Another former Boise State football assistant lands a head coaching job

Former Boise State offensive coordinator Eliah Drinkwitz was named the football head coach at Appalachian State on Thursday.

Drinkwitz was the Broncos’ tight ends coach in 2014 and offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach in 2015. He spent the past three years as the offensive coordinator at North Carolina State, where he coached former Boise State quarterback Ryan Finley.

Drinkwitz replaces Scott Satterfield, who took the top job at Louisville.

Appalachian State is 10-2 and the Sun Belt Conference champion. The Mountaineers have won at least nine games each of the past four seasons and three straight conference titles.

“My family and I are excited to embrace and build upon the proud tradition of Appalachian State football,” Drinkwitz said in a press release. “... This is a special time for App Nation, and we will work tirelessly to uphold the championship tradition.”

Drinkwitz came to Boise State with coach Bryan Harsin in 2014 from Arkansas State. He got his first full-time college coaching job in 2012 and has risen quickly through the ranks.

Under Drinkwitz in 2015, the Broncos finished 15th nationally in scoring (39.1 points per game) and total offense (501.3 yards per game) while playing most of the season with then-true freshman quarterback Brett Rypien.

“I’m excited for him,” Harsin said, noting that he spoke to Drinkwitz. “I think all these guys should be head coaches and get their shot to go in there and run their program. ... Now he gets his opportunity at, I think, a really good place.”

Drinkwitz makes it seven former Boise State assistant coaches who are running FBS or FCS programs. Mike Sanford, who was Boise State’s offensive coordinator in 2014, was fired earlier this year after two seasons as head coach at Western Kentucky.

(For more on Drinkwitz, read the profile we published in 2014. It’s at the bottom of this post.)

Former Boise State assistants as head coaches

Boise State: Bryan Harsin (former offensive coordinator)

Washington: Chris Petersen (former offensive coordinator/head coach)

California: Justin Wilcox (former defensive coordinator)

Oregon State: Jonathan Smith (former quarterbacks coach)

Appalachian State: Eliah Drinkwitz (former offensive coordinator)

Montana State: Jeff Choate (former special teams coordinator)

UC Davis: Dan Hawkins (former special teams coordinator/head coach)

Note: Former Boise State head coach Dirk Koetter is the head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the NFL.

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Drinkwitz profile from 2014

By Chadd Cripe

ccripe@idahostatesman.com

Eliah Drinkwitz’s first inclination was to tell Gus Malzahn no.

He could not sell his house and move his wife and 2-month-old daughter from Arkansas to Alabama in 2010 to work as an entry-level, quality-control assistant at Auburn.

Then he talked to his wife, Lindsey.

“You’d be crazy not to,” she told him.

So Drinkwitz, with four years of experience coaching high school football and no experience playing college football, took the job.

The Tigers won the national championship that year - the start of a wild four-year stretch for the Drinkwitz family that included subsequent moves to Jonesboro, Ark., and Idaho, and jobs working for three different head coaches.

Now they’re settled in Meridian - “I’m tired of moving,” he says - with Drinkwitz serving as the tight ends coach and a recruiting dynamo for first-year Boise State coach Bryan Harsin.

“I’m very proud of him,” Malzahn said. “He’s got a bright future at this level. ... He’s a hard worker. He’s a very good example for kids and he has a good football mind.”

Drinkwitz’s career has been tied to Malzahn’s from the start.

Malzahn, who led Auburn back to the national championship game last season in his first year as the Tigers head coach, is a former high school coach, too. He hired Drinkwitz as an intern at Springdale (Ark.) High in 2004. When Malzahn left in 2006, Drinkwitz landed a job at Springdale.

And after bringing Drinkwitz to Auburn, Malzahn took him along to Arkansas State. Malzahn, who was the offensive coordinator at Auburn, took over the Arkansas State program in 2012.

Malzahn returned to Auburn in 2013. He offered to take Drinkwitz with him again but couldn’t promise an on-field coaching job.

Drinkwitz opted to stay at Arkansas State with Harsin, who made him the co-offensive coordinator and allowed him to call plays for the second half of last season.

“(Malzahn) is obviously a mentor to me,” Drinkwitz said. “I’m forever going to be grateful to him for giving me that opportunity. There are so many different things about who he is that you see in his leadership that you try to emulate.

“He always talked about finding your edge in this business and making sure you maintain your edge. That’s something I always think about.”

And what gives Drinkwitz his edge?

“That’s between me and my edge,” he said.

Drinkwitz endeared himself to his colleagues and new fans immediately upon arriving in Boise with his dogged effort on the recruiting trail. His midnight visit to tight end Chase Blakley on the first day of an open recruiting period helped the Broncos land one of the highest-rated players in their 2014 class.

“He’s like a little ball of energy,” Boise State offensive line coach Scott Huff said.

Harsin laughed last week in Las Vegas as he told the story of how he met Drinkwitz. Harsin was hired at Arkansas State in December 2012. After meeting with players, holding a press conference and posing for publicity photos, he told the assistant coaches that he didn’t know whether he would retain any of them but he’d have a better idea in a couple of weeks.

Harsin went back to his office, shut the door, looked outside and dropped his head in relief.

“The whole emotion of it,” hit him, Harsin said.

The quiet didn’t last long.

“I turn right here,” Harsin said, turning his head to the side, “and boom, there’s Eli right there, and he’s right in my face saying, ‘I want to be here.’

“I don’t even know this guy. I’m like, ‘Who are you?’ To me, at that point, I was like, ‘I’m sold on this dude.’ He didn’t sit in there like everybody else. He was right in there. He had the nerve to come in there and say what he wanted.”

Drinkwitz became one of Harsin’s most important assistants during that year at Arkansas State. Harsin called most of the plays for the first seven games (3-4) but turned his prized offense over to Drinkwitz. The Red Wolves went 5-1 the rest of the way.

“That guy is a supercomputer when it comes to football,” Harsin said. “I loved his passion - still do. When something needs to get done, it gets done and it gets done right. There are no do-overs.”

Drinkwitz began his studies at Arkansas Tech as a political science major with thoughts of becoming an attorney. His high school coach, Frank Vines, planted the seed of a coaching career, and Drinkwitz switched to an education major.

That set him up for a career as a high school coach. His first job was coaching seventh grade.

“All I wanted to do when I was a seventh-grade coach was coach high school football,” Drinkwitz said. “Sure I watched college football, but I never thought I was going to be a college football coach.”

His humble beginnings, though, obscure the quality of the experience he received.

Rhett Lashlee, now the offensive coordinator at Auburn, also was on the Springdale staff when Drinkwitz interned there. And they met with another up-and-coming offensive mind that year - Chad Morris, now the offensive coordinator at Clemson.

“If I was going to be a football coach, I was going to be around the best coaches I could,” Drinkwitz said.

That quest led him to Idaho, far from his Arkansas roots. He has spent much of the past seventh months meeting new people - at home and on the recruiting trail - and telling his story.

In four college seasons, he has been part of a national title, three conference championships and four bowl wins.

“Now to think I’m here coaching at Boise State, it’s unbelievable,” he said. “It’s probably more a testament to my wife having the faith to say, ‘We’ve got to do it,’ and to the Lord just opening doors.”

This story was originally published December 13, 2018 at 11:16 AM.