Ty Detmer remains on the NCAA's list of top five passers of all time, his legend a part of college lore. He steps into the limelight once again in 2016 at BYU. Will his legacy be polished or dented?
Time will tell.
On the high school and college level, he dominated as a player. In the NFL, he lasted 14 years, mostly because of his mind and the infectious likability he had with coaches and players alike.
But does that mean the former Heisman Trophy winner can coordinate a college offense? Lead a staff? Teach and organize players to run an offense, communicate under pressure, game plan and call plays?
As new BYU coach Kalani Sitake’s offensive lieutenant, Detmer steps into a crucial role right off the sidelines as a high school coach where he’s been enjoying a comfortable gig near Austin, Texas. How will it work?
Detmer would never have made this move if he didn’t feel the situation fit, the timing was right.
Still, this hire, along with that of first-time coach Sitake, has some alarmists on high alert.
Three-time NFL Most Valuable Player quarterback Kurt Warner believes Detmer will not only excel as a college offensive coordinator but has an innate talent for the job.
Warner was part of a Green Bay Packers group of quarterbacks that hooked up with Detmer in 1994 and learned significant keys to quarterbacking from the former Heisman Trophy winner. That group included Warner, Brett Favre and Mark Brunell. Both Warner and Brunell have joined Detmer in an annual QB Elite summer camp as instructors.
Warner still takes notes when Detmer goes up to a whiteboard and talks X’s and O’s. It’s been 22 years. For Ty, son of legendary Texas high school coach Sonny Detmer, all he’s ever known since he was in diapers is coaches talking football in his family room and around the dinner table, everything from schemes, plays, defenses and pass routes to pass the potatoes.
“Ty will make a great offensive coordinator — starting with the great knowledge of the game he has,” Warner said on New Year’s Eve. “He was one of the most intelligent quarterbacks that I ever worked with and he will be an incredible mentor to young men learning the position. On top of that he has an incredible competitiveness, but that is coupled with a very calm demeanor.
“I believe these traits will go a long way in pushing the BYU quarterbacks to a high standard, but will also help these young men grow and learn from their mistakes by being built up. Those are the wonderful traits he brings to the football field, but Ty is an even better person than player, which is saying a lot. Maybe his greatest asset will be modeling character and integrity to all those that come through the program,” Warner said.
Those who know Detmer believe he has the talent and skill to coach major college football. Until his recent retirement, South Carolina’s Steve Spurrier was one of the most successful former Heisman Trophy winners to make coaching his life.
Coaching isn’t a science as much as it is networking, teaching and inspiring others — the intangibles. It is also 80 percent recruiting, finding the right players.
Successful coaches are flexible yet demanding, they can be stubborn but smart enough to adjust and evolve and are open to counsel. Being closed–minded in a business driven by ego can be death. Communication skills rule at a job where personality is the engine and the train. And, in college, donors must be fed and rings have to be kissed.
Baylor’s Art Briles was just two years from coaching high school in Stephensville, Texas, when he was hired as head coach at Houston after working as running back coach at Texas Tech. Baylor hired him from Houston four years later.
Former BYU quarterback and second-round NFL pick John Beck has remained close to Detmer over the years, and they have forged a mutual respect. John and Barbara Beck named their firstborn son Ty.
Beck is currently working as a throwing coach and counselor with world-renowned expert Tom House in Southern California. Their clients include the top current high school, college and NFL quarterbacks in the country, including Patriot superstar Tom Brady.
Beck has firsthand understanding of how difficult new offensive coordinators can have it. His first college coach was Gary Crowton. Then Robert Anae arrived at BYU in 2005 after being an offensive line coach at Texas Tech and had never called a play before at that level. Beck’s quarterback coach at that time was also a rookie, former Cougar and San Francisco QB Brandon Doman. In the NFL, Beck went directly to the Miami Dolphins, then Baltimore Ravens, Washington Redskins and Houston Texans. His last playing time came this past season with the British Columbia Lions of the CFL.
While Beck would have given anything to have been tutored by Ty, a 14-year NFL veteran when he was at BYU, he is pragmatic about the challenge Detmer faces in coming months.
“The challenge will be teaching the rest of his staff the offense,” said Beck.
“They will be teaching as they are learning it. So coaches and players will be going through the learning curve at the same time. Assistants will use similar plays from past offenses they have been in as an outline for some of their teaching because that’s where their experience comes from.
“Another challenge will be communication and philosophical beliefs for certain concepts,” said Beck. “They need to learn Ty’s verbiage not only for plays, but also his concepts. You can have three staffs with the same concept, but all three can teach it and read it out differently. Each assistant is going to be looking to Ty for the ‘that’s what you want, right?’ approval.
“I think there will be challenges, but the exciting part will be seeing what he puts together. I know he’ll lean towards a pro style offense, which will require some more on the quarterbacks’ shoulders, but it will serve as great preparation for those that will want to go on and play in the NFL.”
Dustin Smith, who organized QB Elite camps, says Detmer isn’t into regurgitating popular gimmick drills a lot of kids learn at camps and combines.
Instead, his benchmark is that if it wasn’t used in the NFL, if Mike Holmgren and other NFL coaches didn’t use it, it was out. “His practices will be based and founded on time-tested practices and routines that work,” said Smith. “His offense won’t be the current fad or what’s going around and what’s the ‘in’ thing to do, it won’t be a gimmick or the sexy thing at the time.” In other words, BYU isn’t built to run Oregon or Arizona’s offense.
Smith just finished working out SUU quarterback Ammon Olsen this past week in preparation for furthering his career past college.
According to Smith, during one of Detmer’s camp sessions with QB Elite, he got in front of a group of talented Utah high school players like Porter Gustin and Jaren Hall from Salem Hills and other all-state quarterbacks, and he began to call them out to stand in front of a whiteboard.
“Draw up your favorite play,” he said. “Tell me how you’d throw it against this defense.” Then, he’d change the defense.
“Who is your key defender,” Detmer asked, and he’d circle the key defender and ask why.
“He was teaching the kids to think, and he was so specific he was even making the kids draw the circles on the O’s a certain way, more of an oval than a circle with a specific distance in between representing players in position. Talk about attention to detail. He was making sure the space between the linemen was to perfection so if they ever had to stand up before a college coach, they’d look like they knew what they were doing. He asked them about fronts, to draw up an odd front or even front. None of these high school coaches or kids knew how to draw up an over or an under defense, so Ty would explain why one or the other would help them understand what kind of coverage the defense was in, based on how the defensive linemen were lined up.
“That’s something very few high school kids or their coaches talk about or address. Very few college kids would be able to tell you what that is. Ty will make his quarterbacks know the fronts, what the responsibilities of the linebackers are and therefore what the safeties are expected to do — and read these things before the ball is snapped,” Smith said.
“Ty was almost cheating when he was playing because based on what he was seeing in how a defense lined up, he knew what the linebackers had to do and where the safeties would leave gaps because of it. By process of elimination, before the snap, he had a pretty good idea of where the holes in the defense would be. It then became a matter of getting it there in time,” Smith added.
Can Detmer be a successful college offensive coordinator?
His work will begin in 2016, and first inclinations will come in BYU’s spring practice after offseason workouts. How Tanner Mangum operates will be the tell.
It is a huge asset for Detmer and Sitake to have SUU head coach Ed Lamb on board. Remember, Oregon State, Wisconsin and Utah State head coach Gary Andersen’s first head coaching job was at SUU. And Lamb’s SUU record (45-47, two conference titles, two FCS playoffs) dwarfs Andersen’s (4-7) at that school. That Lamb will coach the tight end position underscores where Detmer’s designs will be based.
When Smith and Detmer worked on creating a QB Elite website and were gathering testimonials, Smith remembers Detmer saying, “I think I can get Steve Mariucci to give us a quote.” Marriucci was the quarterbacks coach of the Packers when Detmer, Favre and Warner were on the roster.
So, they fired a text to Marriucci.
His reply was instantaneous, according to Smith.
“Say whatever you want. Whatever you put in it is fine with me.”
Smith was tempted to put in, "Ty Detmer is my most favorite quarterback of all time."
“You know what? Marriucci would have signed off on it.”
EMAIL: dharmon@deseretnews.com.
TWITTER: Harmonwrites