When Gary Patterson resigned as coach of Texas Christian in October 2021, midway through his 21st season with the Horned Frogs, the now-65-year old coach decided to take a step back and reevaluate where he and the college game were headed.
โIโd had a job since I was 9 years old,โ Patterson said. โJust kind of wanted to take a break.โ
For decades, football had been at the forefront of his and his familyโs life, so much so that his wife joked she was merely his โmistress.โ He wanted to spend time with her, with his grandkids. Plus, after a few seasons, he knew heโd be eligible for the College Football Hall of Fame, which was important to him.
Patterson ended up filling that time with football, anyway. He watched the game from afar, helping out as a consultant on staffs at Texas and Baylor, even working with Amazon Primeโs football coverage, just to score a subscription to Catapult (which specializes in athlete performance tracking technology), all along biding his time for the right opportunity to come along.
It came earlier this month, four years after his departure from Fort Worth, in the form of a text message from USC coach Lincoln Riley, whom he knew from their days coaching across from each other in the Big 12. The Trojansโ defensive coordinator, DโAnton Lynn, had left in late December for the same job at Penn State. Riley needed a replacement.
โHe wasnโt going to jump back into this for anything,โ Riley said Wednesday. โIt had to be the right opportunity, the right kind of place, the right kind of setting. I know he knows and believe heโs found that.โ
No one is more invested in that than USCโs head coach. Whether Patterson turns out to be the right fit at the right time for the Trojans may ultimately determine the trajectory of Rileyโs future with the program. Patterson will be Rileyโs third defensive coordinator in five seasons at USC.
โI think itโs an unbelievable hire by Lincoln,โ said David Bailiff, who worked with Patterson at New Mexico and TCU. โFor him not to be intimidated with Garyโs background, that all he wants to do is get USC better โ a lot of coaches probably wouldnโt hire Gary because heโs been a head coach for so long.โ
For Patterson, who never beat Riley in seven meetings while at TCU, it was a particularly ideal partnership.
โAny time that I was ever part of a team that had a great offense and scored a lot of points, we won a lot of ball games,โ Patterson said.
Patterson, however, hasnโt been a full-time assistant since the turn of the 21st century. He last served as defensive coordinator under Dennis Franchione, who brought Patterson with him from New Mexico to TCU in 1998. He was promoted to head coach in 2000, when Franchione left for Alabama. A week later, across the country, USC hired Pete Carroll.
Thatโs how deeply entrenched Patterson was for more than two decades at TCU, where his tenure, by any measure, was a staggering success. Over 22 seasons, Patterson led the Horned Frogs to 181 wins and six conference titles. Throughout, defense remained his calling card. Five different times during his tenure, TCU finished No. 1 in the nation in yards allowed, as Big 12 offenses struggled for years to adjust to his multifaceted 4-2-5 scheme.
But by 2021, while Pattersonโs TCU defense had largely remained strong, the luster of his long tenure in Fort Worth had faded. The bottom fell out that fall, as the Horned Frogs started the season 3-5. Informed that he wouldnโt be back the following season, Patterson instead resigned with four games left.
Now he returns not as a head coach, but as a coordinator, a step down that Patterson seemed just fine with when asked Wednesday.
โI love it, to be honest with you,โ Patterson said.
The entire landscape of college football has also been turned on its head since Patterson last coached, with the advent of revenue sharing and the rise of the transfer portal. But he didnโt seem all that concerned by those changes Wednesday. Mostly because he doesnโt expect it to affect what USC is asking him to do.
Trojans fans hope Gary Pattersonโs hire leads to more of this, when three USC players brought down a Northwestern running back last season.
(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)
โMy job is defense,โ Patterson said. โI donโt deal with NIL. I donโt deal with all those different things.โ
His reputation as a mastermind on the defense certainly precedes him, and at USC, thatโs where heโll be needed most. Bailiff, who worked with Patterson at New Mexico and served as his first defensive coordinator at TCU, said that hisability to diagnose what a defense needs is โsuperior from any person Iโve ever seen.โ
His signature 4-2-5 defense was designed, in part, to allow for such adaptability. With five defensive backs on the field most of the time, Pattersonโs scheme is intended to adjust to any offense, allowing for his defense to limit substitutions and match up against most personnel groupings.
That scheme, after four years away from the game, is likely to be different by the time itโs installed at USC. Patterson said he plans to marry his original 4-2-5 at TCU with concepts he learned at Texas and Baylor. He also plans to integrate some of what USCโs defense was already doing, with most of the assistants from last season expected to remain on staff.
โInstead of just coming in and saying, well, โThis is how weโre going to do it,โโ Patterson said, โitโs been a little bit more work of trying to put it all together.โ
Itโll be up to Patterson to put it all together on USCโs defense, which in four seasons under Riley, has never put things together for long.
โHopefully,โ he said, โ[I can] be that last piece to help SC get over the bar, get into the playoffs, to bring out a championship.โ