Fort Bend Bush (Texas) coach, former NFL standout Allen Aldridge dead at 52

Allen Aldridge, the longtime head football coach of Fort Bend Bush (Texas) High School, died suddenly on Sunday night, according to Houston-area reporter Mark Berman and Texas Football.com.

Aldridge, who played eight seasons in the NFL with the Denver Broncos and Detroit Lions, was 52 years old.

A 1990 graduate of Willowridge High School, he was a standout player at the University of Houston in the early ’90s before he was taken in the fourth round by Denver in the 1994 NFL Draft. He went on to play four seasons with the Broncos, winning a Super Bowl title in 1998.

Following that stint, he played four years in Detroit, totaling more than 200 tackles during his time there. After his retirement from the game, he quickly joined the coaching ranks.

He spent the past 20 years at Fort Bend Bush in East Houston, starting as an assistant before assuming head coach duties for the past 15 years. Aldridge was one of the pillars of the football coaching community in the area, and was nominated as the Houston Texans’ High School Coach of the Week in 2022.

“My father was a coach, my mother is a retired teacher, my sister is a teacher … I have a family full of educators,” he said about the news of his nomination. “Hard work and dedication will take you far in life. ‘Class and Character’ was my school motto at Willowridge High School, and I carried that with me my entire life. I always wanted to coach High School football.”

According to Berman, Aldridge’s mother says there will be an autopsy to confirm the cause of his sudden passing.