College Football

How Washington's Kalen DeBoer and his future staff formed bonds in Michigan's shadow

Updated Jan. 8, 2024 12:09 a.m. ET

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Michael Cohen

College Football and College Basketball Writer

HOUSTON — On Dec. 30, 2014, a chorus of camera shutters and applause greeted interim athletic director James Hackett for an introduction that would prove to be among the most seminal moments in the illustrious history of Michigan football. Hackett, who had only been on the job for a matter of weeks, was about to introduce ex-Wolverine quarterback Jim Harbaugh as the program's next head coach. 

"It's great to be with all of you today," Hackett said that day. "And I want to welcome all of the people here who have come from all over the place to report this important news."

Nine years would pass before Hackett's decision to hire Harbaugh would reach its magnificent peak, with a chance for Harbaugh to win the school's first national title in 26 years at NRG Stadium on Monday night (7:30 p.m. ET). But from the moment Harbaugh took the reins of his alma mater following the failure of predecessors Brady Hoke and Rich Rodriguez, the Wolverines were forever bathed in the national spotlight. Everything the enigmatic coach did made news: from his satellite camps that prompted recruiting rules to be rewritten to his sleepover at the home of an elite prospect, from his program's trips to Italy and South Africa to his "Signing of the Stars" event that featured Derek Jeter, Tom Brady, Ric Flair and was livestreamed around the world.

A little less than five miles down the road, on the campus of Eastern Michigan, life couldn't have been more different for Eagles head coach Chris Creighton, who'd recently completed his first season in Ypsilanti. Creighton's program was mired in a bowl-less streak that would eventually swell to 28 years before it snapped, with Eastern Michigan's last postseason appearance coming back in 1987, not long after Harbaugh finished his playing career in Ann Arbor. Thirteen of those forgettable seasons in between featured double-digit losses. One of them — the dastardly 2009 campaign — ended winless at 0-12.

But Creighton had an unwavering belief that he could transform his first Division I job into a place where winning was possible, where participating in bowl games became an annual expectation — no matter how crazy that notion might have seemed. To help him get there, Creighton hired an offensive coordinator from Southern Illinois named Kalen DeBoer, a man whose trophy cabinet already included three NAIA national championships as the head coach at Sioux Falls. And DeBoer chose as his right-hand man the Sioux Falls offensive coordinator, Ryan Grubb, a former member of his staff from 2007-09.

One decade and several jobs later, DeBoer and Grubb are now the masterminds behind Washington's ascent to the national championship game, with the former serving as head coach and the latter his trustworthy offensive coordinator. A handful of other former Eagles have joined them in Seattle, too, including head strength and conditioning coach Ron McKeefery and graduate assistant Shaq Vann, who played running back for DeBoer and Grubb.

Once separated from Harbaugh's pomp and circumstance by a few miles and a few million dollars, the indomitable coaching duo will match wits with their former neighbor on college football's grandest stage Monday night. This is the story of their three seasons at Eastern Michigan — from 2014-16 — when DeBoer and Grubb were grinding silently in Harbaugh's wide-ranging shadow.

From 2014-2016, Kalen DeBoer labored without fanfare as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Eastern Michigan, just minutes away from Michigan, where Jim Harbaugh had started building a juggernaut. (Photo courtesy of Eastern Michigan Athletic Department)

Brad McCaslin, defensive coordinator at EMU (2014-15): "Wherever you're at in the game of football, you want to bring the pride of, ‘We're going to make this as good as anywhere,' right? But when you can throw a golf ball and hit Michigan Stadium from where we were at, it's really, really hard to display that pride, to live out that pride when you know [a program like Michigan] is that close."

Darius Jackson, running back at EMU (2012-15): "Honestly, there wasn't a lot of love for Eastern. Because when you're not winning, and you're in the shadow of Michigan, it's tough. We shared the same Chipotle, and that's all we had in common."

Brogan Roback, quarterback at EMU (2013-17): "They look at you like — I wouldn't say a little brother, because that's obviously how they view Michigan State and stuff. We're almost like the sibling that there's a 10-year gap, right, and you don't really talk to the young one. That's how I'd say that they viewed us. We just always wanted to prove that we belong in that area.

"We're not going to get all the love, the pub, the nice things that they do five minutes down the road, and that's actually cool. I think embracing who you are as a team, as an identity, is big. That's why Coach Creighton used to bring a hard hat in and tell you to bring your lunch pail because that's why our turf [in our stadium] is freaking gray, man. It's supposed to be a parking lot. So it's just hard-nosed and it takes on the identity, in my opinion, of Wayne County and, more importantly, Detroit in general, more than any other school in Michigan."

Aaron Keen, special teams coordinator/tight ends coach at EMU (2014-16): "One thing that really stands out to me is just something that happened during the interview process. And I believe [Creighton] asked every one of us who interviewed for a position on the staff just why we were interested in the coaching profession, what kept us in that profession. And I think everybody on the staff kind of answered very similarly, that they were interested in the relationship part of coaching and building those relationships, and how strong those relationships were in their experiences growing up in the game."

Jackson: "It was a tough time for the program. And I think a lot of guys when they first came were just wondering who these guys were, you know? You had Grubb from a smaller school in Michigan, you had Coach DeBoer coming from Southern Illinois, an FCS school, you had Coach Creighton coming from a smaller school. It did take time." 

McCaslin: "When you're in an environment where winning is really, really hard and really far away, it's also very difficult to invest a ton. I mean as an individual player. Because you're tired of feeling the pain of loss. And so why invest to the nth degree, which is what great programs get their guys to do. Why go to that level if you're only going to be disappointed again, you know? And that's a really, really difficult thing to overcome."

McKeefery: "There's a verse in the bible that talks about you don't throw light into the light, you throw light into the darkness. When we were going to Eastern, it was pretty dark, you know? There's guys that run from that, and then there's guys that are like, ‘Bring it on.' Kalen and Grubb, myself, several guys on our staff, I think it's just a bunch of guys that had that kind of mindset. And we put in the work to make the change."

Washington strength coach Ron McKeefery, who held the same position at Eastern Michigan, on the challenges of working at a smaller program: "There's guys that run from that, and then there's guys that are like, ‘Bring it on.' Kalen and Grubb, myself, several guys on our staff, I think it's just a bunch of guys that had that kind of mindset." (Photo courtesy of Eastern Michigan Athletic Department)

Creighton: "It was a situation where the program had gone through some tough times, and we just assembled a staff and didn't clear house but met the guys where they were at and started building relationships and doing all the things that, I think, you've gotta do to build a really solid foundation for the program. And we were doing that, I mean, there was no question."

Roback: "Creighton coming into Division I football was new, a little bit, so I think Coach DeBoer and Grubb really sped that process up in understanding what needs to be done. But as far as culture, man, it's been one thing and one thing only, and it's family. It's a true brotherhood. Yes, I call [DeBoer] a f------ genius, a god when it comes to schemes, but he's an even better guy than he is a coach. And I think especially football, man, it's not war, but it's the closest thing we've got out there on an everyday basis. So you go to battle knowing you're doing this for the guy next to you. That's something that was really instilled."

McCaslin: "One of the things that comes to mind [from Creighton] is the importance of developing a genuine connection and relationship with the athletes. Not that Kalen or Ryan, for that matter, struggled in that. In fact, I think they showed up and maybe excelled in that area because of the places that they had been, the lower levels that they had been. But I think Chris brought maybe a little bit more of a process to that, a structure to that, a consistent approach as a program as opposed to letting all the individual coaches proceed in their own way."

One of the biggest reasons why Creighton, a former NAIA head coach himself, decided to pursue DeBoer and Grubb was because of how potent their teams had been at Sioux Falls. The Cougars averaged 51.7 points per game in 2009 — the final season in which DeBoer and Grubb overlapped at Sioux Falls — and averaged 487.5 yards of offense. Their season total of 775 points was the most ever scored in NAIA history and ranked third all-time across any level of college football. Their quarterback, Lorenzo Brown, was the NAIA National Player of the Year. 

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Roback: "[DeBoer and Grubb] wanted to do something with the offense where they're setting us up for the most success. They weren't trying to change us as players, but instead, how can we make them the best versions of themselves, obviously, on the football field. And I think they did a great job of that and just very receptive as coaches, as people, as leaders. They would take everyone's opinion as far as what the guys were thinking on the field and then incorporate that into the game plan."

Jackson: "I just appreciated how it was simple and yet different. We had so many of the same plays just in different formations and different motions that made it look different, but it was the same exact play. And I just think that's how he was innovative before his time. And now he's just progressed with it.

Herb Haygood, wide receivers coach at EMU (2014-18): "They just made it very easy. The offense, I mean, it's built to make sure the kids are playing as fast as possible without thinking as much. There's always an answer for you, whether it's zone or man coverage, so it made it fairly easy to adapt to. Those two, they just had outstanding chemistry that poured over to the other staff members, as well as our team."

McCaslin: "It definitely continued to evolve, but what we knew back then is [the scheme] had the dials, you know? It was grounded in a very good foundation, easy to understand, the players could communicate it, they could adjust, they could understand. But then they had those additives or dials or little changes that were often difficult for us to deal with. Just when we were teaching a guy [on our defense] how to deal with a particular play, then there was something that came off of that."

Roback: "What they're doing by sending so many motions or going out in different formations, they're confusing the defense. But more importantly, they're forcing the defense to communicate without their coach. And that's the biggest thing. Because a lot of people will look to the sidelines and do a ‘Check with me,' so to speak, and obviously that started on the offensive side of the ball [with offenses looking to the sideline before the snap.] But as people were doing it on the offensive side of the ball, defenses started to do the same thing. When you [motion and shift] and make [the defense] communicate and change things up that they weren't used to seeing, or they're not familiar with pre-snap, it's just confusion. And I think that's just the biggest thing. They've always been pioneers in that world."

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Keen: "We ran a lot of different things offensively. I mean, Kalen really pushes the envelope on the amount of things that he installs and works through."

Jackson: "I think Coach DeBoer was kind of the point guard, and he liked things the way he wanted them to be. But I thought Coach Grubb was always a great complement because he always threw his flash into it."

Creighton: "They're both really bright, so I think that they click in that way. Sometimes that can get overlooked. It's like the intellect — at least the football intellect — matters, too. To spend so much time with someone for so long, you've gotta respect them, right? You've got to really respect their mind. And I think that those guys really just respect that piece about each other. They both are just tirelessly hardworking, they both care about their families, you know?"

Grubb: "I think when you care about each other as people and you talk about raising kids, you are having those kind of conversations, [then] figuring out how to run four verts against a coverage is pretty simple. For us it's always been that, that there's a chemistry there because of like-minded people. Our values align. Our work ethic aligns. I think when you align with people like that in a cultural sense, then it's easy to be a professional with someone like that."

Keen: "I remember Ryan Grubb saying when they worked together at Sioux Falls, how well they were treated by Kalen as a head coach. Just the relationship part of it. So certainly if you talked to people that worked with Kalen or for Kalen, you're going to find that he treats people really well — and not just as resources, right? It's investing in the relationship part of things. He's just a genuinely good person, so it's easy to root for a guy like that and work for a guy like that in my opinion."

Ryan Grubb, offensive line coach at Eastern Michigan and now Washington's offensive coordinator, said of Kalen DeBoer: "Our values align. Our work ethic aligns. I think when you align with people like that in a cultural sense, then it's easy to be a professional with someone like that." (Photo courtesy of Eastern Michigan Athletic Department)

Haygood: "The biggest things is those guys are family guys, you know? It's not like you're going to work when you go into your office. Family is truly first. I think that's just part of it. All those guys that are on that staff absolutely love each other. 

"At Eastern, I had my two boys while we were on staff there. It was a no-brainer for me to make sure that I myself was there present to see my kids born. And when I came back, it was like I didn't leave. It was never where you had to be at your office from 6 a.m. to 10 at night. When your work was done, you were allowed to go home. You could do your recruiting calls from home. Spend time having dinner with your family. I think they allowed that stuff to happen, which made you want to work for them and work with them."

Roback: "So with family comes accountability, right? Holding people accountable. DeBoer used to come over and guys would be lined up, maybe, honestly, two feet further out than they should be, and DeBoer was so attention to detail that he'd run out there like, ‘No, you need to line up like this.' And the guys would literally take a half step to the left. And he's like, ‘It matters, it matters.' And when you're at that age, you don't really understand. But then when you go out there on Saturdays and you see it working, and you start understanding."

McCaslin: "And I think, too, something that's also really important in the game right now is seeing offensive line background coaches [like Grubb] having coordinator responsibilities because it is still a game that is built up front. And when you have the background that most offensive line rooms have — the working for others concept; there's no individual; it is the ultimate team within the team game position group — so when you have that in conjunction with all the specific particulars, when you can apply the principles of an O-line to an offense, I think it's tremendous. And that's something that so many people are afraid of doing. 

Creighton: "I remember telling [Grubb] this several times. Just watching him work and listening to all those meetings — and I'm learning the offense as they're doing it — he's just so natural with seeing things, with understanding football. And then he's so natural in his ability to communicate it. I tried to articulate that to him, you know, multiple times. There's coach speak, you know, and every offense is its own foreign language that you have terms and things that people know across the country. But he just had a way with coaches, or with players, of just making it make sense with the way he communicated. I just think he was really gifted in that way."

Keen: "Ryan Grubb is such an aggressive coach, right? Whether it comes to recruiting, pushing the envelope with scheme, coaching technique. He was our offensive line coach, but he was obviously interested in other positions and had coached other positions. It played off of kind of the laid-back nature at that time, at least the way I saw it, with Kalen really well. They almost fed off each other."

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McCaslin: "So many times in a football coaching environment, egos get in the way of that. Wanting to be right gets in the way of that. Wanting to be the big voice gets in the way of that, wanting to be the person up front. Those two guys are excellent at managing that."

Creighton: "But on game days in '14 and '15, we just weren't very good. We just couldn't do it. So here we are internally knowing that we are making great strides, but in '14 and '15, game days were brutal."

Roback: "Only winning one game [in 2015 was hard], but what made us really start believing and buying in was, ‘Hey, we're losing these games by six points or less or one possession. We used to be getting blown out by 40 points.' So you knew you could kind of see the light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak, with them. And they never really harped on it, you know? We were losing and nobody likes to lose, but they didn't really focus on the loss. It was more so, ‘Hey, this is what we did really well, but this is what we can be doing a lot better.' And they didn't try to change the people and the players. They just trusted the process."

Jackson: "I was happy. I had as much fun as you can have for a 1-11 season because we had success on the offensive side of the ball. We really couldn't stop anybody, you know, but that's nobody's fault. That's nobody's fault. It just comes with the territory of building a new team. But I knew they were going to be good the year I left. I was actually, you know, kind of jealous that I didn't have a fifth year because I wanted to be part of it."

Creighton: "And then you may recall that the spring of '16 was when the national news about Rutgers and a team from Texas and Eastern Michigan dropping football [came out]. Try recruiting in the spring when that's going on. So it was at a pretty low point. Then we just stayed with it, and that just made 2016 magical. To have a winning season, to go to the Bahamas Bowl and all of that. It was a magical season."

Keen: "We knew offensively that we had gotten better in that second year, that we were starting to see some of the pieces come together. But we had a quarterback who played really well in Brogan Roback who played really well in that 2016 year. I thought we had receivers that played really well. Run game started to click a little bit. We had some good offensive linemen who were going through their senior year. So it was awful rewarding to see those guys have the success that they have, because it was a long time coming."

Grubb: "I think far too often young coaches can start to daydream and think about being at Washington instead of being a really, really good O-line coach at Eastern Michigan. That was my focus when I was there, is making this place the best it can be. Big times where you're at."

DeBoer: "Those years right there coming into a program that really didn't have a culture at that time, or much tradition at all, and one day at a time being relentless and putting it together and seeing in a couple years what it could become — and obviously that foundation continues to be strong there with what Chris has done — I'm super proud of his success and how he's got an expectation to have that program in a bowl game."

An overall record of 2-10 in 2014 was followed by a 1-11 mark in 2015, but Eastern Michigan's offense improved from 124th nationally in Year 1 (289.6 yards per game) to 78th nationally in Year 2 (380 yards per game). And the average margin of defeat dropped from 32.2 points per game to 19.9 points per game during that stretch. 

The 2016 season is what launched DeBoer and Grubb to a new level of stardom as the Eagles ranked 35th in total offense (455.2 yards per game) and finished 7-6 overall with a loss to Old Dominion in the Bahamas Bowl. They accepted new positions at Fresno State — DeBoer as offensive coordinator; Grubb as offensive line coach — and would remain a package deal when Washington came calling after the 2021 campaign, by which point DeBoer was the Bulldogs' head coach. 

Now they're one win away from winning the Huskies' first national championship since 1991.

DeBoer: "I loved being around the people I was with. Chris Creighton is an amazing person. I cried my eyes out when I left that place. The morning I spoke with him, and he understood that this was an opportunity to go to Fresno at that time. It was good for me and my family. But that was a hard place to leave because there were so many great people that I surrounded myself with. Now, to me that's the key. It's wherever you go, the people make it what it is."

Keen: "It's been fun for me to text Ryan Grubb or Kalen DeBoer at times and just ask a question about something they're doing, and they'll get back and we can kind of speak the same language because I've been a part of that offense."

Jackson: "I actually got to play with Shaq Vann at Eastern, and now he's on [Washington's] coaching staff. He sent me a couple clips — I think it was before the Pac-12 championship — of some of our plays [from Eastern that they're using]. He said, ‘We're just scheming for the Pac-12 championship.' We were just reminiscing real fast. But man, it's been a treat watching them play."

Roback: "To be honest with you, man, it was very embarrassing going in there [at Eastern] and winning one game and having people think you guys suck. So they made you proud to be a part of the Eastern Michigan football team and not be shy about it anymore. They proved that every single year. And now look where they're at."

Creighton: "Super, super excited. Really, really proud. And some amount of, like, ‘I told you so,' too. You know what I mean? Not directed to the coaches, but just directed to whoever may have said the name wasn't big enough when he was hired or that kind of stuff."

Jackson: "The whole Eastern staff is going to the natty. That's pretty sweet." 

Michael Cohen covers college football and basketball for FOX Sports with an emphasis on the Big Ten. Follow him on Twitter at @Michael_Cohen13.

More on the College Football Playoff National Championship

• Everything to know about the championship game 
• Expert picks: Will Michigan or Washington win it all?
• Ranking the top 20 players in the championship game
• Michigan's 3-year build is at a crucial turning point
• Hail to the graybeards: Two teams built on experience

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