Gary Andersen Has One Important Trait When Hiring A Coach

LOGAN, Utah – Utah State head coach Gary Andersen had a tough task at the beginning of his second stint with the Aggies in hiring almost a whole new staff.

After Matt Wells departed for Texas Tech, he took nearly the entire coaching staff with him to Lubbock.

Now Andersen has done a great job of putting together a staff that he claims he hasn’t been perfect at but needs to be.

“The one thing I wanted to make sure that I did this is hire a great person that cares about the kids before I hired a football coach,” Andersen said. “I have not been perfect of that and I need to be. I need to make sure that I do my best to surround the kids with the same beliefs that I have, that the kids are the most important part, not the football part.”

He has brought in some unique coaches to run his offense and defense.

Justin Ena

Andersen has tasked Ena to run the defense for the Aggies. The cupboard isn’t bare by any means as most of the starters return for the 2019 season. Ena has a wealth of knowledge on the defensive side from his playing days at BYU and recently joined Utah State after being the linebackers coach at Utah.

“He has called defenses a lot in his career, he has done it at SUU, so he has been in a good spot there and was highly involved with the defense when I was at Utah with him for a year, which really helped me,” Andersen said. “He is a very good recruiter, he understands our plan, he played at BYU back in the day and the plan is not much different than it was with LaVell (Edwards) and coach Mac (McBride) at Utah. We follow that plan pretty close, so he gets who we are and what we are about. He’s young, he’s energetic and is excited about the opportunity to jump into this but, most importantly, I found out really quickly in the year that I was with him that he has the same beliefs as far as care factors for kids that I have and that is the number one most important thing for me.”

Mike Sanford

Sanford will take over the offense for Utah State after being the head coach at Western Kentucky from 2017-18. Before that, he was the offensive coordinator for Notre Dame and Boise State. He isn’t changing the scheme much on the offensive side of the ball and will mesh well with junior quarterback Jordan Love.

“I love the way the offense is set, the way it plays,” Andersen said. “I think it’s proven that kids are comfortable with it. When we came in, we didn’t want to completely change terminology and flip it upside down. Very different than when we went to Wisconsin because it was a very different style than when we were at Utah State the first time. But, we put the burden of learning on the coaches as well as far as terminology. Andy Ludwig was the offensive coordinator at the time (at Wisconsin), he put the learning on the coaches, much is the same here at Utah State this time around.

Andersen is putting the pressure on the coaches rather than the players.

“We put the learning, terminology and the verbiage on the coaches to be able to learn and there will be some tweaks and will be some things that we move forward to help our best players get the ball in their hands as you continue to grow and massage the offense and see where it can grow and help Jordan be as good as he can possibly be. I think the transition was really smooth on offense and on defense, and coaches are good teachers but I would rather have the coaches learning than to flip it upside down on the kids,” Andersen said.