when you’ve got an experience group the kids understand that we’re not coaching defense, we’re really coaching offense. That’s what we were able to do last year.”

While a lot of teams are using a 4-2-5 defense in this era, the Hokies are unique in the way they employ their version of the 4-2-5. The Hokies can use the same personnel to run an eight-man front, a 46 package or a 4-3, “and we do it without substituting,” Foster said.

“Really, we’re a nickel package with four linemen, two linebackers and five DBs, and with the way offenses are trying to spread you out that makes it so we’re not sending up a red flag and letting the offense know if we’ve got out nickel or dime people in, because those are the same people we play with all the time.”

Since Foster became the defensive coordinator at Tech, the Hokies have rarely substituted to match a situation, except in goal-line situations.

“Whether it’s first-and-10, third-and-two or third-and-15, we’re not substituting personnel,” Foster said, “and I think that’s what makes us a little more unique than anything else we do."