HOOTMAIL #1: PASSAGE DU DEFENSE
Jerry Mack and Kennesaw State find a defensive coordinator in Paris. Allez Les Hiboux.
We all have that daydream at some point, right? What if we could disappear and reinvent ourselves in a distant place? That’s what Sturgill Simpson accomplished with Passage Du Desir, the official Hoot State dot com pick for album of the year in 2024.
Drained from extensive touring, a vocal cord injury, and general creative malaise, Simpson essentially quit music and filmed a movie in Thailand, then took refuge, anonymously, in Paris. An excellent GQ profile detailed Simpson’s time abroad, where he “made the city a home base and a launch pad for a new chapter in his life.” They called him Le Cowboy, and he walked around Le Marais at all hours of the night, writing what became an instant classic under his Johnny Blue Skies pseudonym.
Swap outlaw country for football, and new Kennesaw State defensive coordinator Marc Mattioli can tell a similar story over the past few years. He spent 8 of his 9 seasons in FBS working under Derek Mason, following the Stanford DC to the SEC. When Vanderbilt’s AD cleaned house toward the end of the 2020 season, Mattioli faced an unfortunate, yet familiar, crossroads for a young coach.
The typical career move: Take some time off, then jump right back on the college football coaching carousel a rung or two lower on the ladder. Or, instead: Go to Europe, coach in the Italian Football League for two seasons, then take over an expansion Paris Musketeers franchise in the upstart European League of Football. Not many coaches get past that first choice; even fewer would consider the second.
Mattioli’s thought process, though less about the “haunted as fuck” atmosphere (Sturgill’s words) and vibrant energy of Paris, doesn’t sound too far off from the creative reset that brought Simpson to France.
“I was just ready for a change of pace,” Mattioli told the ELF’s official podcast. “I wanted to experience life and football in a different way than I had been doing.”
That’s an understatement. The European stamps on Mattioli’s coaching passport give him a singular résumé: LaGrange → Stanford → Vanderbilt → Parma → Leipzig → Paris → Kennesaw. Football is such a closed-off, small industry that those kind of Passage Du Desir moments don’t come around often, if at all. Everyone knows everyone, and hot boards for job openings go up well before the outgoing coach even knows he’s gone. There aren’t many surprises, and it takes a concerted effort to break the cycle.
What’s the exchange rate from the ELF over to CUSA? On the field, not much. Some of the QB play should be reported to INTERPOL, and there’s such a wide variance in talent that a lot of plays end up looking like the halftime games where mascots truckstick children.
Everywhere else? A lot more carries over than you’d think. Mattioli’s Musketeers played in the literal shadow of Parc du Princes, PSG’s home ground, as they tried to sell an expansion team in a market that mostly didn’t know - or care - that they existed. Mattioli missed the transfer portal/NIL era in its current state, but he’s essentially had to evaluate and recruit a fresh roster multiple times over, using very nontraditional avenues and tight limits on foreign players. You’ll find a lot of similarities with the ELF cap structure (only 8 full-time salaries) and Kennesaw’s financial resources, too.
Mattioli’s head coaching experience in Europe, no matter how unconventional, adds an extra dimension to a staff that’s mostly composed of up-and-coming SEC analysts on the other side of the ball. His time with Mason at Vandy will also be instructive. Stop me when this starts to sound familiar enough to translate: Conference bottom-dweller, limited funding, recruiting roadblocks, tucked away in a large media market while the state’s main college football attraction takes center stage from an hour or two away. To maximize his talent pool, Mattioli can most likely import Mason’s system in a similar way that Mack and Militello will bring over the Tennessee offense.
Kennesaw State hasn’t officially announced Mattioli’s hiring yet, though Football Scoop, 247 Sports, and ESPN all reported the news at various times throughout the holidays. Back on December 20th, Owls fan and Twitter user @therealtmac13 actually figured it out before any of the pro journalists, in piecing together follower lists. Only in college football.
Why was Kennesaw State the project that got Mattioli to return stateside? Surely there were other offers along the way, especially when Mason took over at MTSU. Former Rice head coach Mike Bloomgren must have been the main conduit in linking Mattioli to the new Kennesaw regime. A coworker of Mattioli and Mason at Stanford, Bloomgren became a mentor to Mack and earned a ton of praise from the new Owls HC during his intro presser.
Whatever Mattiolio’s answer may be, the Owl Network has a fascinating A Football Life episode whenever he sits down to tell his full story. Sturgill wrote his love songs then returned to record the comeback album; Mattioli found whatever answers he needed in France and now has his first chance to call a defense at the FBS level.
As for scheme, my bet would be that we see a LOT of the 4-2-5 (aka 2-4-5) stuff that evolved from Mason’s 3-4 background. Jonathan Bradley, the only other reported defensive hire with a set position group (DL), spent last season at South Alabama running their “Swarm” defense and mostly operated out of a base 4-2-5 defense as a coordinator at Jackson State and Alcorn State.
For a couple explainers on two defenses that will be key influences:
Inside Texas’ Ian Boyd broke down the 2-4-5 wrinkle when Mason went to Oklahoma State. Coincidentally, Boyd named the Veer and Shoot offense that Mack/Militello are installing at the same time.
Roll Bama Roll wrote this piece on the Swarm D when Kane Wommack took over as the Crimson Tide’s DC. Wommack came from South Alabama before Bradley’s hire was finalized, but the Jags kept the system - nominally a 4-2-5 - in place for 2024.
Two very good reads, and you’ll see a decent amount of common ground between the two systems and what appeared to be Kennesaw’s original plan for last season, before Donovan Westmoreland’s Achilles injury put them in a bind at edge. Mack and Mattioli will make a bet on versatility and make use of some undersized guys, especially given the available personnel and the offensive schemes we’ll see in CUSA.
I watch an alarming amount of golf videos on YouTube. One frequent cliche, courtesy of an old Donald Ross quote, refers to opening holes as a “gentle handshake” that should ease you into the round. That is decidedly NOT what CUSA gave us in our first conference football game against a Jax State team almost perfectly designed to torment the Owls.
This time around, in men’s basketball, it’s a much friendlier matchup for the young Owls to kick off the league slate. Call it a tough but fair Par 4, without much in the way of water hazards or doglegs. A few notes before tipoff:
We’re back in the friendly confines of the Convocation Center, where the Owls are unbeaten this season. Sure beats opening up on the road, against someone like Louisiana Tech or UTEP.
Jacksonville State, I’m fairly sure, is the least efficient D1 defense the Owls have seen all season. Kennesaw doesn’t value the ball at all (22.1% turnover rate on KenPom, 348th in the nation), but the Gamecocks rank 363rd in steal percentage. If you can’t protect the ball and score against these guys…
We’re looking at the Jaron Pierre Jr. vs. Adrian Wooley show on Saturday night, with the two 6’5’’ guards facing off in the key matchup. JPJ ranks in the nation’s top 50 in usage rate at 30.9%, averages 23 points per game, and shoots 44% from deep. Wooley, for my money the most important player on the KSU roster, has already proven himself in a high-profile defensive assignment against Rutgers’ Ace Bailey. Is it oversimplification to say whoever wins this battle also wins the game? Because whoever wins this battle probably wins the game.
As a team, JSU shoots 38% from deep (31st in the nation), though the Owls are holding opponents to 28.4% (18th). Strength on strength there, and weakness on weakness at the other end: KSU’s 3P% and JSU’s 3P defense both rank outside the top 230 nationally.
The Gamecocks favor a much slower pace (276th in KP’s Adjusted Tempo), which could give the young Owls, who usually play at F1 speeds, a chance to breathe on the home court.
Antoine Pettway’s team can’t afford to waste this early opportunity for a W if they want to make noise in CUSA this year. We’ll do a bigger picture Vibes Report coming out of the weekend, because this is the sort of game that feels much more Must Win than you’d like to see from a conference opener. Especially if you’re the type to buy into this so-called “rivalry” having any sort of extra meaning (I’m not).
I’m still very high on the program long-term, regardless. But if the Owls drop this - one of just 3 or so games where they’ll be favored in CUSA - 2025 shifts almost right away into explicitly building for the future.
THE COMPUTERS SAY:
KenPom: KSU 78, JSU 77
EvanMiya: KSU 76.2, JSU 76.1 (unreal)
T-Rank: JSU 79, KSU 78