At Utah State, unlikely interim Nate Dreiling is learning from the best
If I had a nickel for every up-and-coming first-year DC unexpectedly promoted amid a late-offseason scandal in the last two years...
Note: rankings for this series are set by the final 2023 rankings from TERSE, a D1 college football metric designed to imitate human rankings.
“David Braun,” said Utah State’s new head coach, “is gonna block my number by the end of this thing.”
Braun was far from the only person Nate Dreiling had called, of course. By his own admission, he’d put himself in contact with coaches at nearly a quarter of the programs in FBS, seeking advice and guidance as he took over the Aggies deep into the 2024 offseason. But he sought out Northwestern’s head coach more often than anybody else, and for good reason. If there was anyone who could relate to the position Dreiling had been put in, it was Braun.
Longtime readers will, of course, remember how that situation came about. Braun was the subject of the last article in last year’s edition of this series, having arrived at Northwestern as a defensive coordinator after holding the same role at North Dakota State prior to 2023, before being thrust into action as an interim HC following a scandal that led to Pat Fitzgerald’s firing. Improbably, Braun wrangled a team that many had written off as perhaps the worst in the P5 to an 8-5 record, winning his last four and earning the full-time gig to complete an unlikely, rapid ascent from FCS coordinator to Big Ten head coach.
For Dreiling—who arrived at Utah State as a co–defensive coordinator earlier this offseason after holding the same role at New Mexico State, then got an unexpected promotion to interim HC following the messy ouster of Blake Anderson—the reasons to pick Braun’s brain are obvious. It’s almost unsettling how similar these extraordinary situations are, even beyond all the details mentioned above; both Braun and Dreiling have the same agent, and each had to balance the extreme circumstances of their program with the health of their wife.1 It’s no wonder Dreiling would look to somebody who took on a similarly immense task and succeeded beyond all expectations.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given their unique paths to taking over FBS programs, both men are also among the youngest coaches in college football. Dreiling’s lack of experience, however, is even more acute than Braun’s—the latter started coaching in 2008, while the former did so in 2015. Less than a decade ago, he was playing football, not coaching it.2 There are plenty of reasons you’ll hear Dreiling being written off the same way Braun was, but his incredibly short career is right near the top of the list.
It’s not that hard to make the case that he can hack it as a top-level head coach, at least from a pure football perspective. Two years ago, when Jerry Kill named him to the NMSU staff as defensive coordinator, he was the second-youngest DC in FBS—and he was taking over a unit that had allowed 40.4 points per game the previous season, 128th of 130 teams in the subdivision. In his very first year, the Aggies cut that figure by a staggering 16.5 points per game, soaring to 47th nationally; in his second, they got even better and were instrumental to a stunning 10-5 campaign, New Mexico State’s winningest season since 1960. It’s not a stretch to say he was pretty overqualified for the small step up to Utah State DC, and if things had played out a bit differently, he very well could’ve had an offer to take the same spot on a P5 staff within a year or two.
As was the case for Braun, though, what’s vital for Dreiling to succeed isn’t being the right coach for USU, but the right person. His sudden ascension to the FBS coaching ranks is a direct consequence of the rather dire state Utah State athletics is in. It goes beyond Anderson’s unexpected, contentious firing; the mess here also extends to the spate of athletic department firings that occurred around the same time, and to the hasty departure of former AD John Hartwell to ULM in 2022 that set all of this into motion.
It’s a somewhat different predicament from what Braun found himself facing at Northwestern—just as ugly, but not quite as clear-cut, with Anderson and others actively contesting the university’s assertion that there was justified reason to fire them for cause (and thus get out of paying their contracts). But Dreiling’s job is much the same as Braun’s was: to create an island of peace within the sea of troubles Utah State has stirred up. Clearly, dwelling on the legal disputes and the heavily-debated reason the Aggies needed an interim coach in the first place won’t do this team much good. Their focus has to be on what’s in front of them.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Dreiling finds a way to make lightning strike twice. Getting a truly great season out of this roster, which faces fairly heavy turnover from a 2023 campaign in which they weren’t all that good to begin with, won’t be easy by any means. But Braun’s success at Northwestern drew up a clear blueprint for defying the odds and bringing a team together in trying times, and for all the questionable moves Utah State has made lately, promoting someone who just so happens to fit the Braun archetype perfectly was a pretty shrewd decision. If Nate Dreiling finds a way to work a miracle here and earn the right to keep this job, it’ll be in part because he knew just the right guy to call.
The Last Five Years
Colorado State is the Mountain West’s poster child for program underachievement, and that’s probably not going to change unless they finally take advantage of the resources at their disposal, but there’s something to be said for Utah State’s unique knack when it comes to wasting bright futures. In the last decade, they’ve pulled off three separate double-digit-win seasons, each followed by multiple years at a mediocre 7-6 or worse; most recently, Anderson engineered a stunning 11-3 season and top-25 finish in his first campaign, only for the Aggies to go 6-7 in his next (and last) two. If nothing else, they’re used to starting from scratch often.
That’s good, because they’ll probably need to. The one way Dreiling’s promotion clashes with USU’s situation a bit is in their returns for his interim season—decent on offense, but among the more turnover-heavy rosters in FBS on defense. That unit already needed a ton of work to begin with (and dragged down a team that averaged some 33.2 points per game), and one of its new coordinators abruptly stepping into the HC role in the final two months of the offseason can’t have made things any easier. That being said, Dreiling has worked wonders on this side of the ball before, and if the Aggies can stop anything at all, the offense is certainly capable of guiding them to a bowl or better.
The Next Five Years
It’s easy to look at a situation like this and assume that, as challenging as the results of Dreiling’s decision to take over as head coach may be, the choice itself can’t have been that difficult. But—as I wrote in this section a year ago, on Braun making the same choice at Northwestern—it’s important to note that accepting an interim role like this carries a lot of risk without much reward. Winning one’s way into the full-time job is uniquely difficult in these extraordinary circumstances (as if it’s not hard and arbitrary enough already), and failing to do so likely means you’ll be out of the program through no fault of your own.
Dreiling would latch on somewhere, of course. He’s still young, impressed immensely in his most high-profile job before Utah State, and clearly possesses the likability and leadership that tends to be prioritized when teams pick out interims in tumultuous times. But inviting more upheaval to his career after how the last year has gone can’t have been an easy call, as inherently attractive the prospect of being an FBS head coach is.
The fact that he’s the kind of person who would take on that challenge is probably a key part of why Utah State offered him the spot. Sure, because it was important to replace Anderson swiftly, smoothly, and simply…but possibly also because someone with that character has the potential to turn a potentially lost season into the start of something big. After all, if David Braun could do it at Northwestern, there’s no reason Nate Dreiling can’t do as one of his finest mentors did and stun the world at Utah State.
Braun’s wife, as mentioned in the piece covering him last year, was pregnant at the time Northwestern asked him to take the reins; Dreiling’s wife was declared cancer-free just two months before Utah State promoted her husband.
For the FXFL’s Omaha Mammoths, if you’re curious.