The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Staley’s rise buoyed by ’16 win
In the game of What Ifs?, this is one had former John Carroll All-American Jimmy Thomas thinking.
After a few seconds, his response:
“I never really thought about it, but yeah, it’s so true,” said Thomas, who will play this season for the Arena League team Charlotte Thunder, headed by former NFL players Ted Ginn Jr. and Thomas Davis.
So true, indeed. Moments in time that go one way or the other can be the pathway to life-altering events.
Brandon Staley’s rise from Perry graduate, college quarterback, college assistant, NFL assistant to this week being named head coach of the L.A. Chargers can be traced to 1 minute, 26 seconds of play when John Carroll played Baldwin Wallace in 2016.
Thomas, at the time a sophomore defensive end — was at the center of the game, and in a way his touchdown late in a dramatic 17-10 come-from-behind win over the Blue Streaks’ crosstown rival was the start of an amazing, meteoric rise for Staley.
“We don’t win that game, life would be totally different for a lot of people,” said Thomas.
Life might have been totally different for Staley had the Blue Streaks lost to BW in 2016. Still, who knows? The former JCU defensive coordinator might have worked his way up the coaching ranks and still be where he is today, but it’s reasonable to think the path taken would have been different.
That’s how important JCU’s win over BW was in 2016 to the coaching ladder he eventually climbed. Here’s how it all played out. The 2016 Blue Streaks — led by Tom Arth, now the head coach at the University of Akron — opened that season at Wisconsin-Oshkosh, a talented team that finished that season 14-1 and the NCAA Division III national runner-up. It was only team to defeat JCU in 2016, doing it twice.
The 33-14 loss was a setback. The late JCU sports information director Chris Wenzler once told me about that game: “If anyone said after that this team will make it to the final four, I would have said, ‘No way.’ “
Following a bye week, the 0-1 Blue Streaks hosted BW in their Ohio Athletic Conference opener. It was a defensive struggle. The Yellow Jackets went ahead, 10-3, in the third quarter on Austin Smith’s 1-yard run.
JCU quarterback Anthony Moeglin struggled all night in the second start of his career. He was just 11 of 28 for 82 yards and threw three interceptions.
The Blue Streaks defense — the strength of the team all year — and the running of Sam Kukura (Kirkland) and Ro Golphin (Gilmour) saved the day.
Kukura (119 yards) and Golphin (114) keyed a fourth-quarter TD drive that tied the game at 10.
“Coach Arth kept preaching that — we needed to run the football,” said Kukura, who’s a graduate assistant working with offensive lineman for Arth at Akron. “The (offensive line) anchored us that night.”
Then with 2:54 remaining in the game, Thomas made a play that changed the course of JCU football history.
The JCU defense forced BW QB Robbie Plagens to fumble deep in his own territory. Thomas reacted quickly and jumped on the loose ball in the end zone for a touchdown that keyed a 17-10 victory.
From there, the Blue Streaks won eight straight to close out the regular season, including a win over No. 1-ranked Mount Union to win the OAC outright.
Three straight wins in the NCAA D-III playoffs — including another over a No. 1-ranked team (Wisconsin-Whitewater) put the team in a national semifinal at Wisconsin-Oshkosh, where it lost, 10-3.
A few weeks later, Arth, Staley and few others JCU coaches left for FCS Chattanooga.
Staley spent a short time with Arth at Chattanooga. He got a job coaching linebackers with the Bears. Two years later, he was an assistant with the Broncos before becoming the Rams defensive coordinator in 2020 and shortly after that agreeing to become Chargers head coach on Jan. 17.
But what if JCU had not rallied to beat BW on Sept. 18, 2016? The Blue Streaks would have been 0-2, and 0-1 in the OAC.
“Definitely a what if?” said Kukura. “Our season might have spiraled out of control if we lost.”
Winning out after an 0-2 start would have likely given the Blue Streaks a co-OAC title and the automatic bid to the D-III playoffs sine doing that would have meant beating Mount Union in the regular-season finale. Again, that might have been difficult to accomplish with an 0-2 start.
“There’s no doubt that win (against BW) was huge,” said Kukura. “It really was a sling shot to the next week and beyond.”
More important to the big picture, had JCU not
beaten BW that night in 2016, it would have seemed unlikely — but not impossible — the Blue Streaks win the OAC outright, get an NCAA D-III playoff birth and make a run to an historic 12-2 season.
Without all that, it’s unlikely Arth would have been named D3football. com’s National Coach of the Year. Or that he would have got the Chattanooga job. Or that Staley would have been named the national assistant coach of the year.
Had Arth and Staley remained at JCU after 2016, it’s not unreasonable to think one — or both — would have eventually landed coaching jobs above the D-III level, but that season definitely put both on the map as hot coaching candidates.
The victory over BW helped pave the way to all of that. One play — a loose ball in the end zone that Thomas jumped on for a TD — changed a lot.
“Yeah, without a doubt,” said Thomas.