In his own image
Former walk-on safety has molded Badgers into No. 1 defense that’s gunning for a title
MADISON – From his desk in the football offices atop Camp Randall Stadium, Jim Leonhard can look down on the field and reminisce about those autumn Saturdays when he wore cardinal and white and ball-hawked his way into University of Wisconsin lore.
He rarely does.
“This place means a lot to me,” he says, “but it’s not one of those things when I’m staring at the field, thinking about those days all the time.”
Leonhard, 35, the Badgers’ defensive coordinator, is too busy preparing for the next challenge — this week it’s Ohio State and the Big Ten championship game — to wax nostalgic about his rise from small-town walk-on to All-American to 10-year NFL career, or about his meteoric rise through the coaching ranks.
Like Leonhard with the ball in his hands, it’s gone by in a flash.
In 2015 he was out of football, in 2016 he was Wisconsin’s new defensive backs coach and in 2017 he’s coordinating the nation’s No. 1 defense and is one of five finalists for the Frank
Broyles Award, which goes to the top assistant in the country.
In Leonhard’s hometown of Tony, where locals remember him as the smartest, most instinctive, most naturally gifted athlete in every sport he played at Flambeau High School, nobody is surprised by his success.
“The thing is, everything Jim did, he was great at,” says Mark Stamper, who coached Leonhard in football and baseball. “He was a great athlete. Tremendous student. Really, really sharp. He was so good at everything he did.”
Leonhard scored more than 1,000 points as a point guard in basketball and at 5-foot-8 could slap the backboard. He played quarterback and safety in football and teammates recall his uncanny ability to shoot the gap and find the ball carrier and the way, even back then, he could get the defense lined up.
His best sport might have been baseball. A left-handed pitcher, his fastball touched 90 mph and he was such a good hitter that an opposing pitcher once intentionally walked him with two out and nobody on — in the first inning.
In Leonhard’s junior year, Flambeau’s baseball team made the WIAA playoffs and played at Birchwood, which led by one run in the seventh and final inning. Two out, man on second and Leonhard steps to the plate.
“First base is open and I figure they’re going to walk him,” Stamper says. “The coach goes out to the mound to talk to his pitcher: ‘What do you think?’ The pitcher, like any redblooded young man, says, ‘I can take him.’
“The first pitch, it was a no-doubter the second it left the bat. The field is in town and there’s houses all around and Jim bounced the ball off the house beyond the center-field fence. It seemed like in those clutch situations when you really needed something he was on top of his game.
“Jim was just different.” Adam Alberson, Leonhard’s boyhood friend and backup quarterback who also caught him in baseball, recalls the time Leonhard made a halfcourt shot at the buzzer to win a basketball game … in the fifth grade.
“There was always something special about him,” Alberson says. “He was head and shoulders a better athlete than all of us farm boys.”
At every level in football, Leonhard demonstrated a knack for being around the ball.
He intercepted 21 passes in three seasons as a starting safety at Wisconsin; in the NFL he broke up 36 passes, had 14 interceptions, recovered five fumbles and made 329 tackles.
His best attribute, though, was his mind. Leonhard dived into film study and preparation so that on game days he recognized formations, knew what opposing teams were trying to do and got teammates lined up correctly.
“Physically, I was good, not great,” he says. “So I always felt like I had to find a different edge in the mental side of the game.”
But it’s one thing to be the smartest player on the field and quite another to coordinate a college defense, with all its moving parts and personalities.
Results don’t lie. Going into the Big Ten championship game, Wisconsin is ranked No. 1 in the nation in total defense (236.9 yards per game) and allows just 12.0 points per game, the No. 2 mark nationally.
The Badgers have given up just four rushing touchdowns all year and in the last three games — victories over two teams ranked at the time (Iowa and Michigan) and their biggest rival (Minnesota) — they allowed 433 total yards.
People who have called the Badgers’ schedule soft have never suited up for a Division I college football game. It’s exceedingly difficult to go undefeated in the Big Ten, even if you play Illinois eight times.
“Nobody felt sorry for us last year
“The thing is, everything Jim did, he was great at. He was a great athlete. Tremendous student. Really, really sharp. He was so good at everything he did.” Mark Stamper Former football and baseball coach for Leonhard
when we had on paper one of the hardest schedules in college football history,” Leonhard says. “In the last three years we’ve played LSU twice and Alabama. It’s not like we’ve had a history of avoiding big competition.
“You play who’s on your schedule and you try to find a way to be one point better than them and we’ve been able to do that so far this year.”
Leonhard is Wisconsin’s third defensive coordinator in three years, following Dave Aranda and Justin Wilcox, but if anything the unit has gotten better despite the loss of playmaking linebackers T.J. Watt and Vince Biegel from last year’s team.
“I was very fortunate to walk into a pretty good situation with Coach Aranda and Justin Wilcox, the foundation that had been laid to play this kind of defense,” he says. “It was my job to come in and not mess that up.”
His formula for success is not complicated. He wants to give his players a scheme they can execute and a plan they can buy into and then put his playmakers in the best possible position to make plays.
“It’s not Xs and Os,” he says. “It’s not paper football. You need to understand who your playmakers are and who your leaders are. Who can you count on to play consistent week in and week out? I think you have to start there and build your defense around that.”
When he evaluates players, he looks for the intangibles he brought to the field as a player: physical and mental toughness, communication skills, football I.Q. Are they instinctive? Can they react on the fly and not overthink? Do they hang their heads after a bad play?
Above all else, how much do they love the game?
The bench press and 40-yard time reveal a lot about a player, but they don’t reveal everything.
“The first thing we look for when we recruit kids is how much do they love football, as opposed to how much do you like what goes along with being a football player?” he says. “There’s a big difference. We try to get kids that love the game and want to be coached. Then you can coach hard and teach.”
There’s already some concern in Badger Nation that Leonhard is a short-timer at Wisconsin. He’s young and obviously talented and would intrigue Division I programs looking for a head coach, if not now then in the near future. Opportunities will be there for him in the NFL, too.
Leonhard says he is in no hurry to move on. He and his family love Madison. Asked if he could be happy being Paul Chryst’s defensive coordinator for the next 10 years, he answered in the affirmative.
“He’s a great football coach, a great mentor to these kids, so it’s easy to want to stay with that,” Leonhard says. “Outside of that, we have a great relationship. He lets me do my thing. He’s not going to question what we do. He just says, ‘Let’s find a way to win.’ It’s a lot of fun as a coordinator to have that freedom.”
Just like he doesn’t look back, Leonard won’t look ahead. There is one very big challenge directly in front of him and his players: Ohio State.
“I’m just going to stay in the moment with this season and enjoy this group of guys,” he says. “It’s never the same year to year, so just enjoy it while you have it. It’s going to be over soon enough.”
Hopefully, for Badgers fans, not until Jan. 8.