How Neal Brown could help Texas football

As soon as Steve Sarkisian hired West Virginia’s running backs coach and one time co-offensive coordinator Chad Scott to be the new running backs coach at Texas, it begged the question of whether Scott’s longtime colleague Neal Brown might also join the Longhorns in an analyst role.

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Those two played together at Kentucky under Hal Mumme (Mike Leach’s mentor) in 2000, worked together at Troy years later, at Texas Tech in the Tommy Tuberville era, then at West Virginia from 2019 through the 2024 season which was Brown’s last in Morgantown. Throughout his time at West Virginia, Scott held high position titles and worked closely with Brown who tended to be the play-caller for his own squads. Now not long after Scott was hired, sure enough reports indicate Brown is being targeted by Texas to join the staff.

Generally, head coaches are pretty qualified to offer insights to a program when reduced to a more limited scope of practice even if they weren’t always effective as head coaches. Eric Nahlin already got feedback from one coach on how Brown could help Texas with much of the emphasis being his knack for program oversight.

Nick Saban used to make it a practice to load up the Alabama analysts room with guys who could offer something to his program either in terms of their analysis and insights or as a possible bench to take future staffers from as they learned the Alabama way.

What specifically could Brown offer to Texas?

Neal Brown, hard-nosed program guy

The interesting fact of Neal Brown’s head coaching career has been his teams’ commitment to running the ball and playing defense. That’s obviously not an unusual identity for a head coach to foster, but Neal Brown is an Air Raid coach who found himself as a head coach owing to offenses at Texas Tech and Kentucky (moreso at Tech) that were chunking the ball around the yard.

Seth Doege threw for over 4,000 yards in two seasons under Brown before the coach headed to Kentucky to try and help Mark Stoops. Since Brown first became a head coach at Troy in 2015 through the 2024 season with West Virginia he’s had just three passers throw for 3,000 yards or more while five of his rushers reached at least 1,000 yards. He was immensely pleased at his first Big 12 Media Days with West Virginia when I asked him how they’d find fullbacks of the sort they relied on to run the football while at Troy. They always recruited big tight ends at West Virginia who could fit the bill there.

His teams also tended to emphasize defense and at West Virginia maintained a consistent identity throughout for using a sort of hybridized Cover 2/Flyover defense.

West Virginia always recruited decently well under Brown and had a solid knack for finding good defensive backs at the FCS level, talented wideouts, but above all else they were surprisingly good up front along the D-line and eventually on the offensive line as well. Brown knows the South recruiting landscape well and tended to recruit the right 3-stars to give his defenses a chance to win while playing conservatively on the back end and trusting their D-line to disrupt and make plays. They were also clearly very effective at developing players with lots of guys growing into new positions and developing discipline, toughness, and technique over time in the program.

It was ultimately a lack of passing skill that killed Brown’s nominally Air Raid Mountaineers, not a lack of toughness running the ball or playing defense. A lack of passing skill and the fact teams started poaching their better defenders in the transfer portal. Once Georgia and Miami were taking away the better D-tackles and cornerbacks from the West Virginia roster, life got hard.

How does this translate at Texas?

Brown was a pretty good offensive gameplanner and scout, hence his focus on coordinating and calling his own offenses. The Mountaineers never quite developed the passing game skill to maximize their potential in attacking opponents but routinely had physical rushing attacks and smart plans.

If all Brown did was offer a Paul Chryst-esque service in scouting and offering gameplanning tips for how to beat opponents on the schedule, that’d be valuable and certainly not beyond Brown’s expertise. He’d probably also be useful in offering an audit or oversight of the overall offseason program and how Texas is developing players. Even if Sark is better at those things than Brown it doesn’t follow that Brown may not have tips or insights that could still be additive to Sark’s process.

Finally, I think his eye for evaluating and recruiting linemen on either side of the ball and in the South in particular could be very valuable to Texas. The Justus Terry recruitment aside, the Longhorns are routinely trying to find future defensive tackles across the SEC footprint and any advantages in finding the right 3-stars there to recruit and invest in would be extremely beneficial. In the same way Texas tends to load up on a few big kids with 3-star rankings on the O-line every year to put in the pipeline, they’d benefit from having lots of eyes on doing likewise for the defensive line room.

Finally, he might have insights on various players Texas could consider in the spring portal window if he’s either coached them or coached against them in recent seasons.

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Adding Neal Brown would be a nice boost to Texas’ chances in 2025, even if they were fairly subtle or non-obvious to fans and commentators. He’s a proven winner as a head coach, a strong program builder, and versatile in his tactics.