Former coach Long hired as new DC
ALBUQUERQUE — The reclamation project of the Lobo football program began, in earnest, Monday morning before head coach Danny Gonzales hopped on a flight to Oklahoma.
Right around the time most people were handing off their kids at school or jockeying for elbow room at the coffee machine, the 44-year-old University of New Mexico coach let his fingers do the talking by posting on his personal Twitter account that he’d just hired Rocky Long as the program’s defensive coordinator.
In some ways it made public what had been the worst-kept secret in Albuquerque for over a month. A Long disciple and devoted student of Long’s nationally respected defensive scheme, Gonzales made it no secret that he loved the idea of his former coach, former boss and long-admired teacher a part of the Lobo family one more time.
“I mean, how exciting is this?” Gonzales said by phone Monday afternoon. “We have a group of coaches who want to be here, who want to be Lobos, who want to get this thing going.”
Chalk up another W for Gonzales, who has spent the first six weeks of his Lobo career winning back the hearts and minds of fans from one end of the
state to the other. It kicked into high gear last weekend when he and his sta≠ entertained dozens of prospective recruits for the upcoming Feb. 5 signing day.
No fewer than 15 high school players offered Gonzales a verbavl commitment to become Lobos.
Part of the draw, he said, is the team’s unrelenting push to make over a defense that finished 129th out of 130 teams at the Football Bowl Subdivision level last season.
UNM gave up 485.7 yards per game last season, eclipsed only by UMass. The Lobos’ secondary was torched worse than every team in America, giving up an FBS-worst 321.4 yards per game.
“We weren’t near the bottom,” Gonzales said. “We were the bottom.”
Hiring a rising star in the defensive ranks like Gonzales was a good first step for UNM. Him hiring Long was a great first step for him as a head coach.
Long’s 11-year run as Lobos coach from 1998-2008 saw the Lobos reach five bowl games by grinding opponents down with a hard-hitting approach that emphasized all the things Gonzales wants his mentor to bring back to Albuquerque.
“It’s his defense, it’ll be his guys,” Gonzales said. “He’ll call the plays on game day.”
Long will also coach UNM’s linebackers, meaning incoming assistant coach David Howes will likely coach another element to the defense. Originally brought on with the idea of coaching the LBs, Howes will work under Long as the pair tries to work a minor miracle in getting the Lobos defense to be something better than merely terrible.
To do that, Gonzales said, the key is finding someone to fill the “Lobo” position on defense. Reserved for a quick, physical defensive back with speed and instincts, it’s a free-flowing position whose only definition is being undefined.
“Every team at this level has to have a certain level of uniqueness, exoticness,” Gonzales said. “Ours will be the Lobo doing things other teams don’t see outside of our film. It’ll be hard to prepare for and coach Long, he’s the best defensive mind in the country in my opinion.”
Long’s brainchild is the “Lobo,” a position Gonzales describes like this: “We tell him the parameters, we don’t give him rules and if they don’t do it right we fire him. We just get the next guy.”
Gonzales cut his teeth in Long’s defensive system, then took his talents to Tempe, Ariz., the last two years as Arizona State’s defensive coordinator. The Sun Devils went from 121st in the country to 39th in total defense under his watch.
One of the secrets, he said, was what he did every Sunday morning after a game. He’d head into his office, turn on his computer and call up his old boss.
“We ran the exact same thing at ASU that Rocky did in San Diego, so it was kind of a form of complimentary stealing we had going on,” Gonzales said. “Every Sunday morning he and I would exchange film and watch what the other side was doing, seeing if we could pick up tendencies we might use ourselves. That went on for two years and the results were great.”
Gonzales said that Long always taught him to stick with the basics, to do what he found most comfortable and stick with it so long as it worked.
For UNM, it means building the program using defense as the backbone.
All the rest falls to an offense left in the hands of new coordinator Derek Warehime.
“I think we’ll get away from the ground and pound and work in a few di≠erent things,” Gonzales said. “We don’t have those really big boys up front just yet, not the kind we’re going to need to get where we want. What we do have are some talented coaches and some good players we can work with, so what you’ll see is some of [previous head coach Bob] Davie’s old triple option plays thrown in with all the things Derek wants to build.”
At the end of the day, Gonzales admits there’s one thing he’s really proud of after six weeks on the job at UNM. With the possible exception of Warehime’s hire and possibly that of Howes, he was able to keep most of the names on his coaching sta≠ — Long’s included — a secret until he announced them himself.
“That wasn’t easy,” he said Monday. “I had everyone calling and, yeah, no one really had it. You’d see people saying stu≠ online but no one knew. That’s the thing about us, about what I want to do. Until we say it, until we do it, no one will talk about it.”
And with that, the rebirth of Lobo football is well underway.