Slamming Tim Walz’s football resume is a weird way to say you don’t know ball

Photo by KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP via Getty Images

Defensive coordinators deserve our respect.

One of the biggest anecdotes about Tim Walz that has been repeated during the Democratic National Convention is how he turned around an 0-and-27 Mankato West football team and made the high school into state champs as defensive coordinator. It’s a story that has been going around for years since Walz started his political career, but now there are some who have really taken exception to the story.

Walz’ opponents are saying he doesn’t deserve any of the credit, because he was only an assistant coach, used as a pejorative to lessen his role in the team’s success.

Just admit you don’t understand ball.

Saying that the architect of a defense can’t turn a team around is extremely weird. It’s led to a whole spate of people falling in step to also admit they don’t know a damn thing about football, while being willing to show their whole ass on the internet.

Bad news for Dick LeBeau and Buddy Ryan, because apparently y’all weren’t responsible for leading the Steelers and Bears to Super Bowl wins. More recently, the Chiefs were always dominant offensively, but it wasn’t until Steve Spagnuolo became defensive coordinator that the team became the most dominant in the NFL because he turned around that side of the ball.

Quite literally nobody who understands ball would dare to say a DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR can’t be responsible for turning a team around. After all, legendary Alabama head coach Bear Bryant said: “Offense sells tickets, but defense wins championships.”

It’s totally fine if you don’t agree with Walz politically, but boy is it sad to try and die on this hill. Especially when there’s been ample coverage over the years of exactly how Walz turned around the team by installing his now-famous 4-4 defense in 1996.

Unfortunately we can’t go back and look at Max Preps for records from the mid-90s, but we do have an official stat sheet from a game where Walz coached, courtesy of Newsweek. Inside it we can see that the reason Mankato West won this game was its defense.

Mankato West were clearly a hard-nosed run-first team on offense, but the difference was the Walz defense. We can see from the defensive stat sheet that the team recorded two interceptions, while also forcing two punts. Then, from kickoff returns we can see that only two were made by Mankato West. One would have to begin a half, meaning that the opponent only scored one touchdown or field goal, at most.

Couple this with the fact that players on the championship team directly give Walz credit for being the difference maker on the team and it’s abundantly clear that his installation of defense was directly responsible for boosting the team.

Dan Clement, a linebacker on the team and top of the list for defensive impact in this game, credits Walz with not only revolutionizing the defense — but preventing him from being a high school dropout.

“Every day, he would find me in the hallways, after school, and in between classes to tell me how important I was to the team, how much they needed me, and how much he wanted me there,” Clement said. “I played football for Tim Walz, not for anyone else. […] Everybody on that linebacker group played hard for Tim Walz because he demanded a lot and was great at showing you what you needed to do, explaining it, and motivating you. The primary differentiation was definitely his energy and commitment to the individual,” Clement recalled.

So we can apply a little basic logic here: If a team is 0-27 in two years, and then they make one significant staffing change and it’s a new defensive coordinator, then that same team wins a state championship — hmmm … what’s likely to have caused that team to turn around? The common factor, or the new one? That’s right! It was a TEAM victory the entire staff earned, but there’s no doubt that Coach Walz was responsible for the change in fortunes.

We can disagree about a lot of things in the country. We can argue over how government is supposed to operate. We have to be united in giving defensive coordinators the respect they deserve.