New Bonnabel coach Andre Anthony's calling was evident during his LSU playing career

Andre Anthony has had a difficult time fully verbalizing his excitement for a day he said he never envisioned — at least not so soon.

But the recent LSU and NFL defensive end has been humbled by the inundation of congratulations and support during the weekend from his family, friends and former teammates and coaches who had forecast for years the path he would take after his playing career.

Bonnabel High announced Anthony as its new head coach Friday, bringing to fruition and to the headlines a calling the seeds of which were already becoming evident during his time in Baton Rouge.

“Once the news broke out, all hell broke out,” he smiled. “I mean, once it got out there, man, I’m talking it was probably worse than Draft Day as far as social media, text messages, phone calls, man. It was incredible. It was amazing, like it was overwhelming the amount of people I heard from: old teammates from high school, from college and the NFL, the 2019 (LSU) team and players I played with at LSU throughout my six years there, high school coaches. I’m still texting people back thank you.”

Anthony developed into not only one of the top edge rushers in New Orleans high school football during his prep career at Miller-McCoy and Edna Karr, but also one of its most well-respected young leaders.

He carried both of those fortés with him to college in 2016 under coach Ed Orgeron, where he eventually held a role on the Tigers’ leadership council as he had with the Cougars.

And while Anthony wasn’t thinking much then beyond his role as a player, others around him were already seeing his eventual calling.

“Coach O was the one that always said, ‘Oh, at some point you’re gonna be a great coach,’ dealing with those kids,” Anthony said. “We’d do little camps, like I’d do a camp with the former offensive lineman Sean Wells, and doing different camps and I’d hear people — you know family or coaches — say here and there, ‘You’re going to be a great coach one day,’ but not really think much of it because I’m focused on playing.”

Two knee injuries in the span of just over a year, in September 2021 in his final season at LSU and in October 2022 in his rookie season in Chicago, ultimately contributed to an early end to his playing career.

But he didn’t take long to land into his first coaching job on the staff of another former Tigers defensive standout, his older teammate as a freshman.

“I knew at some point when I did get finished playing it was something I wanted to do, and then once I got the opportunity to go coach at Bonnabel as the line coach with Dwayne Thomas, that’s when it all started,” he said. “Once I got into it, the playing days kind of drifted away a little bit… and I fell in love with the kids. I fell in love with teaching the kids, as far as the game of football, the fundamentals, and then it just became more of a passion, even more and more every game. And as the games went on, as the season went on, I’m like, ‘OK, this is something I could do.'”

Anthony leaned on much of the same core group of mentors and confidants before joining the Bruins’ staff this past offseason and again when the lead job opened this winter: Orgeron and former LSU defensive line coach Andre Carter; Edna Karr coach Brice Brown and former assistants Brock Hays, now Tulane’s running backs coach and Nick Foster, now the coach at L.B. Landry; and former Tigers teammates Michael Divinity Jr. and K’Lavon Chaisson.

His only uncertainty centered around whether the timing might be too early in his career, but his support system quickly put him at ease that he had been preparing for the moment since he was a teenager.

“They gave me great advice, like ‘I knew you could. I knew at least one day it was gonna happen, but it’s like the opportunity of a lifetime that most people don’t really get,'” he said. “So they were like, ‘Man, go for it.'”

Anthony arrived to his interview with the Bonnabel administration with binders — not unlike Orgeron’s at LSU in 2016 — that outlined his vision for the program: coach and player expectations, conditioning and practice schedules, fundraising plans and more.

Most importantly, he wants a foundation of pride and leadership on the field and in anything members of his Bruins program do.

On-field schematics will continue to develop as the coaching staff comes together and begins working with the student-athletes and getting a grasp on personnel.

And Anthony doesn’t expect to be the last familiar name for LSU fans to be a part of this staff.

“Yeah, there’s gonna be some familiar names on there if everything follows through like I want it do and like I’m praying that it will,” he smiled again. “But I just know these are the same people who I’ve either played with, people that have bene on the same team with us at LSU or people that I know they have the same principle, they have the same mindset.”

He hopes to have much, if not all, of the staff finalized in the next couple weeks and is eager the lay the foundation for the program under his guidance.

But, in many ways, the excitement of the opportunity still hasn’t fully sunken in.

“I can’t really describe it, because I never thought this would be happening to me — at least this fast,” he said. “But I’m excited. I’m blessed, man. And I’m just ready to get started and get to work.”