Ken Wilson is introduced as Nevada’s football coach on Dec. 10, 2021 in Reno. (Photo: Nevada Athletics)
Does Ken Wilson really know what he has gotten himself into with this Nevada Wolf Pack football team?
Yes, we understand that Wilson bleeds silver and blue. This, he says, is his dream job. He kisses a statue of Chris Ault every night before he turns out the lights. He loves Northern Nevada. He, like his mentor Ault, doesn’t have anything resembling the color red in his closet. And, like Ault, he will never, ever leave the Wolf Pack. Blah, blah, blah. Now get to work, Ken. From what we saw on Monday morning in Detroit, Wilson might have bitten off more than he can chew.
Yes, sure, Wilson might recognize Mackay Stadium. He might even recognize the now 75-year-old Ault. And the Reno Arch is where it was on Virginia Street back in 2013 when he left the Pack. But that is about it.
The Nevada Wolf Pack that Wilson loves doesn’t really exist anymore. Heck, the Wolf Pack we saw just 30 days ago doesn’t exist anymore. That team is off to the NFL, Colorado State, Washington State and San Jose State. One (linebacker Lamin Touray) even decided to go to Eastern Washington, of all places, rather than remain in Nevada.
Yes, Pack fans, the Pack has been gutted, thanks to Jay Norvell’s move to Colorado State. The 52-24 Quick Lane Bowl loss to mighty Western Michigan on Monday showed that this program is starting over. The 28-point defeat wasn’t as competitive as the score might suggest. It was a cruel Monday morning wake up call and a reminder this football program has been decimated. Wilson has a ton of work to do the next eight months simply to make this football team respectable.
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The decimation of the Wolf Pack even continued after the bowl game. Two Pack players, defensive back Jordan Lee and defensive lineman Daniel Grzesiak, jumped into the transfer portal. Lee played in the bowl game and had nine tackles. Grzesiak, according to the official statistics, did not play against Western Michigan.
Lee had a breakout year in 2021 for the Pack with 86 tackles, five tackles for a loss, five fumble recoveries and four forced fumbles and was arguably the second most productive player on this year’s Nevada defense for coordinator Brian Ward behind linebacker Daiyan Henley (team-high 103 tackles). And now all three of them (Ward, Henley, Lee) will be playing and coaching for Washington State next year.
So, yes, Norvell wasn’t the only former Pack coach stealing Nevada players this month.
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Wilson is facing the Wolf Pack’s largest and most complete rebuild since the school brought back the sport in 1952 after a one-year hiatus. But that was easy in 1952 compared to what Wilson will face in 2022.
The Pack, which didn’t have the funds to support big-time football in 1952 (according to Norvell the program still doesn’t have enough funds), simply cut out all scholarships and invited students to try out for the team 70 years ago. The Pack played just five games in 1952 and 1953 and only went to road games (Idaho State, Davis, Fresno and Chico State) where one tank of gas in a bus could carry them.
The Pack couldn’t even afford a real coach from 1952-54. Athletic director Jake Lawlor, a basketball coach, took over the program because he didn’t have any money in the budget to hire someone else. He only had one assistant coach (Hugh Smithwick), which is only slightly less than what Wilson has now. That rebuild back in 1951 and 1952 left the Wolf Pack a mediocre-to-horrible football program until Ault took over in 1976. Will the current rebuild take as long?
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Be patient, Pack fans. Wilson has never done this before. He’s only been a defensive coordinator for a handful of years in his three-decade coaching career and for most of his coordinator years he did the job with a co-coordinator. He’s basically a 57-year-old linebackers coach being given a head coaching job because he fit the one criteria athletic director Doug Knuth listed for the job: The chosen candidate (Wilson was the only candidate) can’t leave.
Yes, the Wolf Pack football head coaching job, like a supreme court justice, no longer has term limits. The only requirement is that you keep coming to work. Is that really what the Pack needs right now or is it simply because Knuth doesn’t want to be bothered anymore with hiring a coach in his two most high-profile sports? Basketball coach Steve Alford, after all, is under contract through the 2028-29 season. So give Wilson a chance. If the Pack goes 2-10 next year remember what he started with this winter. Given the expectations, the scholarship money invested in the players and his salary (roughly $1 million a year), and the what-have-you-done-for-me-lately world we now live in, he is facing the most difficult job a rookie head coach has ever faced in Wolf Pack history.
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The Wolf Pack should have let Chris Ault act as the head coach in the bowl game. Imagine the interest in the game. Imagine the excitement for the players, who would get to play for a Pack legend. Ault would have loved it.
The guy, after all, spent a couple of years teaching Italians how to run the pistol. You don’t think he would have loved the chance to coach the Pack in a bowl game one more time? You can bet he would have given the ball more than the 18 times combined that running backs Toa Taua and Devonte Lee got in Detroit. And you can bet the Pack wouldn’t have been embarrassed by four touchdowns.
The Pack, though, wasted a golden opportunity by not sending Ault to Detroit. Vai Taua is a nice guy, loves the Pack, the players like him and he took the bullet for his university by serving as the head coach in Detroit. But he wasn’t qualified to run the program last month. Taua has only been a full-time on-field coach for three years and he spent those three years coaching a position (running backs) his head coach (Norvell) could not have cared less about. And now Wilson has already named Taua as his assistant head coach. That seems a bit strange for a rookie head coach to name a relatively inexperienced coach as his assistant head coach. One would think that Wilson would have wanted an experienced, grizzled, veteran with two decades-plus experience as a coach as his assistant head coach. But, then again, he has that guy (Ault) on speed dial on his phone.
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The biggest question about the new Wilson era is which offense he will run. We have no idea what that offense was on Monday. It was sort of Air Raid Lite. Quarterback Nate Cox, for the most part, was simply running around trying to save his skin, hoping one of his fourth-string wide receivers would get open.
There’s no wonder Carson Strong opted out of that ludicrous (and cruel) bowl game. Strong, who is about as quick as honey dripping out of a jar, likely would have been sacked a dozen times on Monday.
Will Wilson hire Jim Mastro away from Oregon and bring back the pistol? Will he give former Pack coach Jeff Horton a call at San Diego State and ask him to revamp the 1993 Air Wolf offense? The Pack right now simply does not have an offense or even the personnel to run the Air Raid, Pistol or Air Wolf. They don’t have the personnel to run the wishbone, spread, Wing-T or even single wing. The Pack, one of the most dynamic offensive schools in the history of college football, is starting over from scratch on offense. An offensive coordinator will be Wilson’s most important hire.
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Wilson, according to internet reports, has hired a couple of his Oregon colleagues. Nate Costa, Oregon’s senior offensive analyst the last three years, will be the Pack’s quarterback coach. Kwame Agyeman, who is in his seventh year at Oregon, will be a co-defensive coordinator. He’s spent the last four years as a defensive analyst. There has been no report of Wilson hiring Mastro, who has been Oregon’s running game coordinator the last four years and has also coached at Washington State (with Wilson) from 2012-17 and UCLA (2011) since his 11-year career (2000-10) at Nevada under Chris Tormey and Ault. Mastro, like former Pack offensive coordinator Chris Klenakis, helped Ault develop the pistol and would be a perfect fit at Nevada.
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Klenakis, who is a former offensive coordinator and offensive line coach at Nevada and also bleeds silver and blue, would also have been a great fit with Wilson’s Wolf Pack. It was Wilson and Klenakis that were Ault’s first hires as assistants in 2004 when Ault took over the program for the third time.
Klenakis, like Wilson and Mastro, has gained tremendous experience outside of Nevada. He was an assistant at Southern Mississippi, Central Missouri, Iowa State, Louisville and other places. But Klenakis was just recently hired as the offensive line coach at Liberty, likely taking him out of consideration for a Nevada job.
You don’t think he wouldn’t have liked to come back home to Nevada? He grew up in Fallon, coached at Gabbs High and Churchill County High and the Wolf Pack (1990-99, 2004-09). His father, Tony, gave Ault his first coaching job in 1968 at Fallon High. Klenakis’ career, though, has seen him coach at Florida A&M, South Alabama and now Liberty since he was fired at Louisville after pleading guilty to a driving under the influence charge in August 2018.
