BOISE – With Boise State trailing 13-0 late in the second quarter against San Diego State last Friday and the offense scoreless and struggling to move the ball, new offensive coordinator Dirk Koetter wondered whether he had made the right choice to come back.
“I was looking up at my wife in the (seats) and thinking about drinking a Coors Light or something,” he said with a laugh.
It got a lot more fun in the second half. Koetter, back coaching on a college sideline for the first time since 2006, led the Boise State offense to five rushing touchdowns and 35 unanswered points in a 35-13 come-from-behind win over the Aztecs.
Koetter, who agreed to be the interim offensive coordinator for the remainder of the season when Tim Plough was fired on Sept. 24, had been mostly retired after serving as the head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the offensive coordinator of the Buccaneers, Jacksonville Jaguars and Atlanta Falcons during a 13-year NFL coaching career.
And he was reminded why he enjoyed the college game as opposed to the NFL. Koetter was Boise State’s head coach from 1998-2000 before leaving to be the head coach at Arizona State from 2001-06.
“I really enjoyed watching the pure joy and the smiles on the players and coaches faces, I really enjoyed that,” Koetter said. “I hadn’t seen that in a long time because the NFL is not like that. Singing the fight song and the rituals, they have a lot of rituals they do here that are pretty cool that I hadn’t seen. I really enjoyed seeing that.
“But the coach in me was already thinking about what next week was going to bring.”
Koetter moved back to Boise after retiring as the Falcons’ offensive coordinator following the end of the 2021 season. The move back was mostly to be back in Idaho and see his son Davis, a wide receiver playing for the Broncos.
He agreed to be a part-time analyst for the Broncos, watching spring practices and fall practices and helping provide his thoughts and input while also doing advance scouting on opponents.
But he didn’t travel on the road and still was playing golf three times a week. The balance was perfect.
Then the Boise State offense had arguably its worse game since the Broncos moved to the FBS level in 1996 in a 27-10 loss at UTEP in which the Broncos had just 177 total yards – they didn’t reach 100 in either passing or rushing – and scored just one touchdown.
Plough was fired the next day, and Avalos convinced his longtime friend and coaching mentor to help out as offensive coordinator for the rest of the season.
“When Andy asked me to do it I knew it was going to be a big lifestyle change because in this business you are either all in or all out and I was definitely riding the fence on all out, mostly out,” Koetter admitted. “Why did I do it? I did it because I felt I could maybe make a difference and help, and I felt an obligation to this program and definitely feel an obligation to Andy and the coaches and the players I know, and I don’t know all of them, but an obligation to them.”
The offense looked better with Koetter and new quarterback Taylen Green running the show against the Aztecs. The Broncos had a season-high 316 rushing yards and were nearly unstoppable once Green got involved in the running game in the second half.
But before you get any ideas or fantasies about next season, Koetter was quick to say he’s only doing this for the rest of 2022. He’s helping out this year, but has no desire or interest in doing it beyond that.
“The grind part of coaching is real and this is year 40 for me doing it and that’s why I wasn’t doing it anymore, because I had had enough,” Koetter said. “But this is a short-term endeavor and I can do my part and I’m asking those guys to do theirs and they did that last week. They did a good job of that.”
Asked to clarify that he was 100 percent done after this season, Koetter said, “Yes, this is short-term. This is a young man’s game. These guys, if you know how hard these guys worked with the whole recruiting thing, transfer portal, NIL, this is a young man’s game and I’m not a young man.”
Koetter said he didn’t reinvent things in the six days from when he took over to when the Broncos hosted San Diego State. In fact, he didn’t change that much at all.
“All the plays we ran in that game, give or take, were already in the system,” Koetter said. “Some of those plays (just) might not have been the best fit with the previous quarterback.”
Koetter admitted “there were more designed read plays” with Green under center but said they were plays the Broncos had practiced going back to the spring. It took a while for Green – and Koetter – to get into a rhythm, but once they found it they didn’t slow down.
“I think he just calmed down. I think he was a little nervous and rightfully so. Heck, I was a little nervous too,” Koetter said. “The fact that we were only down 13, to be able to go into the locker room and say we’re only down two scores (was big). Now I know with the way we had been playing two scores seemed like 20 scores.”
Koetter wasn’t spending 60 hours a week inside the facility prior to this past week but he was involved enough to know what was going on. And he decided to help because he knew the group could be better.
And although he admitted “it was weird” to be back on the sidelines of Albertsons Stadium, Koetter was glad to be there – and glad he helped contribute to a win.
“The main thing was as an offense that offense was underachieving in the first few games and no team wants to underachieve,” Koetter said. “I learned a long time ago, all you can ask of the players, unit, the team, is to achieve up to their talent level and the offense wasn’t doing that and we didn’t do that in the first half last week either.
“If this group of players can play to their level of talent, the rest of it will take care of itself.”
