2021 G5 Preview: San Jose State Is... Really Good?
Hearing numerous reports of Brent Brennan being "nice with it"
CYMI: This is a part of The Outside Zone’s full 2021 G5 preview series, which last looked at Army. You can find a master list for all of the previews here.
Some college football programs just aren’t meant to win for many reasons. Some are in a talent desert, leaving them without the natural recruiting base needed to build a strong foundation and forcing them into shaky and unsustainable recruiting practices to keep up with their opponents. Think UConn, Washington State, Oregon State or Kansas.
Others are stuck in a conference that doesn’t suit them, damaging them in recruiting and leaving them at the bottom of the totem pole, unable to generate the kind of success needed to leave the basement. Kansas, again applies here, as do schools like Rutgers, Vanderbilt and Duke. The location is perfectly fine, the schools are often very nice and have something to sell to recruits, they just can’t overcome losing at the rate that they do historically.
I could go on for hours. There are so many things that cause a college football program to fail repeatedly; so many factors that go far beyond the scope that fans and media so often operate within, circling “making bad hires” or “not landing good enough recruits.” It’s a complex sport that has to deal with extenuating circumstances, just like any other industry would.
Also, like in any other industry, some college football programs don’t win, seemingly without reason. Teams that exist in a decent or even great location, teams that aren’t overpowered in their conference, teams that should, in theory, have the resources to compete at least semi-consistently for bowl games, with the occasional jump up to conference title level play. These are your Illinois’, your Cals, your… San Jose States. They lose, and continue to lose, just because that’s what they do. There may be a lack of investment or something else happening below the surface that we can’t see, but for the most part, it just seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. They lose because they lose, and they can’t stop losing because that’s not what they do.
In my opinion, these are the hardest jobs in all of football. At the schools that have an obvious flaw, you are afforded two big things as a coach. Firstly, you have an excuse. There’s something that everyone can see, something you can point to and say, ‘That’s why I’m not winning more. That’s why this isn’t working.’
Secondly, when and if you do break through, you will be lauded, permanently, as an innovator. As someone who did the impossible and found a way to win with a program with no business winning.
The coaches at jobs that people love to describe as “sleeping giants” are afforded no such praise. When you win at a school with no obvious fatal flaw, you aren’t lauded as a master program builder, you’re lauded as the guy who happened to be in town when the program finally figured out how to do what people in the EA Sports NCAA video game have been doing for decades. Of course [that school] is doing well, why wouldn’t it be?
Obviously, that’s nonsense. I’m preaching to the choir here, I know that. Informed fans understand the dynamics that are at play to make these jobs so hard, and I like to think that I’ve accumulated a nice little community of informed fans here. At the core of all of those “sleeping giants” is a fatal flaw that keeps the giants asleep. Whatever it is. And every one of them has one thing in common: the absolute, undying belief that they will never break out of this cycle.
Again, in my opinion, (folks, welcome to the Outside Zone, it’s all opinion!) that’s what makes these jobs so goddamn hard, and so much harder than the jobs that have an obvious weakness. A lot of the time with schools like these, you aren’t fighting against something tangible. You’re trying to convince fans, players, university staff and everyone else that the cycle of losing isn’t fixed or immutable.
Every time I looked at San Jose State in 2020, I was reminded of the TV show Ted Lasso. I’m sure you’ve seen it, and if you haven’t, you’ve probably picked up the gist of it through online circles. If not, the extremely brief, spoiler-free summary is that an American college football coach travels to England to coach a Premier League team, despite not knowing anything about soccer.
Ted’s strength is his optimism, and he works to win and build a team through that, rather than through football knowledge. He’s openly and proudly cheesy as a way to break down the emotional walls built by fans and people within the organization after decades of mediocrity. The show is essentially about Ted fighting that same fight as coaches at these sleepy schools do; he’s dealing with intra-team conflict but he’s mostly battling against apathy in and around his club.
I don’t like the sports writing staple of comparing sports thing to pop culture thing, but God, San Jose State head coach Brent Brennan sure does remind me a whole lot of Ted Lasso. He’s college football’s most howdy doody-ass coach, from his endless slogans and mantras to this, one of the most earnest videos I’ve ever seen in my entire life.
“Look at that. Isn’t that fun?”
Also like Lasso – Brennan’s schtick is working. This is one of the hardest jobs in America, it’s a program that’s had essentially zero success since the 1980s, and not a single coach that was either (a.) able to keep things long enough to elevate SJSU or (b.) willing to stick around that long. SJSU has seen 19 coaches roll through town, and only three have made it longer than five years. None have surpassed the eighth season in town.
It’s unlikely that Brennan changes the latter, but he’s about to enter year five. He’s joining elite company at this point. If you make it to a fifth year at San Jose State, you’ve already beaten the odds, and it seems like if anyone would make a career out of this job, it’s the coach that’s built his entire brand around thriving in the face of comical odds with some of the weirdest programs in America. Along with some more standard jobs, Brennan spent time with Hawaii, Arizona, Cal Poly and Oregon State before he took over at San Jose State. He worked with the Spartans as an assistant for six years, meaning that he was good enough to get hired by Toney and to be maintained by Mike MacIntyre. He knows what it takes to win in jobs that aren’t supposed to yield winners.
And in 2020, after three years of growing pains, he proved it. San Jose State was one of the best stories in football, breaking through in a wide-open MWC with a team full of guys that didn’t quite fit in elsewhere. Former Texas A&M and Arkansas quarterback Nick Starkel, once referred to as “ass, my dude” by currently unemployed Instagram poster Tate Martell, led an offense filled with misfits. Kairee Robinson is a 5-8, 185-pound power back. Tyler Nevens is a 6-0, 225-pound speedster. The lead receivers were 5-11, 180 and 6-1, 182, respectively.
The defense was led by the opposite of Starkel, who went to College Station originally as a pretty highly touted recruit. Cade Hall arrived at San Jose State because he was a wildly undersized defensive end and a two-star recruit that claimed just one offer, from the Spartans. Like its leader, the whole defense seemed to succeed through sheer willpower, because it lacks the talent to be able to do what it did under any normal circumstance. This entire team had absolutely no business being as good as it was in 2020.
And now nearly the entire roster returns. Nine offensive starters are back, including Starkel, Nevens, and the entire offensive line. Receivers Tre Walker and Bailey Gaither will be difficult to replace, but everything else here is absolutely solid. The defense brings back literally everyone, including Hall, who was named the MWC Defensive Player of the Year last season; first-team All-MWC defensive end Viliami Fehoko; first-team All-MWC linebacker Kyle Harmon and a killer secondary.
Honestly, I don’t have much to say about the scheme here. San Jose State is running a lot of RPOs on offense and relied heavily on big plays for their success, which is fine. Starkel has a good arm and can make the throws, he’ll just need some new receivers to step up. The running game is pretty simple and operates primarily between the tackles, which both major backs are very good at. I don’t think this is going to be an amazing group, but it should still be really good.
The defense may be transcendent, though. Like the offense, I have very little in the way of scheme breakdowns here – Brennan is a smart coach but his best traits are in his people management, and that’s a little hard for me to break down on here. The defensive line is the best in the MWC and the cornerbacks are crazy aggressive. Honestly, I would be a bit surprised if SJSU doesn’t win another Mountain West title this fall. How bizarre.