Who: Bryan Nardo, Oklahoma State
Title: Defensive coordinator
Previous stop: Gannon University defensive coordinator (2022)
Why he's important: I can't count the number of Power 5 head coaches get on stage at a convention or clinic and testify that the level of ball one coaches is not necessarily reflective of one's coaching ability, that there are Power 5-level coaches out there doing the work in the lower divisions and in high school ball.
Only one has the stones to actually go out and hire one.
After plucking Mike Yurcich from Shippensburg University to coordinate Oklahoma State's offense in 2013, a decade later Mike Gundy again hired the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference's finest.
At Big 12 media days, Gundy explained the process that led him to Bryan Nardo. Since it's Mike Gundy, I thought it best to reproduce the story in full.
I hired Jim Knowles with Duke. He wasn't a fan favorite at that time. People were like, 'Who's Jim Knowles? What's Duke?' He fit what I was looking for at that time in an event front and had success at Duke when I felt like at times he might not have had the same talent that other teams had. I liked that.
Then I had (Derek) Mason come in. Highly intelligent. Players really liked him. Good motivator. Been in the pro level. He kind of got tired of a little bit. He came in after the season and said, 'Coach I love it here, I enjoy you, I need a break.'
So I (rolls eyes and head at the same time). We went back out and ended up with Coach Nardo from Gannon University.
I wanted to implement some odd front. You can't bring in a traditional coach and run the system you were in, because he doesn't know the system. The guys who coached you knew the system. I had a really good staff that knew the even front. Nobody knew the odd front. So I couldn't say, 'I want to run some odd front, you guys coach it.' They didn't really know it. So I had to go find an odd front guy.
I looked at every level. I went from the pro level, college level, high school level, juco level. There weren't a lot of guys that really knew the pure odd front. Brought Bryan in on the last interview. I didn't really know where he had come from, couldn't find video on his team. Flew in, picked him up, six hours later during the interview I said, 'This is the best coach.' I don't care where he came from. In my opinion, he's the best coach.
I asked my staff: 'You guys were in the interview with me. What do you think?' One guy said, 'How will he get in front of the team?' Another guy: 'I just worry about his relationship with the players.' I said, 'I'll get in front of the team. He doesn't need to get in front of the team, he just needs to coach defense.' Then we get him in here and he's fantastic in front of the team, got great people skills.
So it worked out good.
The 3-down defense has taken over the Big 12 in the same way the Air Raid did 20 years ago, and so Gundy didn't want a coordinator implementing someone else's ideas -- particularly because the new coordinator will have to teach them not only to the players, but to the staff. Co-defensive coordinator/linebackers coach Joe Bob Clements, pass game coordinator/corners coach Tim Duffie, safeties coach Dan Hammerschmidt, and defensive line coach Greg Richmond have 38 years combined experience at Oklahoma State.
Nardo has been in coaching since 2008, a 3-year GA stint at Ohio that, until now, represented his only coaching experience at the FBS level. He coordinated the defense at Division II Emporia State from 2012-19, then climbed to the FCS level as Youngstown State's linebackers coach in 2020. He was let go after the 2021 season.
Nardo called that a "dark time," but really it was a necessary step backward in order to take an enormous leap forward.
“The biggest thing was it got me back to being a coordinator,” Nardo said of leaving Youngstown and landing the coordinator job at D2 Gannon University. “It got me back to running my defense and being able to have a voice again and impacting kids. That was the biggest transition, was to get me back to believing in myself and believing what we could do.”
In one season, Nardo chopped more than 100 yards and a touchdown off the Golden Knights' per-game averages in his one season in [checks Google] Erie, Pa. Gannon went from 101st in pass efficiency defense and 95th in rushing to 50th and 30th, respectively. Along the way, Gannon's record improved from 5-6 to 8-3.
Over the course of that 6-hour interview, Gundy said, Nardo was most impressive with his questions, not necessarily his answers.
“I couldn’t stump him,” Gundy said in a podcast interview last month. “Very confident in his approach and his delivery in his interview. I would put stuff up on a board that I knew was kind of unrealistic. I said, ‘Well, we’ve seen this before. What are you gonna do?’ He says, ‘Well, I’d have to study that. How good is the quarterback? How skilled are they on the perimeter? I gotta take that away first, then I’ll do this.’
“But it wasn’t just like he said, ‘I got the answer.’ I’ll tell you what I liked about him, he said, ‘I’m not sure, but I’ll figure it out.’ … Stuff I was putting on the board for him, there really wasn’t an answer. I just wanted to see what he would say. And he’d say, ‘Well, can the quarterback run? OK, well than that’s an issue. Can he not run? Then I’m not worried about that, I can do this.'”
A 3-down front will allow Oklahoma State to take advantage of the type of athletes that are plentiful in Big 12 country.
"Defensively now, most teams are going more athletic second-level players because of all the RPOs," Gundy said at Big 12 media days. "Not just us, everybody in the country. We had a couple guys that I call tweeners, they're not real rush ends but they're not backers. They can play that tweener position. And that allowed us to make a pretty smooth transition this spring. So I think we'll be fine there."
Oklahoma State enters this season with modest expectations, picked seventh among the Big 12's 14 teams. Gundy is in makeover-mode on both sides of the ball; in addition to the change on defense, Oklahoma State will go under center and adding a tight end in an attempt to counter-act the 3-man front by expanding the line of scrimmage.
If both changes hit immediately, Oklahoma State has the type of schedule to mount a dark-horse run that most Big 12 observers are expecting out of Texas Tech. The Pokes play only two of the top six teams in the Big 12's preseason poll, which means they get to play all seven teams picked behind them -- seven of the bottom seven. Overall, it's the easiest schedule in the conference.
It remains to be seen how Oklahoma State performs this season, but Gundy's track record indicates Nardo's days as a Division II grinder are done. Yurcich spent six seasons in Stillwater, and has since coached at Ohio State, Texas and Penn State. Nardo could be in for a similar ride.