It has only been four years since the start of Brandon Staley’s tenure as a head coach and two since its end.
If all had gone according to his original plan, he’d probably still be the head coach of the Los Angeles Chargers. Instead, Staley spent this summer in Irvine, Calif., at training camp as the New Orleans Saints’ new defensive coordinator, hired by first-year head coach Kellen Moore this spring.
For Staley, the job is a return to a past life. He installed a new defense under L.A. Rams coach Sean McVay in 2020, and it became the NFL’s best. That vaulted Staley into a head coaching job, but he was fired in 2023 after a top-heavy and frequently injured Chargers roster underperformed and his defenses fell to the bottom of the NFL in many metrics. He took an assistant head coaching role in San Francisco in 2024 before Moore — his former offensive coordinator in 2023 — hired him in New Orleans.
The 42-year-old has gotten grayer. Tough lessons — about coaching, about himself — will do that to a man.
“There’s that saying, ‘you don’t need to be old to be wise, but you can’t have wisdom without experience,’ and I think that really applies to me,” Staley said with a small laugh. “What I thought I knew in 2020 and what I know now are so different.”
There’s no self-pity here; in fact, Staley exudes a bit of an edge. Working with Moore and his new Saints players these last few months has returned in Staley a familiar energy.
“It just felt really good to be at the beginning of something,” he said. “I think when you’re at the beginning, there’s that fresh possibility.”
Moore’s hiring of Staley fits into a familiar trend that accelerated this offseason: first-year head coaches, mostly offense-oriented, who have turned to former head coaches to run their defenses. Brian Schottenheimer hired Matt Eberflus in Dallas, Ben Johnson hired Dennis Allen in Chicago, Aaron Glenn hired Steve Wilks with the Jets.
Few know what the job of a head coach is really like — for better, and sometimes for worse. These first-year coaches sought experience and perspective.
Being able to bounce things off Wilks, the Arizona Cardinals’ head coach in 2018, “has been really, really good,” said Glenn, who took over the New York Jets this offseason after serving as defensive coordinator for the Detroit Lions. ” … I pick his brain as much as I can.”
Schottenheimer and Eberflus — who helmed the Chicago Bears from 2022-24 after four years as the defensive coordinator of the Indianapolis Colts — had never previously worked together. But they spent much of their free time in the winter and spring hiring the rest of the Dallas Cowboys’ staff and discussing the direction of the program — and what Schottenheimer could expect from his new position. Navigating the unexpected is, of course, key. One week before the start of the regular season, the Cowboys traded All-Pro pass rusher Micah Parsons to Green Bay, a move that asks Schottenheimer and Eberflus to completely change the identity of their defense.
“I wanted to be open and really just be a sounding board for him to ask questions,” Eberflus said earlier this summer. “As a head coach, you have your philosophies and the things you want to do and how you want to do them. But I believe that it’s invaluable to have somebody (on your staff) that has done the job.”
“You can’t see around every corner. You try to look, but you can’t see around every corner.”
It’s not just rookie coaches who are seeking experienced leadership on the defensive side of the ball. In San Francisco, Kyle Shanahan pursued trusted former assistant Robert Saleh, the Jets’ head coach from 2021-24, to develop the rebuilding 49ers defense.
Saleh’s success as Shanahan’s defensive coordinator from 2017-20 earned him the Jets job. Now, he views Shanahan’s seat a little differently.
“(Before), you have a feel for his issues but you don’t really understand his issues because you haven’t been through it yourself,” Saleh said. “So there’s more of an empathy this time around. I can feel when (Shanahan) kind of has the burden of the organization on his back and he just needs a ‘Hey, how ya doing?’ …
“You’re on an island. It’s a lonely place,” he added, laughing.
Saleh said that a head coach can have phases where it feels like there is “always a fire,” and that he has to solve the problems for everyone. When Saleh notices shades of a familiar stress reflected every so often in Shanahan’s face or demeanor, he makes it known he’s there if needed.
“Just to be an extra set of eyes, another ear for him to talk to, someone who has the empathy to understand what he’s going through — I’m always here for him,” Saleh said. “But, you know, coming in and trying to re-invent the wheel and tell him how I did things, who the hell am I?”
Earlier this month, Johnson, the 39-year-old head coach of the Bears after three highly successful seasons as the Detroit Lions’ OC, said he has gotten advice during morning visits with Allen, who served as the Saints head coach from 2022-24 after seven years in New Orleans as defensive coordinator.
“He said, ‘When you’re in that seat, you got to come into work every morning and say there are going to be four or five things that come across my desk that (you’re) not anticipating,’” Johnson recalled. “If you think that it’s going to be smooth sailing, you’re going to be disappointed, but if you come in with that expectation, you’re going to be just fine.”
Chiefs head coach Andy Reid and defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, shown in 2023, are considered a model pairing. (Denny Medley / Imagn Images)
Coaches across the league view pairings such as Andy Reid and Steve Spagnuolo in Kansas City or Minnesota’s Kevin O’Connell and Brian Flores as models for success. Having an established, veteran defensive coordinator who was once a head coach can help a team in a number of ways, especially if the current head coach calls offensive plays.
That head coach has to understand what he can’t, or won’t have time, to do. Experienced defensive coaches lend insight into practice structure, the style of walkthrough the team should run and changing schematic trends, and generally have a tested teaching method.
Setting aside ego to bring aboard an assistant coach with potentially more experience (and hardware) is important.
“It’s like the one time in decision-making where you have to (operate as though) the result drives the process,” said O’Connell, who hired Flores as his defensive coordinator in 2023. Flores helped former Patriots coach Bill Belichick win four Super Bowls before coaching the Miami Dolphins from 2019-21. In Minnesota, he has one of the NFL’s top defenses.
“That’s not just once the hire is made. It’s thinking about the layers of the coaching staff, the layers of the schematics and how it will all fit from a complementary football landscape,” O’Connell continued. “I envisioned when I hired Flo that … I could lean on him to own the defense. I wanted them to build a team within the team.”
If offensive-minded head coaches get the top job based on the success of their schemes, they also know that hand-picking a defensive coach who can rip apart their playbooks on the practice field will make everybody better.
In 2017, McVay’s first season as the 30-year-old head coach of the Rams, he leaned on the 69-year-old defensive coordinator Wade Philips, a three-time head coach. When McVay replaced Phillips with Staley in 2020, he started allowing more live team periods in which the men called plays against each other as if they were rivals on opposing teams. The battles that training camp between McVay’s offense and Staley’s new-wave defense got so heated, McVay would leave the field steaming; he once ended a session early to go problem-solve in his office. Eventually McVay altered his own scheme, and those training camp days partially inspired the trade of quarterback Jared Goff to Detroit for veteran Matthew Stafford that offseason.
The Rams kept the live periods with Raheem Morris (another former head coach-turned defensive coordinator, now again the head coach in Atlanta) in 2021-23 and first-year defensive coordinator Chris Shula in 2024.
Moore and Staley now do this in New Orleans. A particularly competitive red zone 11-on-11 period at training camp in August felt like a throwback to Staley’s time in L.A. Moore’s offense (still missing a full-time quarterback) couldn’t score, while Staley’s defense came alive, smack-talking, high-fiving and churning up the sod under their cleats as they made stop after stop. Veteran linebacker Demario Davis at one point skipped over to the crowd of reporters clustered with notebooks behind the sideline. “They’re hoping and wishing!” he called, “write that! They ain’t touch the paint all day.”
Brandon Staley has taken what he learned as a head coach into his job as the Saints’ defensive coordinator. (Stephen Lew / Imagn Images)
O’Connell, who was the offensive coordinator in L.A. in 2020 and ’21, also installed live periods in Minnesota. In preparation for each training camp, O’Connell and Flores build out a progression of these periods throughout the summer and into the preseason.
Flores runs an aggressive defense that often changes forms after the snap and sends exotic pressure at the quarterback. O’Connell understands that playing such a defense at real speed in the live periods can be frustrating — but it also encourages development for both sides. If second-year quarterback J.J. McCarthy can learn to diagnose the most confusing pressure looks he’ll see in the safety of a practice setting, the belief is that everything else will slow down when the Vikings face real opponents.
“There’s been some days the defense ‘wins’… but it (still) seems like the arrow is up for both sides. That arrow doesn’t need to be the same. That’s (what) teams that are truly built the right way understand: as long as the arrow is up, doesn’t matter what that looks like,” O’Connell said. “There’s growth potential for everybody.”
Several other teams use live periods. Reid and Spagnuolo are infamous for these, and for their “grueler” double-digit-play drives, tailored to test players’ physical and mental limits. Yet the frequency, competitiveness and overall functionality of live periods still depends on the level of the players and how advanced the coaches/coordinators are.
Johnson holds live competitive periods and sometimes goes live in practice despite a pre-planned script for certain portions. Bears defensive end Montez Sweat told NFL Network this summer that he had more live periods in training camp this summer than any other time in his career. Allen, said Johnson, “shows no mercy. … He’s keeping his foot on the pedal and wants to keep installing and bringing the noise.”
“I don’t like this script. I’m going rogue.”
– Ben Johnson pic.twitter.com/WXg0iLwXUs
— Coach Dan Casey (@CoachDanCasey) August 21, 2025
Schottenheimer allows Eberflus’ defensive group to set certain matchups in one-on-one drills based on what coaches want to see, or how they feel specific players should be challenged. Where some coaches might not want a defense to aggressively make plays on the ball against their teammates, Eberflus has always stressed turnovers (even in 2024, the season Eberflus was fired, the Bears finished tied for 9th in defensive takeaways). Schottenheimer agreed.
“Allowing us to punch at the football every single day as an offensive coach and saying you’re OK with that, most offensive coordinators wouldn’t be OK with that,” said Eberflus. “He is, because it’s about winning.”
Legendary, too, are the old practice battles between Shanahan and Saleh when Saleh last was the 49ers’ defensive coordinator. The two coaches would sometimes go so hard at each other in training camps that they wouldn’t speak to each other for days.
But out of those competitive settings evolved Shanahan’s dominant offense, and Saleh’s innovative “Wide 9” defense. Recapturing some of that former magic reunited the two coaches this offseason, but their task is now very different. The 49ers are partially rebuilding, with their first five draft picks this spring dedicated to defensive positions.
“So there’s a little bit of balance, ‘OK, we can’t just pick up the history book and repeat,’” Saleh said. “There’s a lot of different things that have happened. There is recall, but it’s a completely new adventure. … The competitive part is still there. But (there’s) been so much more dialogue and discussion in terms of — we’re at certain spots in our careers where I feel like it’s been very productive.”
Saleh consulted in Green Bay for head coach and close friend Matt LaFleur in the latter weeks of the 2024 season and sought advice from Belichick about why he once returned to coach under Bill Parcells in 1996 after five seasons as the Cleveland Browns’ head coach.
“It was the same conversations, like he understood why Bill (Parcells) was doing things (after Belichick was a head coach),” Saleh said. “So he went back to a championship format, in terms of how they operated. And it helped him understand the ‘why’. For me, it’s coming back to a championship organization that I was familiar with. And it’s been great, because all of the ‘whys’ are starting to click.”
Some of Saleh’s time in New York feels like a wound, but one he can revisit because of what he learned. Having a larger view of the entire roster — offense, defense, special teams — for a few years as a head coach now informs some of Saleh and Shanahan’s collaboration.
“He can talk to me in a way that is more advanced than he probably talked to me back then,” Saleh said, “and it’s welcome.”
Kevin Fishbain and Zack Rosenblatt contributed reporting.
(Illustration: Kelsea Petersen / The Athletic; photos: Cooper Niel, Brooke Sutton, David Berding / Getty Images)