UCLA Football Preview: Northwestern Coaching Staff Filled with Successful Former FCS Coaches

Meanwhile, former Bruin punter David Akers is at the center of the Wildcat special teams.

Northwestern head coach David Braun is a young up-and-coming coach who rose from the FCS ranks to lead Northwestern to eight wins in 2023. (Photo Credit: NUSports.com)

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David Braun is in his third season as the Dan and Susan Jones Family Head Coach of Northwestern football. In his first year with the program in 2023, he lead the Wildcats to an 8-5 overall record and a 5-4 conference record. Northwestern was good enough to earn a berth in the Las Vegas Bowl, where they defeated Utah, 14-7.

Braun’s story is interesting. He was named interim head coach on July 14, 2023, and he had the interim tag removed on November 15, after leading the Wildcats to a 24-10 road win over Wisconsin.

So, wait a minute.

You mean to tell me that Northwestern found themselves with an head coaching vacancy in July, five months later than UCLA’s head coaching job opened (albeit UCLA’s opened the following year) and rather than immediately naming a new permanent head coach, they forced the guy to earn the job permanently by winning?

Wow. What a novel concept.

Meanwhile, Martin Jarmond not only filled the position permanently, he gave someone without even coordinator-level experience a five-year contract.

What makes Braun’s story more interesting is that he was hired by former Wildcat head coach Pat Fitzgerald to be Northwestern’s new defensive coordinator. In 2022, the Wildcats went just 1-11. Prior to joining the Wildcats, Braun had spent three seasons as the defensive coordinator for FCS powerhouse North Dakota State where he helped lead the Bison to two FCS national championships in three seasons. At NDSU, Braun coached under former Bison and current Fresno State head coach Matt Entz, who has led the Bulldogs to a 4-1 mark already this season.

Braun’s seven wins in his first season was the most for a Northwestern head coach since 1903 and his five Big Ten wins were the most by any first-year head coach in program history.

To be fair, Braun’s Wildcats came back to earth last season, going 4-8, but that’s still better than Fitzgerald’s 1-11. So far this year, Northwestern sits at 1-2. The Wildcats lost their opener at Tulane, 23-3, but rebounded to crush Western Illinois, 42-7, before losing to #4 Oregon, 34-14. Like the Bruins, they had last weekend off.

Braun’s offensive coordinator joined the Wildcats last season. Like his boss, Zach Lujan came to Northwestern from an FCS program, but Lujan spent seven seasons at NDSU’s rival South Dakota State. He started in 2017 as an offensive quality control coach but he was promoted to running backs coach a year later and quarterbacks coach a year after that. When current New Mexico head coach Jason Eck left SDSU to become the head coach at Idaho, Lujan added the offensive coordinator title too. The Jackrabbits won the FCS national championship in both seasons in which Lujan served as the offensive coordinator.

While both Braun and Lujan came to Northwestern from the FBS coaching ranks, defensive coordinator Tim McGarigle did not. After starting his coaching career as a Northwestern graduate assistant, McGarigle spent four years at Western Michigan. After spending 2016 as the linebackers coach at Illinois, he went to the NFL for a season as a defensive quality control coach for the Green Bay Packers. In 2018, he returned to his alma mater as the Wildcats’ linebackers coach before adding defensive coordinator duties last year.

Special Teams

Any discussion of the Northwestern special teams should really start with former Bruin Luke Akers, who spent 2020 and 2021 in Westwood. At UCLA, Akers was the Bruins’ starting punter for seven games in 2020 and 12 games in 2021. With the Wildcats, Akers, whose dad was an NFL kicker for 16 seasons, now is both a punter and place kicker for Northwestern.

As a punter, Akers has punted nine times with a long of 59 yards. He is averaging 48.4 yards per punt. Four of his nine punts have gone for more than 50 yards. So, he has quite a leg.

As a place kicker, he’s made all three of his field goal attempts including his season-long of 35 yards. He’s also made both extra points he has tried.

Grad student Jack Olsen seems to have taken over the PAT duties from Akers. While both Akers and Olsen each made two PATs against Western Illinois, Olsen was the only one attempting PATs against Oregon.

When it comes to kickoffs, Akers may have taken those over. Freshman Nikola Dugandzic was the kickoff specialist against Tulane, but he seemed to lose that job to redshirt sophomore Henry Helms. Helms was the guy for all eight kickoffs against Western Illinois, but Akers was the only kickoff specialist used against Oregon in Week 3. So, if I had to guess I would expect to see Akers kicking off too.

The one thing Akers won’t be trying against his former team on Saturday is returning punts and kicks. Sophomore receiver Drew Wagner is the only Wildcat to return any punts this season. He’s returned four punts for two net yards with a long of four yards. So, he doesn’t seem to be a very dangerous return man.

Look for redshirt junior running back Joseph Himon II to return kickoffs. While like Wagner with punts, he’s the only guy to have returned any kickoffs, even though he has only returned one kickoff. That one kickoff return came against Oregon and it was a good one. He returned it for 39 yards.


Go Bruins!!!

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