Baggot: Chryst’s winning ways rooted in personal connections
December 31, 2019 | Football, Andy Baggot
Why has Paul Chryst built such a consistent winner at Wisconsin? He begins by building real relationships
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BY ANDY BAGGOT
UWBadgers.com Insider
MADISON, Wis. — Paul Chryst and Scott Tolzien go back a while, closing in on 15 years since their paths first crossed.
Chryst joined the Wisconsin football staff as co-offensive coordinator in 2005 and one of his first recruits was Tolzien, an under-the-radar quarterback prospect out of suburban Chicago.
Both prospered as their relationship grew. Tolzien evolved into an award-winning, record-setting starter for the Badgers who spent five seasons in the NFL as an undrafted free agent. Chryst became an uncommonly successful head coach, taking over at Wisconsin in 2015.
The two men came full circle last August when Chryst added Tolzien to his staff as an analyst, which amounted to an opportunity for Tolzien to see if coaching was his calling.
While that decision remains fluid, the process has been wholly enlightening for Tolzien because it's enabled him to gain a deeper, more respectful appreciation for what Chryst does and how well he does it.
"When I think of college coaches nowadays, I think of guys rocking (with their players) in the tunnel and then sprinting out with the team, or the person that's tweeting to every recruit," Tolzien said. "Paul, to me, is the complete opposite and that's what I've always loved about him."
Chryst surreptitiously pulls away from his team at the stadium tunnel and weaves his way through band members and field personnel to his place on the sideline. As for Twitter and social media platforms, his interest level hovers around zero.
"Paul is a complete football junkie and that's the side people don't see," Tolzien said. "He comes across as this Wisconsin guy that wants to talk about everything but himself. What sometimes gets lost is how diligent he is in preparation. Nobody grinds it harder than he does."
That grind translates into a story of consistent, understated excellence.
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Since Chryst took over the program at his alma mater five years ago, the Badgers have averaged 10 wins a season (52-15) and won four straight bowl matchups heading into their Rose Bowl encounter with Oregon on New Year's Day in Pasadena, California.
Perspective: Eighth-ranked Wisconsin (10-3 overall) will take on the sixth-rated Ducks (11-2) with a .776 overall winning percentage during the Chryst Era, which trails only Clemson, Alabama, Ohio State, Oklahoma and Georgia among Power Five schools during that period.
Perspective: Chryst and Nick Saban of Alabama are the only Power Five head coaches to win their last four bowl games. The only Big Ten Conference coach to win bowl games in five consecutive seasons was College Football Hall of Famer Joe Paterno at Penn State.
Perspective: The only Big Ten coach in the modern era (1946-present) with more wins in his first five seasons than Chryst is the now-retired Urban Meyer at Ohio State, who had 61.
Chryst has already engineered as many 10-win seasons at Wisconsin (four) as his predecessors, Barry Alvarez and Bret Bielema. Alvarez, a College Football Hall of Famer, coached the Badgers for 16 seasons and won three Big Ten titles. Bielema succeeded Alvarez and spent seven seasons as Wisconsin coach, winning three straight league championships before leaving for Arkansas in 2012.
Chryst, who played quarterback, tight end and linebacker for the Badgers in the mid-1980s, has roots that reach back to both of those regimes. He had two brief stints with Alvarez, in 2002 and '05, before becoming offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach with Bielema from 2006 to '11.
Alvarez, now the Wisconsin director of athletics, sees Chryst's greatest strength as his ability to communicate on multiple levels with his student-athletes. That may run counter to Chryst's unpolished public speaking persona, but all that matters to him is the audience and the message.
"The kids understand, believe and know that he cares about them," Alvarez said. "With the money that's out there now (in coaching), with self-promoters and guys worrying about their next job and how much they can make, Paul's worrying about the players and what's best for the kids. They'll play hard for him because of that."
Chryst has a personal touch that resonates with his players. Jonathan Taylor, the record-setting junior running back, said Chryst always makes time to talk about life issues that have little, if anything, to do with football. The interest and the effort is genuine regardless if you're a two-time Doak Walker Award winner like Taylor or a freshman walk-on.
"He remembers details that you forgot that you told him," Taylor said.
Senior inside linebacker Chris Orr wants to be an athletic director someday, a desire driven in part by the vast connections he's made with fellow student-athletes in Madison and the guidance he's received from his coaches. He said he and his teammates relate to Chryst for a specific reason.
"He's truly a player's coach," Orr said. "People say that all the time, but he truly is. He cares about who you are; you the person more than you the player. You couldn't ask for anything better."
Chryst is a certifiable football wonk who seems most comfortable sitting in his eighth-level office overlooking Camp Randall Stadium watching video. It could be from a recent practice or scrimmage. It could be from an opponent's game from the season before.
"He'd sit behind that projector for days on end if you let him," Alvarez said.
Tolzien knew this first-hand, having sat in hundreds of quarterback meetings with Chryst during a college career that spanned 2006 to '10. Tolzien was the starter as a junior and senior, winning 21 of 26 games, orchestrating a Big Ten title in 2010 and earning the Unitas Golden Arm Award as the country's best senior quarterback.
Tolzien's awareness has become magnified since signing on as an analyst focused solely on advanced scouting of the Badgers' upcoming opponents. Tolzien, who played for San Diego, San Francisco, Green Bay and Indianapolis in the NFL, describes Chryst as a "humble" and "normal" guy whose daily approach is rooted in quiet repetition and consistent effort.
"His method is outworking the competition, but it's subtle," Tolzien said. "There's no fanfare around it, so sometimes it doesn't get the attention it deserves.
"Nobody works harder than he does. Players have a broad sense of what coaches do, but now that I've been able to peel back the curtain, it's even more evident."
Tolzien, who twice led the Big Ten in passing efficiency and still holds the program's single-season record for completion percentage, has witnessed the daily flow of visitors passing through Chryst's office.
"His open-door policy is real," Tolzien said. "You see all these distractions going on throughout the day. I don't see him get like an hour to himself, yet at the end of the week, nobody knows the game plan or the opponent better than he does. It's like, 'How are there enough hours in the day for him?' It's impressive how full his plate is, yet it doesn't take away from his preparation."
Alvarez hired Chryst away from Pittsburgh after Gary Andersen left for Oregon State following two seasons in Madison. The Badgers won 20 of 27 games in 2013 and '14, but issues arose regarding academics, recruiting and player development. Alvarez said it fell to Chryst to re-assemble the machine.
"When he took over, we'd lost the grasp on recruiting in state and the high school coaches were vocal about it," Alvarez said. "Players were making decisions to leave. We lost some players. That was the most important thing. We had to re-establish ourselves in the state and it didn't take Paul long to do that."
Alvarez said Wisconsin's trademark unit, its offensive line, was in "shambles" and Chryst "had to put the whole thing back together." Chryst manufactured a 10-win season in his Wisconsin head-coaching debut despite what Alvarez said was a "deteriorated" offensive line.
Asked to measure Chryst's degree of difficulty, Alvarez said: "The expectations are very high and it's really hard to win. People don't understand."
Wisconsin was 34-7 overall after three seasons under Chryst, which included three bowl wins, but also two one-score losses in Big Ten title games.
That the Badgers were able to bounce back from an 8-5 showing last season is significant, even if it meant another difficult loss in the conference championship.
Since 2010, Wisconsin has had seven 10-win seasons, including four in a row from 2014 to '17. During that period, no other Big Ten West Division school has had back-to-back years with double-digit victories.
Chryst's program is built largely on three tenets: Toughness, love for the game and embracing the idea of being better as a group. The latest edition will go down as one of Chryst's favorites.
"It's been a group where our best players have been our best leaders and they've been truly team-first guys," he said. "As many teams as I've been around, that group has been as unselfish as any."
It helps Chryst that he has many of the same voices preaching the program's defining themes. He's had three defensive coordinators during his five seasons — Dave Aranda, Justin Wilcox and now Jim Leonhard — but only four total departures from his coaching staff since 2015.
Six assistants — Joe Rudolph (offensive coordinator), Inoke Breckterfield (defensive line), Chris Haering (special teams), Ted Gilmore (wide receivers), John Settle (running backs) and Mickey Turner (tight ends) — have been with Chryst since he came from Pitt.
The current group, which includes Bobby April III (outside linebackers), Bob Bostad (inside linebackers) and Jon Budmayr (quarterbacks), has spent the last two seasons together. The continuity has paid many dividends, but one stands out to Alvarez.
"There's great chemistry on this team," he said.
That, said Chryst, is not always a given.
"Just because you want it or you value it doesn't mean that it happens," he said.
Chryst said striking a balance between some of his old-school desires — his later father George is a former Wisconsin player and assistant coach — and his modern-day realities is a daily project.
"It's about the players and about the game," he said. "I still think there's things that when my dad was coaching and emphasizing, we're still trying to do that. But if he came to practice and heard music, he'd say, 'What the hell is going on?'"
In studying opponents for his analyst's role, Tolzien said he was struck by how so few teams "do what we do," such as having the quarterback regularly line up under center, utilizing tight ends and fullbacks and huddling.
"There's kind of an old-school process," he said. "The program has always been built on that and there's no better person than Paul to keep that same blue-collar work ethic."
Under Chryst, the Badgers have found a way to win 10 or more games without a 1,000-yard rusher (2015) and with a passing offense that ranked 104th among 130 Football Bowl Subdivision teams (2016).
Under Chryst, Wisconsin has found a way to win 10 or more outings despite multiple-game losing streaks (2016, '19).
A lot of names, effort, ideas and sacrifice are woven into the last five seasons for the Badgers. Chryst knows this.
"What I'm probably most proud of is I think the players that have come through — that I've crossed paths with — I think they've left feeling good and feeling proud of what they've done," he said.
