Ladysmith, Wis., native walked on at UW, before prosperous career in NFL
MADISON, Wis. — After Wisconsin head coach Paul Chryst weighed Jim Leonhard’s interest in replacing Justin Wilcox as defensive coordinator — “Is this something you’d like to do? Is this something you’d want to do?” he asked — Leonhard reflected on how everything had fallen into place after his 10-year NFL career.
“A year ago, if you were to ask me if this was going to happen, I’d probably would have laughed at you — not knowing exactly how it was going to go and how it would work out,” said Leonhard, who had no previous coaching experience prior to taking over the UW secondary last season.
“Paul brought me in and asked me if I was interested. He thought I was ready and he thought I could handle it. I was excited about the possibility and kind of wanted to see where I was at — if I really wanted to entertain the idea.
“It went a lot of places initially,” Leonhard acknowledged of his thought process, “trying to decide if it was the right time and if I was ready. The actual calling of the plays and designing everything, I feel very comfortable with. It’s the rest …
“It’s building the relationships with the guys and the staff. It’s making sure of all the details in the day-to-day (operation). It’s structuring practices and meetings. It’s kind of the whole big picture of it. I was just making sure I was going to be comfortable with that and the time that went along with it.
“The longer I thought about it,” said Leonhard, the energy building in his voice, “the more excited I got about the possibilities and what could happen and I jumped at the opportunity.”
Why is Chryst confident that Leonhard can make the jump from first-year assistant coach to coordinator?
“To me, for a coordinator, there has to be certainly a football knowledge level,” Chryst said. “Jimmy has far more than just a one-year level of coaching knowledge; X’s and O’s, scheme knowledge. In fact, I think he has got great football schematic knowledge.
“And, then, I think a big part of coordinating is connecting. It’s connecting the coaches and coming up with and coordinating the different units into a scheme. It’s connecting the coaches to players. It’s finding ways to connect players to players and how you play.
“It’s connecting how one unit plays off the other two units. In this case, how does the defense play off of and with the offense and the special teams? Jimmy has a skill that he can connect groups of people. As a coach, teacher, I thought he’d be really good last year at this time.
“Now, I know that he’s a heckuva teacher.”
During the interviewing stage, Chryst worked from the inside-out by first talking with defensive line coach Inoke Breckterfield, outside linebackers coach Tim Tibesar and Leonhard. “In my mind, it was, ‘What do you have within (the staff)?’ and then, ‘What’s out there that would be a fit?'” he said.
“I really feel fortunate with what we have in Inoke, Tim and Jimmy. In the end, I thought if it was from within, Jimmy would be the one that I felt really good with. He said he’d always thought about it and he’d be excited about it. That tells you he has self-confidence, and I have confidence in him.”
After making that determination, Chryst had a baseline to measure other candidates and eventually concluded, “I feel really good and excited about Jimmy being the next coordinator. You don’t want it to come across that you don’t believe in Inoke and Tim. It’s quite to the contrary really.”
We have our coordinator.
You may recognize him.?? https://t.co/2LsU9mowiVhttps://t.co/TqOvgI8JfO
— Wisconsin Football (@BadgerFootball) February 2, 2017
Chryst bounced his plan to hire Leonhard off Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez.
“Paul asked me about him and I said, ‘If he wants it, if Jimmy says, ‘Yes, I want to do it,’ then he’s ready,'” Alvarez related. “I thought he did a tremendous job with the secondary last year. I thought they played better than we’ve ever had a secondary play here.”
“The thing that has allowed him to make this jump was the type of football player that he was. He was a smart player. He didn’t have tunnel vision. He saw the whole field. He understood the game. He was the defensive quarterback. He had to tie it all together. He’s just a natural. He’ll be awesome.”
Why does the 34-year old Leonhard think that he’s ready for this jump?
“First of all, I love to teach football, I’ve always loved teaching the game,” he said. “I always felt my role (as a player) was to be that mentor to young guys, to help guys learn. So the transition to the coaching side has been pretty natural for me.
“The rest of it was learning how to do it — how to be you and not try to be fake with it — how to be genuine and eliminate a lot of the BS that can go along with coaching. It’s not about you. It’s 100 percent about the players, it’s 100 percent about their development.
“It’s helping them be better players and better people.”
Leonhard didn’t hesitate to run everything past his better half, wife Katie.
“Family is extremely important to me,” he said. “Coaching is a lot of time, a lot of commitment and she knows that just being around the game for so long. Not that I needed the OK, but it’s just the reassurance that it was the right decision and it was going to be a good for all of us as a family.
“She’s excited about it. She’s a Badger as well. She’s excited that we’re back in Madison. My two little boys (Reese and Graham) are big-time Badger fans and have a lot of energy. I truly enjoy every second that I’m at home. But I’m excited to take on this new challenge.”
True to his small-town Tony roots, he made sure to keep his family in the loop.
“They’re all very excited,” said Leonhard, whose mom and dad, Debbie and Don, coached. “They will be the first people to keep me in line — as always — if I start messing this thing up. They will be quick to call me out. I’ll have a lot of people keeping me humble and a lot of people keeping me in line.”
Leonhard put all his sounding boards to good use while pondering taking the DC position.
“I talked to a number of people,” he said. “Family, some former coaches and former teammates and friends of mine just to kind of see what they thought. From the guys I trusted and knew really well, I took a lot from what they said. It was exciting to get back some of the feedback that I did get.
“I give a lot of credit to some of those people I talked to in helping make this decision.”
Varsity Magazine Nov. 2, 2016 Jim Leonhard
For anybody who might point to Leonhard’s lack of experience in coaching and question his readiness to be a coordinator, Alvarez countered by accenting Leonhard’s football IQ and instincts as an NFL safety who was responsible for getting everybody lined up before the snap.
“He had to tie it all together,” Alvarez said. “He’d see an offensive formation and he would make all the adjustments for everybody. Then, if there was a motion, he’d have to adjust again. So you have to understand the defense to be able to do that. He has always been a coach on the field.”
Leonhard learned from some veteran coaches/coordinators. Rex Ryan topped his short list.
“Rex was a guy that I spent a lot of time with,” said Leonhard, who played for Ryan in Baltimore and with the New York Jets. “I’m not that brash personality. But he was the best teacher of football that I’ve been around. What most people would consider very complex, he made it simple.”
Leonhard was also schooled/influenced by Mike Pettine, Jim O’Neill and Jack Del Rio.
“These are guys that were all somewhat tied together,” he said, “but they made enough changes and put their own personality on it (the defense). I’ll take a lot from that. Not that we will be that style or type of defense. Obviously, we don’t need to re-invent things here.
“We play defense at an extremely high level. We have a lot of talent coming back — guys who know how to win and how to be successful. It’s not like you’re starting a project over. You’re more so taking it over and making sure it continues down the right path.”
That’s how Wilcox viewed it after replacing Dave Aranda, who left Wisconsin to be the defensive coordinator at LSU. Wilcox, who has moved on to run his own program as the head coach at the University of California, was instrumental in Leonhard’s successful transition to coaching last season.
Especially since the college game, Leonhard noted, is so much different than the NFL game.
“I learned a lot from Justin,” he went on. “I was able to sit back and handle the secondary and kind of watch the scheme and how you put it together to stop certain things, whether it’s the quarterback run game or different things that you don’t see week-to-week in the NFL.
“I got along with Justin very well and I loved his personality and the way he approached it. It was fun to be around him and these are big shoes to fill, no question about that. Obviously, he stepped in and filled some really big shoes from when Coach Aranda was here.
“The expectations are extremely high right now and I’m comfortable with that. I’m excited to be the next in line (as Wisconsin’s defensive coordinator). At the same time, I understand there are high expectations and high goals. We have our work cut out for us to reach them.”
The Badgers, under Leonhard, will still operate out of a 3-4 base defense.
“That’s who we are,” Leonhard said. “I love the flexibility in it. That’s what I played in during my career. I see the value in starting there and building your defense out of that. I’m excited to see what as a staff we decide to clean up a little bit or change.
“Like I said, we can roll out the same thing we did last year and have a lot of success. A lot of it will look very similar to people who don’t know. But I’m going to make it my own in some ways. And I’m going to make sure the players understand it and take ownership.
“It’s their defense. It’s not about me at all. That’s the thing I need to get across to everybody whether it’s the staff or the players. This is our thing. I’m hoping for any or all feedback from the guys who are around it every single day. I look forward to building relationships with the whole group.”
Leonhard will continue to coach the UW secondary in addition to his new duties.
“We lost some big pieces,” he said of the graduation losses of cornerback Sojourn Shelton and safety Leo Musso. “But I’m really excited about the group returning and the strides that I’ve seen them make in a year. Now they know what to expect from me and what to expect from each other.”
Leonhard has yet to determine whether he will coach from the field or the press box. “It’s too early,” he said of making a choice. “It will probably be a little trial and error, whether I mess around with it in the spring, just trying to figure out what’s right and what makes sense for this group of guys.”
As a pro, Leonhard never got much of a chance to put down his anchor.
“You’d like to be in one spot for your whole career but that wasn’t the way it worked,” said Leonhard, who made the best of his journey. “Every place is different. And it just really got across the fact to me there are a thousand different ways to have success.
“You have to find what works for you and what works for that group (of players). Whether it’s coaching a position group, or the defense as a whole, there are a lot of ways you can do it. It’s just a matter of trying to find what fits your skill, your talent, your personality and who the players are.”
In bouncing from one NFL franchise to another, from Buffalo to Baltimore to New York to Denver to New Orleans to Buffalo again to Cleveland, Leonhard said, “That’s where all the transitioning and changes helped me and my thought process on what football is and what it should be.”
That mindset was also shaped by his old coach, a Hall of Famer, no less, Alvarez.
“He had a huge influence on my career and the way I thought about football,” said Leonhard, who played for two defensive coordinators, Kevin Cosgrove and Bret Bielema. “Having him (Alvarez) right down the hall is going to be huge and I will make sure I use that resource as much as I can.”
Leonhard’s respect for Chryst is another reason why making the jump feels right.
“He’s a coach that is very open,” Leonhard said. “He wants you to be you and he wants you to take care of your business and also be a dad, also be a husband. I’m very appreciative of that because I know that’s not always the case. The players love him. And his door is always open.”
Of course, everyone says that.
“But it really is,” Leonhard insisted. “He means it. He cares about his players.”
So does Wisconsin’s new defensive coordinator. He cares about this program, too. And this university. And this community. It feels right because it’s the right fit. “Madison is home,” Leonhard said. “And I’m very excited to know that I’m going to be here and be a big part of Badger football.”