Neal Brown reshaping coaching staff ahead of spring workouts

So he decided, as his former school Troy hired his former assistant Gerad Parker as head coach and he brought two of Brown’s key assistants – Sean Reagan and Dontae Wright – in with him as offensive and defensive coordinator, that he would reshape his coaching staff.

And, as it always is with Brown, his approach was thoughtful and laid out, involving a lot of unconventional thinking.

One might suspect that with a team on the rise and returning a lot of big-time talent, Brown might go for veteran, experienced coaches to raise the level, but instead he went in exactly the opposite direction.

It began when his defensive coordinator and linebacker coach Jordan Lesley found himself in a different role. Rather than splitting his time between coordinator and position, Brown made him full time defensive coordinator but decided to use his skills to help out in the secondary, where he made a subtle but important change.

With Wright leaving, rather than replacing him to share duties in the secondary with ShaDon Brown, Neal Brown ... well, let’s let him tell it.

“Jordan is moving to where he can oversee things and not have a position,” Brown began. “There’s a couple of reasons behind that. I want him to be more involved with each of the groups. I think that will help him from a relationship standpoint.”

Having said that, he gave the entire defensive backfield to ShaDon Brown, with Lesley involving himself there as he can.

“I wanted the secondary to be together. Jordan is going to help ShaDon with that. We have some analysts and GAs who are really qualified . I wanted the secondary to be together, primarily from a communication standpoint,” Brown explained, obviously hoping to improve on that area of the pass defense.

“I wanted to make sure they were all hearing the same language and all on the same page. So having ShaDon use that entire group with the help on the field of Jordan and the GAs.”

At the same time, Brown brought in Vic Cabral to work with the outside linebackers after having coached the defensive line at Appalachian State, a handy move since he can just keep any gear he had with the Mountaineers name on it, that also being App State’s nickname.

“I’m really excited about him,” Brown said. “He’s coached in the style of defense we’re running and his units have been really productive, especially rushing the passer. That’s something we have to get better at. Our overall TFL and sack numbers have been pretty good but we need to win more one-on-one situations and he’ll add to that.”

With Reagan gone, Brown had an offensive spot to fill and again went with a young coach, promoting graduate assistant Tyler Allen into quarterback coach.

Again, you may wonder why he didn’t go for a veteran QB coach with Garrett Greene seemingly sitting on a big season and with Nicco Marchiol being developed behind him.

Brown, however, does a lot of the work with Greene himself and Allen brings something that a veteran coach probably wouldn’t bring.

“Tyler Allen earned the promotion there,” Brown said. “He’s had an integral role in developing both Garrett and Nicco. He’s helped us in recruiting. He’s ready for that.”

In fact, Brown is convinced that the way to go with young coaches, having had great success with that last year with the additions of Bilal Marshall working with the wide receivers and Blaine Stewart with the tight ends, both of which positions made big strides.

“I really like trajectory, right,” he began. “It doesn’t matter if I’m buying a stock or if I’m hiring people. I want people on a trajectory and hunger is really important. If you look at what we are trying to do, We’ve got systems that we believe in and we don’t want those systems to change.”

So you don’t bring in people who are set in their ways.

“You don’t have infinite money, so I think in those leadership positions they are going to get financially compensated a little higher,” Brown continued. “When you bring in guys at lower levels, you want to bring in guys who are really hungry, guys who are extremely thankful for that opportunity and that have a lot of growth in them.

“You look at Vic [Cabral]. I think his trajectory is heading up. He’s been at G-5 programs, but he’s been at highly successful G-5 programs. And with Vic, too, .... one of the things we did a good job with hiring offensive last year with Bilal and Blaine is hiring younger guys where their day-to-day energy is really consistent and that’s who they are.”

You might recall that last year Brown altered his practice schedule, moving from afternoon practices to morning practices.

“When we flipped to morning practices, I didn’t know we were going to do that when he hired them, but a by-product is our guys start their day with us. In the past, when we were practicing in the afternoons, there’s a whole lot of stuff that went down before we got to our position or unit meetings,” he said.

“Now, each of those guys start their day here in our building. Having those positive, energetic people in those position rooms, really positively affected the offense. I wanted to add that to our defensive side, but it has to be authentic. It can’t be fake.”

Brown is looking for coaches who have proven they can handle adversity.

“I like people in general who haven’t had a silver spoon in coaching. I like people who worked their way up. That doesn’t mean they have to do that to be a successful coach,” he said.

But he inferred that it helped.

“Trust me, I have a lot of flaws, so I’m not trying to hire people who are exactly on the same path I am, but I do like hiring individuals who have not had the easiest path. If you’ve had jobs at a D-II or FCS level and go up to G-5, you know how to do more with less,” Brown said.

“You learn to deal with things early in your career. In my opinion, the best training is on the job training and I am so thankful my first full-time job was at Sacred Heart. They’ve done a really good job as a program and grown but at the time was non-scholarship FCS football.

“I was messing up and nobody really knew, media or inhouse or out of house, I probably learned more in that little job I had than in any job I’ve ever had. So I like people who learned on the job and progressed up the level.”