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Comments from Tim Brewster About His New Staff
Courtesy: University of Minnesota
Release:01/25/2007
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University of Minnesota head football coach Tim Brewster has announced 12 members of his staff for the 2007 season. Here are the comments from Head Coach Tim Brewster, Offensive Coordinator Mike Dunbar and Defensive Coordinator Everett Withers from today's press conference.
Head Coach Tim Brewster
Opening statement:
“This is truly an exciting day for Gopher Football. It’s been a whirlwind week, taking the job last Wednesday and putting this staff together, and I truly believe this is going to be an outstanding staff. It’s going to be as good of a coaching and recruiting staff as there is in the country. These guys are all proven coaches and recruiters, but more importantly, they’re all good people. They are all going to be great role models for our football players. I couldn’t be any more excited as the head football coach at the University of Minnesota to introduce my staff to you.”
Introduction of the staff:
“I’m going to start with Randy Taylor. Randy has been a long-time friend of mine. He spent 10 years at UCLA as their recruiting coordinator. Most recently he’s been in California running a scouting service. He has tremendous experience in operations and he will be a tremendous asset to us here.
“The next guy I’m going to introduce is Dan Berezowitz. Dan comes to us from the University of Arizona where he was the recruiting coordinator and was also heavily involved in operations. Again, he’s another long-time friend of mine and his father, Bob Berezowitz, was the head football coach at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and just retired this year. Dan is a great friend and will do an outstanding job for us.
“Next I want to introduce is Mark Hill, who is going to be our strength coach. He’s coming to us from the University of Arizona and was at the University of Oklahoma prior to that. When I went out and looked for our strength coach, a guy who I really believe in tremendously told me the best strength coach in the country was Mark Hill. I wanted a guy who was going to be aggressive and be positive with our players, and we are thrilled to have Mark join us.
“The next guy I want to introduce is John Butler. John is going to coach our linebackers and will be involved with the special teams. John comes to us from Harvard University and is a great young coach. He is a very dynamic young guy with a tremendous amount of energy, and I think that’s the recurring theme that you’ll find with these coaches. Every one of them are energetic, passionate guys and that’s what I was looking for when I put this staff together. John coached with me at the University of Texas and he’ll be a real asset to us.
“The next guy is Phil Meyer. Phil is going to coach the offensive line. He comes to us after being the head football coach at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. I met Phil when I was a player at the University of Illinois and he was a young graduate assistant. He’s always been an offensive line guy. He was an offensive coordinator at Iowa State and coached at Illinois. Phil can go through his whole background with you, but he has tremendous experience. His leadership as a head coach will be invaluable to me and I am thrilled that fill decided to join our staff.
“George McDonald is going to coach the wide receivers. He comes to us from Western Michigan University and was at Stanford prior to that. He had a number of great jobs and is another young, energetic guy who is going to do a great job coaching our players. He’ll do a great job relating to our players. With all of these guys, I did my research, and George McDonald is one of the finest young wide receivers coaches in America today.
“Will Peoples is joining our staff from the University of Iowa. We’re thrilled to take him away from the Hawkeyes. We have the Pig here, and Will said we’re going to do our best to keep it here. Will was a player at the University of Oklahoma as a wide receiver for them. He’s going to help Mark as an assistant strength coach. He has great energy and passion for what he’s doing. I’ve been watching those guys work out in the morning and our players are verifying that these guys are doing a heck of a job.
“The next guy is a very special friend of mine, Tim Cross. Tim is going to coach the defensive line for us. He comes to us from Syracuse University. I met Tim at Thomas Jefferson High School in Denver, Colo., when I was at Texas. I came into the school, where he was the head football coach at the time, and I told him that one day when I got the opportunity, I was going to hire Tim Cross. Tim is a tremendous man and a tremendous leader of young men. We are very fortunate to have him join our staff.
“The next young guy, you’re going to have little problem with him because he shows a lot of passion and energy. Derek Lewis is going to coach our tight ends. Derek is a young guy who I coached at the University of Texas. He is one of the few people who wears a Super Bowl ring on one hand and a National Championship ring on the other, so he can walk into a home and he has some bling to talk to these recruits about. I love his passion and energy. He’s a guys who has played the position and understands the position. He’s going to recruit extremely hard and will do a fine job for us.
Introduction of the defensive and offensive coordinators:
“These last two guys are very special. All of the guys make this a great group, but the opportunity to hire two coordinators with the kind of experience these two guys have is going to make this a great situation here at the U.
“Everett Withers is going to be our defensive coordinator. He comes to us from the Tennessee Titans. Everett and I coached together at the University of Texas and he’s been a defensive coordinator at Louisville under Ron Cooper. You talk about a guy who brings credentials to the job, Everett is outstanding. He’s a great friend and is going to be a great leader of this defense. We’re going to improve the defense. Everybody in here knows we have to do that, and I hired Everett to do that. He’s going to be the head coach of the defense and we are extremely fortunate to have him and his family here. His wife is from St. Paul, and I did a heck of a job recruiting his wife trying to get him to come.
“Last, but certainly not least, a tremendous presence in the Midwest, Mike Dunbar. Mike comes to us from Cal, where he was the offensive coordinator. A lot of people were surprised this morning and this afternoon to see the University of Cal offensive coordinator is now the University of Minnesota offensive coordinator. Mike has done a great job for a long time. He was the head coach at the University of Northern Iowa. He did a great job at Northwestern with dynamic offenses, spread offenses. He still is going to run the football and we’re going to do a lot of great things on offense here. Mike is the head coach on offense. I can’t tell you how excited I am to have Mike and his wife join our staff here at the U.
“As you can see, this is an outstanding group of coaches and leaders of men. We’re going to recruit and we’re going to coach. A lot of you weren’t sure what I was talking about when I said we’re going to win a Big Ten Championship and take the Gopher Nation to Pasadena. With this group of men right here, without question we’re going to get that done. I don’t ask you to give me your trust, I just ask you to watch how we do things. We’re going to do things right consistently every day. With this group of guys, we’re going to get it done.”
On the importance of hiring two proven coordinators:
“It’s important to every head coach to have great coordinators, regardless of whether or not I’ve had head coaching experience. I wanted to go find the two best coordinators in the country today. Everett Withers has been a friend for a long time, and Mike Dunbar has become a friend very quickly. Again, I feel very fortunate to attract two guys with their credentials and their abilities. To be honest, I think it says a whole lot about the University of Minnesota. These two guys could go coach anywhere in America. They had two of the best jobs in America, and they chose to come here to the U, and I think that says a lot about Joel Maturi. Joel was instrumental in the process of hiring all of these coaches, in addition to President Bruininks and his leadership. Again, when all was said and done, these guys wanted to come and were extremely receptive towards coming and we’re very fortunate.”
On how he convinced these guys to come here:
“I don’t want to speak for these guys, but I’ve been thinking about being a head coach for a long time, and Everett was my guy on any job or any situation I ever considered. It’s something I wanted to do with Everett as long as I’ve wanted to be a head coach. Everett is going to be a great head coach sooner rather than later, but I’m going to try to keep him here as long as I can. Mike’s reputation in college football is outstanding. Every coach in the Big Ten is seeing this coaching staff and the coordinators, and they understand we’re going to give them a hard time.”
On how important it was to find guys who could recruit:
“As I’ve said, recruiting is extremely important to me and the lifeblood of our program is going to be our ability to recruit, particularly in the state of Minnesota. Every one of these guys is a proven recruiter. I use the word dynamic a lot because I like it, and I think that word fits this group of guys.
On how this staff will approach recruiting in-state:
“Everybody is going to recruit Minnesota. All nine guys are going to have an area in Minnesota and I’m going to recruit Minnesota. We are going to try to cover every step in the state and try to get into every high school in May. I’ve made a commitment to recruiting the state of Minnesota, and I think in my first week on the people in the state of Minnesota understand that we’re going to really recruit Minnesota hard, because if we get the best players in the state of Minnesota we’re going to win a lot of football games.”
On Mike Dunbar having free reign in running the offense:
“Mike is going to have free reign to run the offense as he sees fit. Obviously, we’ve spent some time talking and will exchange ideas about different things, but I hired Mike to run this offense and he’ll do a heck of a job doing it.”
On the influence Dunbar will have on recruiting:
“Without question, Mike is going to be a great selling point to receivers, quarterbacks and running backs. That’s a big part of this thing, because everything we do is about recruiting. Every word we say, every time we speak, we’re trying to reach out to kids and recruits and sell them on what we’re trying to get done here at the U. Everett Withers has been with the Tennessee Titans for the past six years. A lot of these kids want to play in the National Football League, and these kids understand that we have a guy here who has been in the NFL and he can help them work to get towards their goal, so it’s a big advantage.”
On Everett Withers having free reign to run the defense:
“Everett was brought here to run the defense. He has a lot of defense in his head. He’s been with Jeff Fisher for the last six years, was at Texas before that and was the defensive coordinator at Louisville prior to that. Everett is going to help us tremendously.”
Offensive Coordinator Mike Dunbar
On having to make the decision to come here so quickly:
“It’s been a whirlwind. It’s been an extremely fast situation and process, but if you’re going to make a change, you might as well make it and move on.”
On leaving Cal:
“Cal is a great program. Coach Tedford and his staff have done a great job and I was very proud and appreciative of the opportunity to be a part of that. Obviously Coach Brewster is a great recruiter. If he can recruit like he did me with student-athletes, we’re going to have a lot of quality student-athletes here at the University of Minnesota. At the same time, it’s an exciting opportunity for me to have the challenge of meshing the knowledge and experience of a coaching staff with the talent and skills of our student-athletes.
“Obviously I’m a proponent of the spread and the multiple-spread, and that’s what Coach wants to do and that’s his vision. Being on the ground floor of taking a program and being able to put those pieces together was really an exciting opportunity, and Coach Brewster has given me that opportunity.”
On the success he has had with the spread offense:
“There are a lot of spread offenses around the country now, and everybody puts their little stamp on what fits their personnel. The key will be fitting our personnel. It’s not going to be what we did at Northwestern or what we did at Cal, it’s going to be about what fits the talent and the skills of the players we have now. The key to the whole thing is finding a way to put our players in a position to be successful. Whichever way we can do that, we’re going to try to do. The multiple-spread will be the base of where we start, and then we’ll evolve from there.”
On what makes the spread so successful:
“I think it gives you a great opportunity for success because it allows you to attack the defense in many ways. It’s quarterback friendly, because by spreading all those people out you can see a little bit. It creates running lanes for the running backs, and it gives the receivers a chance to get the ball out in space. Those are some of the components that make me excited about the potential of the spread and the success you can have with it. You still have to be able to line up and run on third-and-one too, so it’s not all about finesse. It’s a combination of the two and hopefully we’ll have enough of the combination to keep the defense guessing and put our players in positions to be successful. It gives you the opportunity to spread the ball around and have tremendous balance.”
On the spread being an equal-opportunity offense:
“In my time working with the spread, kids have loved it. It’s a fun offense. It’s exciting and it’s dynamic. They know we’re going to be able to spread the ball around. There’s only one football, so you have to find a way to get everyone their touches, and the spread offense allows you that opportunity to have great balance. For example, you usually play two or three receivers who all have around 40-50 catches, and you can usually get the tight end and the running back 30-40 touches, so there are a lot of opportunities to get their touches and maximize their skills and abilities.”
On what his focus will be in recruiting:
“We haven’t had long enough to discuss that. I’ll focus a great deal on recruiting quarterbacks, but we’re all going to be involved in recruiting. As Coach said, it’s the life-line of any program. We’re all good coaches when we have good players. It’s not about us or the scheme, it’s about us getting our players and giving them the right opportunity in the right situations to maximize their talents and give them a chance to be successful.”
Defensive Coordinator Everett Withers
On the defensive scheme the Gophers will run:
“We’ll probably base out of a 4-3, but we’ll use multiple schemes. I want to do what these guys can do. I want to find out about personnel here and the recruiting process will help us along those lines. We don’t want to go slow, we want to be fast, be physical and have fun playing defense.”
On how much recruiting will influence what the Gophers can do:
“Obviously that’s the life-line of what we want to do here is recruit the players who want to graduate, who want to play football and who want to have fun doing it.”
On what convinced him to take this job:
“First, it’s a great opportunity to work with Tim Brewster and have the opportunity to run a defense that we can put our stamp on.
“I want to have an effect on young men. At the NFL level, I always thought I was more of a manager than a football coach. I want to coach and I want to get back to having an effect on 18- to 22-year olds.”
On what sold him on the job:
“Anytime you get the opportunity to coordinate a defense and work with somebody you respect a lot, it really was a good selling point. I’ve always wanted to come back and be a coordinator. It’s been since 1997 that I’ve coordinated, and I wanted to get back to doing it again.”
On the advantage his NFL experience will help in recruiting:
“I don’t know how much of an advantage it is, but a lot of those guys want to make it to the next level so I think I can give them some insight and some ideas of some things that might help them get there if they are capable of playing at the next level.”
On what is going to be the key to the team’s defensive improvement:
“We have to build confidence, and you do that with your coaching and with what you’re doing on defense. The players have to have confidence in what they’re doing. We have to get those guys on the field playing with confidence, playing fast, playing physical and having fun.”
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