Northwestern head coach Pat Fitzgerald made an out-of-the-box hire in tapping David Braun from North Dakota State to be his new defensive coordinator.
Braun has never coached at the FBS level, though he comes from a program that is an FCS dynasty. North Dakota State has won nine of the last 12 FCS national championships. In his four years in Fargo, Braun won two national titles, reached three national championship games and posted a record of 49-7.
That’s a pretty good track record comparable to Alabama, Georgia and the best programs of the FBS.
Still, there's not a lot on the record about Braun, save for his resume, which includes stops at Winona State, Culver-Stockton, UC-Davis and Northern Iowa. He has yet to be officially announced in his new role and hasn't spoken to the media.
But one person that does know Braun is Jeff Kolpack, who writes for Forum Communications and has covered North Dakota State football since 1995. He says the Wildcats are getting a smart, even-keeled coach whose defenses play with physicality. And Northwestern fans will like hearing that Braun’s style of defense is reminiscent of former NU defensive coordinator Mike Hankwitz’s.
Despite all of North Dakota State’s success, some Bison fans on football message boards didn’t seem to be all that sorry to see Braun go. They think that the Bison defense regressed under his leadership.
Do those comments have any validity to Kolpack?
“Zero,” he said. “Nine titles in 12 years have created some unrealistic expectations.”
North Dakota State did field the worst defense of Braun’s tenure in 2022. Yet the Bison still ranked 16th in total defense (329.3 ypg) and ninth in scoring defense (20.2 ppg) in the FCS. You quickly learn that what’s considered disappointing at NDSU might be seen as elite at other programs. Northwestern fans would take a Top 20 defense in a heartbeat.
Part of the reason for 2022’s backslide is because the 2021 defense was so dominant. On their way to the national title, the NDSU defense allowed just 264.7 yards and 11.1 points per game to lead the nation as the Bison went 14-1. This year, they went 12-3 and fell a game short, losing the championship game to South Dakota State last Saturday.
More important than those numbers, Kolpack said that he saw improvement in North Dakota State from the beginning to the end of the season. He thinks that the reason they had a drop-off was that the Bison were young up the middle, particularly at defensive tackle.
“I'm sure that Pat Fitzgerald saw that as a sign,” said Kolpack. “This year he had to coach a little more, and they got better.”
Disappointed fans are probably a little salty from the national championship game, where South Dakota State – a better team, according to Kolpack – laid a 45-21 whipping on the Bison while racking up 506 yards of total offense. It marked just the third time since 2010 that North Dakota State didn’t win the final game of the year.
Northwestern fans will like hearing that Braun’s system at North Dakota State is more similar to that of Hankwitz, who ran Northwestern’s defense from 2008-20, than it is to the just-fired Jim O’Neil, who presided over two disastrous seasons that saw the Wildcats go 4-20 and finish 119th and 111th in the nation in rushing defense.
Kolpack said that defense has been the foundation of North Dakota State’s amazing run of nine titles in 12 years. That defense was coordinated from 2014-18 by Matt Entz, who has been the head coach of the Bison since 2019 and hired Braun.
The defense the Bison run is primarily a Tampa-2 system, a 4-3 base with two high safeties designed to take away big plays. Hankwitz favored a Cover-4 defense, but the basic philosophy of both schemes are similar.
In a Tampa-2, it’s nice to have one explosive three-technique that can penetrate and wreak havoc; think of Warren Sapp of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. It also requires a dynamic linebacker who can fill gaps in the run game but also be athletic enough to drop to the deep middle in pass coverage. Think Derrick Brooks for those same Buccaneers or Brian Urlacher for the Chicago Bears.
Kolpack thinks that linebacker play will be a key to the defense’s success at NU.
“The linebackers have to be smart,” he said. “All three positions are tough to learn. You need smart linebackers to run his system.”
Northwestern prides itself on recruiting intelligent, instinctive players, so that may be a good fit.
Kolpack added that North Dakota State put its cornerbacks in press-man coverage quite a bit under Braun. We’ll see if he feels he has the personnel to continue to do that in Evanston.
The other aspect of Braun’s background that has given some fans pause is the fact that he’s never coached at the FBS level. And Braun is moving to the Big Ten, a Power Five conference that represents the highest level of the college game.
But Kolpack says that the leap to the Big Ten shouldn’t be too much of a concern. He’s seen several Bison coaches make similar jumps over the years.
"Chris Kleiman and the three or four coaches he took with him to Kansas State have done okay," he said.
After winning four national championships in his five years in Fargo, Kleiman has gone 30-20 over the last four years at Kansas State. This year, the Wildcats won their first Big XII title in 10 years and played in the Sugar Bowl, their third bowl appearance in four years.
Football is football, as coaches like to say.
Besides, North Dakota State has gone 9-4 against Power Five teams, including a win over then-No. 13 Iowa in 2016. Northwestern is an eerily similar 9-3 under Fitzgerald when dropping down a level to play FCS teams. Furthermore, the Bison this year were able to beat the Southern Illinois team that knocked off the Wildcats.
O’Neil’s defenses struggled on the field, but one area he excelled was recruiting. Recruiting at the Power Five level figures to be a whole new ball game for Braun.
The scholarship limit goes from 63 at the FCS level to 85 in the FBS. He will no longer be trying to lure recruits to what is beyond a doubt perceived as the best program in FCS football. Now he’ll have to sell a program that is currently riding an 11-game losing streak and has higher academic standards than just about all of the schools it’s competing against.
Kolpack couldn’t really speak to Braun’s recruiting ability. He didn’t feel like he knew Braun very well personally, but everything he heard about the coach was positive.
“He seems pretty even keeled and a pretty smart guy,” said Kolpack. "Those that know him well speak very highly of him. He seems like a good guy."
