Cal Football hires Terrence Brown to help coach defensive backs
A new face with West Coast ties to lead the next generation of Takers.
It’s a Festivus miracle—Terrence Brown will be joining the Cal Football coaching staff!
Per the official announcement, Brown will be joining our current defensive backs coach—Tre Watson—to “share duties” in leading the secondary.
Brown is—unfortunately—a Stanfurd alumnus, but don’t let that taint your view of him! He started coaching as the cornerbacks coach for the Spring of 2015 at Cal Poly before moving on to become a defensive graduate assistant with Washington for the 2015 season. He was the full-time cornerbacks coach at Vanderbilt for two seasons, followed by two seasons as the assistant defensive backs coach back up at Washington. Per 247, we can evaluate his prowess as a recruiter; he’s listed as the primary recruiter of two three-star DBs at Vanderbilt and secondary recruiter of a three-star Californian DB at Washington, but it’s still early in his coaching career. He has also twice been honored as a member of 247 Sports’ 30 Under 30 in 2019 and 2020.
Here’s a list of all his stops as a coach, courtesy of the Cal announcement:
Terrence Brown Coaching History
Season: Team – Coaching Position (Postseason, Champions)
2015 (Spring): Cal Poly – Cornerbacks
2015: Washington – Defensive Graduate Assistant (Heart Of Dallas Bowl)
2016: Washington – Defensive Graduate Assistant (College Football Playoff, Peach Bowl, Pac-12 Champion, Pac-12 North Champion)
2017: Washington – Defensive Graduate Assistant (Fiesta Bowl, Pac-12 North Co-Champion)
2018: Vanderbilt – Cornerbacks (Texas Bowl)
2019: Vanderbilt – Cornerbacks
2020: Washington – Assistant Defensive Backs (Pac-12 North Champion)
2021: Washington – Assistant Defensive Backs
Present: California – Defensive Backs
In an interview with 247 after Washington’s win over Cal this year, Brown emphasized the importance of mental toughness among the DBs as well as trust in their training. He expects players in the secondary to contribute to stopping the run and would fit in with the old Tedford philosophy of players being “real physical”.
This hire fills the vacancy of special teams coordinator Charlie Ragle leaving to become the head coach of FCS Idaho State, but it wouldn’t surprise me to see some rearrangement among the coaches in the coming weeks so we can officially have a special teams coordinator.
Coach Brown was a 3* recruit out of Orange, CA where he had offers from Boise State, Oregon, Oregon State, and San Diego State before choosing Stanfurd.
Welcome to the Cal Family, Terrence!
My guess is this will free up WIlcox as well. Even though he is HC and a defensive coach, he's a DB at heart and was probably spending time with Tre. You could see how our DB's progressed over the year and improved. If we could see the same improvement out of some of our other position groups we will be in good shape.
Football has 3 components: offense, defense, and special teams. To have a good STs, you have to have your best players on the units. Also, for traveling squad limitations those players come from the 1 & 2 deep. So, when practicing ST's especially KO & KOR your 1's & 2's are the lads on the field. Ergo, you likely aren't practicing offense or defense at that time of practice. Which would leave a plethora of coaches to coach and assist in coaching STs. A group effort by all coaches. Only 1 or 2 coaches need to implement scheme and strategy. Then when on the practice field most, if not all coaches, can coach it up. So, I'm kinda OK with not having a ST's coach per se.
That said, I think STs as as important, if not more so, than offense or defense. Think Frank Beamer and how many games VT won due to their STs.