Joe Brady And Jim Leonhard Are Coaching Where Now?
On the meteoric rises of two elite college football coordinators in the NFL.
On Saturday morning, NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport reported the Buffalo Bills had hired Jim Leonhard away from the Denver Broncos to be the team’s new defensive coordinator. For LSU fans, I imagine it was already a bit surreal to see Joe Brady get elevated from NFL offensive coordinator to NFL head coach this offseason. For Wisconsin fans, I imagine it’s both a bit surreal and frustrating to see Leonhard continue to rise through the NFL ranks.
Brady was the play-caller for arguably the best offense in college football history when he was with the Tigers in 2019, when LSU won its last national championship. It was just one season in Baton Rouge before the 36-year-old elite offensive mind was back in the pros, but I imagine every Bayou Bengals fan is quite grateful for that one season with Brady. The Tigers led all of college football in scoring at 48.4 points per game, and Brady won the Broyles Award as the nation’s top assistant coach for his work with Joe Burrow, Ja’Marr Chase, and Justin Jefferson. In the Tigers’ final seven games that season, which included two College Football Playoff games, the SEC championship game, and a trip to Tuscaloosa, LSU averaged an astounding 50.7 points per game.
What Brady did for LSU in 2019 reminds me a lot of what Gus Malzahn did for Auburn in 2010. Brady and Malzahn were offensive masterminds who orchestrated the top offenses in the top league and gave LSU and Auburn fans their schools’ best season this century. Both Brady and Malzahn won the Broyles Award after those magical seasons and were the perfect combination for the school’s premier quarterbacks in Burrow and Cam Newton, respectively. Sure, it was mighty helpful to have two Heisman-winning quarterbacks those seasons, but Brady has continued to thrive post-Burrow. Malzahn made it back to the National Championship with Nick Marshall years later and came close again with Jarrett Stidham a few years after that. The year after Malzahn left for Arkansas State, Auburn did not win a conference game. LSU played .500 football the next two years after Brady left for the NFL.
Malzahn returned to Auburn after a season coaching the Red Wolves to a SunBelt championship. Brady never returned to LSU. It did not work out with Brian Kelly, and we shall see if it will work out with Lane Kiffin. If you’re an LSU fan, it feels like you know it would have worked out had Brady returned to Baton Rouge, right? I imagine it was the same feeling Auburn fans felt when Malzahn returned to The Plains. There is already a proof-of-concept aspect with Brady and LSU – the same was true years ago with Malzahn and Auburn.
I suspect most LSU fans are excited about the Kiffin era. Rightfully so, it would be silly not to expect big things from one of the game’s best coaches and offensive minds. However, ever since that 2019 run, I have wanted to see how Brady would have fared as the head coach at LSU. If you replace Kelly with Brady in 2022, what’s different that year with Heisman winner Jayden Daniels?
I wonder if Wisconsin fans feel the same way about Leonhard? The former Badgers walk-on was not only a great four-year player for the school in the early 2000s, but he also went on to become an elite defensive backs coach and, a year later, an elite defensive coordinator, all in Madison. He was a Broyles Award finalist in 2017, his first season calling the defense for his alma mater.
The Badgers had the No. 4 scoring defense in FBS in 2021. They were ninth the year before that. Tenth the year before that. Third in 2017. Between 2017 and 2022, the Badgers finished the season inside the top-10 in scoring defense four times and in the top-20 five times. In the three seasons post-Leonhard, the Badgers have finished in the top-10 or top-20 zero times.
The decision not to promote then-interim Leonhard to permanent coach in 2022, three years later, looks like an errant move by Wisconsin. Former Cincinnati head coach Luke Fickell is 17-20 and likely on the hot seat heading into his fourth season in Madison. The Badgers have one double-digit winning season over the last eight years. They had four in a row from 2014 to 2017. If they’re not careful, the Badgers will go the way of the Hokies sooner rather than later.
None of us know Leonhard would have fared as the permanent head coach at his alma mater, but we know where his defenses ranked while he was there. It’s fair to assume, like with Brady at LSU or Malzahn at Auburn, the side of the ball that he coached would have remained a defensive juggernaut under his leadership. Who Leonhard would have hired as his OC had he replaced Paul Chryst would have been just as important as it was for Fickell when he hired Phil Longo. The seismic offensive philosophy shift obviously did not work in Longo’s lone two seasons at Wisconsin. Still, you imagine Leonhard would have gotten more of the benefit of the doubt had he swung and missed on his first offensive coordinator hire. Lincoln Riley eventually hired D’Anton Lynn. Kirby Smart eventually hired Todd Monken. Marcus Freeman eventually hired Mike Denbrock. Mario Cristobal eventually hired Shannon Dawson.
After leaving Wisconsin, Leonhard worked with a Super Bowl-winning offensive mastermind in Sean Payton, and will now work with a younger offensive mastermind in Brady. It’s fair to suspect, given who Leonhard has surrounded himself with in the NFL, that had he gotten the Badgers job in 2022, he would have eventually partnered with the right offensive coordinator in Madison.
Both Brady and Leonhard are two young coaches on the rise – and who knows, maybe both wind up back at LSU or Wisconsin one day, respectively. Right now, though, they are the two-headed monster tasked with bringing Buffalo its first Super Bowl championship. A little more than half a decade ago, Brady was commanding an elite offense at LSU, and Leonhard was commanding an elite defense at Wisconsin. Now they’re doing even bigger things on the biggest stage.
What would college football look like if Brady got the LSU job in 2022 or 2025? What if Leonhard got the Wisconsin job in 2022? They’re not the biggest what-ifs in the sport, but it’s one I’ll be thinking about a lot watching the Bills on Sundays this fall.