Nick Saban and Alabama gave Boise State’s new offensive coordinator a needed boost
After an unexpected exit from Washington and a short stint at Kansas, new Boise State offensive coordinator Eric Kiesau was out of work in early 2015 and unsure if he wanted to jump right back into coaching college football.
Then Alabama coach Nick Saban called.
Kiesau was lying on the couch in his Seattle home, watching cartoons and contemplating how much time not coaching would free up for him to spend with his son, when a blocked number popped up on his cell phone. He almost didn’t answer, thinking it was his mother and he would call back later, but he picked up and was immediately skeptical when the caller on the other end introduced himself as Saban.
Sure enough, it was Saban calling with a proposal. He heard about Kiesau through Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin — Alabama’s offensive coordinator at the time — who had heard about him from former Washington coach Steve Sarkisian.
Kiesau was Sarkisian’s offensive coordinator in 2012 and 2013 when the Huskies transitioned from a traditional offense that huddled between plays to a no-huddle scheme. Saban was interested in doing the same, so he essentially offered Kiesau a one-day tryout.
Kiesau packed as much as he could into a suitcase, gathered his no-huddle presentation and flew to Alabama. The result was what he described as the most influential season of his career. He shared the sideline with Saban, Kiffin and Mario Cristobal, who was then the Tide’s tight ends coach and recruiting coordinator and is now Oregon’s head coach, and Alabama went 14-1 and won the national championship.
“It was good to just kind of sit back and observe and watch and really just kind of reflect on myself as a coach and obviously look at these great coaches in front of me and how well they do it and how detailed they are,” Kiesau said Wednesday.
At Alabama, Kiesau was an offensive analyst — a behind-the-scenes position garnering plenty of attention these days with Joe Brady’s ascension from an analyst for the New Orleans Saints to an offensive wunderkind at LSU and now the Carolina Panthers offensive coordinator.
Kiesau isn’t behind the scenes anymore, though. Heading into his fourth season at Boise State, he’s taking over an offense that finished last season ranked No. 19 nationally with 34.7 points a game.
Boise State announced Kiesau as its new offensive coordinator Wednesday. He spent the past three seasons coaching the Broncos’ wide receivers and had the co-offensive coordinator title added in 2019.
“I’m just very honored and very humbled by this opportunity because this is such a special place,” Kiesau said. “Knowing what this place is all about and the program we have and the direction it can go, I’m very excited about the future.”
Kiesau replaces Zak Hill, who spent four seasons at Boise State before announcing Dec. 15 that he was leaving to accept the same position at Arizona State. Hill had been the Broncos’ primary playcaller since 2017, though head coach Bryan Harsin, himself a former offensive coordinator, remained involved.
Kiesau said that he and Harsin have not discussed who will call the plays in 2020, but he anticipates the role continuing to be a collective effort.
“We have a process we used in the past before I ever got this job,” Kiesau said. “It’s a process we’ll continue to refine and get better and move forward.”
Kiesau also said not to expect many schematic changes from the offense.
“That’s why the continuity is so good,” he said. “You’re not going to have somebody try to change the success we’ve had in the past. You just want to build on it and try to make it better.”
Recently, the Broncos have been focused on building from within.
Five of Boise State’s last seven offensive coordinators have been promoted from within, beginning with Harsin, who was the Broncos’ offensive coordinator from 2006 to 2010. Brent Pease was Harsin’s wide receivers coach and replaced him as offensive coordinator in 2011.
Robert Prince coached wide receivers at Boise State before he was promoted to offensive coordinator in 2012. Eliah Drinkwitz — the newly appointed head coach at Missouri — coached tight ends in 2014 before taking over as offensive coordinator the following season.
The lone outliers during that stretch were Mike Sanford, who coached running backs, quarterbacks and receivers at Stanford before taking over as Boise State’s offensive coordinator in 2014, and Hill, who was at Eastern Washington and briefly at Hawaii before joining the Broncos in 2016.
“The most important thing at Boise State is (finding) the right fit to fit into our culture and what we’re doing,” Kiesau said. “At the end of the day, it’s what’s best for the Broncos and what’s best for the program and how we put ourselves in that championship mode moving forward.”
Kiesau takes over the offense after having previously served as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Colorado (2009-10), Washington (2012-13) and Fresno State (2016) and as the interim offensive coordinator at Kansas over the final five games of the 2014 season.
“Eric Kiesau did a great job working with our offense this past year, helping us win another conference championship,” Harsin said Wednesday in a press release. “He’s been phenomenal with our wide receivers, but he played quarterback and he’s coached quarterbacks at the highest level. He knows what we’re trying to do, and I’m fired up to see him take this offense, continue to grow and develop it, and help us improve as we try to win another Mountain West championship.”
Kiesau played quarterback at Glendale Community College and Portland State. He began his coaching career in 2000 as Utah’s running backs coach before spending three seasons as Cal’s wide receivers coach and eventually moving to Colorado, where he was appointed to his first offensive coordinator post in 2009.
While he took snaps as a player, much of his success in the coaching ranks has revolved around developing receivers and tight ends. At Cal, he worked with future NFL stars DeSean Jackson and Keenan Allen. At Washington, he mentored tight end Austin Sefarian-Jenkins — a second-round pick in the 2014 NFL Draft.
In his first season at Boise State, Kiesau coached Cedrick Wilson Jr., who broke the program’s single-season receiving yardage record with 1,511 and was a fifth-round pick by the Dallas Cowboys. The past two seasons, he oversaw John Hightower’s transition from a rarely used junior college receiver to one of the most dangerous deep threats in the Mountain West and Khalil Shakir’s emergence as one of the top receivers in the country.
Kiesau’s success with receivers doesn’t mean developing quarterbacks is foreign to him, though. He said playing the position gives him a unique perspective, and he’s always had one foot in the quarterbacks room.
“I have been coaching the receivers from the quarterback’s perspective anyway,” Kiesau said. “What I am excited about is I think maybe we’ll have some more quarterback and receiver meetings together, just so we’re all on the same page and talking the same language.”
The Broncos return quarterbacks Hank Bachmeier and Chase Cord this season, and on Tuesday they got a commitment from Texas native Cade Fennegan, who will join the team this summer after returning from his LDS mission to Argentina.
Boise State also gets back leading receivers Shakir and CT Thomas — who combined in the fall for 104 catches, 1,394 yards and 11 receiving touchdowns — and leading rusher George Holani, who finished his true freshman season with 1,014 yards, extending the Broncos’ streak of seasons with a 1,000-yard rusher to 11 straight.
“When you have a foundation of a run game, it makes it very hard to defend when you start doing some other things with it,” Kiesau said. “I’m excited about George and can’t wait to get him going.”
Wednesday’s release did not say who would replace Kiesau as wide receivers coach. The Broncos are also looking for a running backs coach after Lee Marks’ departure for Fresno State. Kiesau didn’t attach a timetable to either hire.
“We don’t put a timetable on it because it’s about finding the right one,” he said. “So, when that time is right and we’ve got the right guy and the right fit, we’ll bring him onboard.”
This story was originally published January 15, 2020 at 12:38 PM.
