‘He Came Very Highly Recommended’: Why Mike Gundy Hired Todd Grantham as the Cowboys’ Defensive Coordinator

STILLWATER — Mike Gundy said he didn’t know Todd Grantham when his search started for a new defensive coordinator, but Grantham came highly recommended.

Oklahoma State announced Grantham’s hiring on Dec. 11. Grantham comes to Stillwater with a lot of power conference experience as a D coordinator, but his hiring in some ways felt out of left field because Grantham didn’t have ties to Gundy or OSU, and he was most recently in the NFL as the New Orleans Saints’ defensive line coach.

“So, I visited with some pretty prominent coaches,” said Gundy of how Grantham got on his radar. “These guys have extensive background on the defensive side of the ball. So I asked them in particular, who would you hire if you were looking to hire a defensive coordinator? I trust these guys, and particularly, one who said, ‘If I was coaching, I would hire this guy to be my coordinator.’ That’s how it happened. I didn’t know that guy. I didn’t know Todd. I didn’t even know where he was. And then I started the process and got involved in communications and had a very extensive interview with him, and so on and so forth. But that’s how it happened.

“He came very highly recommended from people that I trust and understand defense. When I spent time with him, very well organized. We had a four- or five-hour interview, I don’t remember what it was. But he laid everything out in front of me. Had a plan for this. ‘This is what I want to do. This is how I’m gonna do it. These are guys I’d like to hire. You want to vet them, whatever. I’m not saying it’s perfect, but this is what I want to do and this is how I want to do it.’ Just laid everything out. Essentially, when I walked away from the interview, he convinced me — what I needed was a head coach on defense. And I was very up front in communicating that to these guys, and then Todd, who you’re asking about, and he convinced me that he could be the head coach on defense, and I could let him do his job. Which is what I want to do.”

Grantham has rubbed shoulders with some highly successful coaches throughout his coaching and playing career. Grantham was a player under Frank Beamer at Virginia Tech. Beamer won 238 games as the Hokies’ coach, leading Virginia Tech to 23 straight bowl games between 1993 and 2015.

Grantham worked under his college coach from 1990 to 1995 before heading to Michigan State in 1996, when Nick Saban coached the Spartans. Under Saban, Grantham worked his way up to an assistant head coach title before jumping to the NFL for an 11-year stretch that saw him coach for the Indianapolis Colts, the Houston Texans, the Cleveland Browns and the Dallas Cowboys.

Returning to the college game in 2010, Grantham took over Georgia’s defense under Mark Richt before coordinating Bobby Petrino’s defense at Louisville. After three seasons there, Grantham jumped to Mississippi State to coach under Dan Mullen. After a 2017 season that saw the Bulldogs rank 10th nationally in total yards allowed, Grantham followed Mullen to Florida.

The name that stands out among all those names is Nick Saban, arguably the greatest coach college football has ever seen. When Grantham was discussing some of the guys he coached under, he had this cool anecdote about something he picked up from Saban.

“Going with Coach Saban, it’s just his attention to detail, not only in football, but also recruiting,” Grantham said. “In other words, your recruiting’s just like an NFL board — like an NFL Draft. Meaning you had your players ranked, and they were blocked off like, hey, these our first-round guys, these are really third- or fourth-round guys. These are guys that can contribute. You had it broken down to be exact, and you had your numbers. And based upon the way the recruiting process is going, you knew, if you had enough players at these positions.”

Grantham described his defensive scheme as “multiple” and provides players some flexibility with the moves between four-down and three-down fronts. He said success starts with stopping the run, which OSU fans will love hearing considering the Pokes ranked 128th nationally in rushing defense last season.

“No. 1, I think you want to keep it simple from the standpoint of, you don’t want people to run the ball,” Grantham said. “So you have to have the ability to stop the run. And at the end of the day, how do you affect the quarterback and make him play bad? I mean, if the quarterback doesn’t play very good, your chances of winning are not very good. So if we can eliminate the run, force him to throw it, and then when you get into, OK, making the quarterback play bad, what is that? Well, obviously, pressure. You can pressure. It can be post-snap disguise, meaning, hey, we’re showing one thing, and at the snap of the ball, it’s going to be something else.

“Because if you look at the history throughout my career, we’ve always been very high in turnovers, and we’ve been high in interceptions. And that reason is, one, making them one-dimensional, but then also trying to give the quarterback a picture, then that picture tells him where to throw the ball. Then we want to take that picture away, and we want to get to where the ball’s going to be thrown.”