Chris Petersen’s impact on his current, former staff goes well beyond football
Jeff Choate didn’t have to say yes.
He’d only been an assistant coach at Florida for a season, and he had an opportunity to remain on the Gators’ coaching staff. Had it been someone else’s voice on the phone, maybe Choate — now the head coach at Montana State — would have declined. Maybe his coaching career would have veered in a different direction. But it wasn’t someone else’s voice; it was Chris Petersen’s. And that changed everything.
The phone call came in 2014, soon after Petersen was named the head coach at Washington. His pitch to Choate — he’d been an assistant on Petersen’s staff at Boise State from 2006-11 — was direct: “Jeff,” Choate remembers him saying, “I just need you for two years. Help me get the foundation set, and then I’ll help you do whatever you want to do.”
As the two talked, Choate thought back to 2006. He was an assistant at Eastern Illinois — an FCS school in the Ohio Valley Conference — when new Boise State head coach Petersen brought him on as an assistant. It was a moment that changed not only his career path but also his family’s life. So when Petersen called again years later asking for a favor, Choate said yes.
“When a guy that gives you the opportunity he gave me asks for something and I can give it to him, I was going to do whatever he asked me to do,” Choate said during a phone interview on Monday.
Petersen’s coaching resume speaks for itself. A 146-38 record, two Fiesta Bowl wins at Boise State, a 2016 College Football Playoff appearance at UW, two Pac-12 titles and three consecutive New Year’s Six bowls from 2016-18. The coaches he’s hired never dwell too long on football when they talk about him. Instead, they talk about life — and everything he’s done to shape theirs. Petersen’s career has been transformative for college football, Choate said, and not just because of his strategy and success.
“I think as far as the Mount Rushmore of character of college football coaches,” Choate said, “Chris Petersen is on that.”
‘An epic adventure’
Huskies’ offensive line coach Scott Huff was a player at Boise State when Petersen was the offensive coordinator. Petersen then hired him as the Broncos’ tight ends coach in 2006, and he’s been with Petersen ever since. As he met with the media on Monday, Huff could only shake his head and smile as he tried to explain how Petersen has shaped his life.
“Certainly as a husband, as a father, as a person,” he said. “You would be crazy to think he hasn’t had a huge impact on my life in all those facets and certainly as a coach, too. I owe him a lot. I’m very grateful for my time with him. … It’s been an awesome ride. An epic adventure, as I like to say.”
Current UW defensive coordinator Jimmy Lake will take over for Petersen following the Las Vegas Bowl, adding another branch to an already extensive coaching tree that includes Choate, Cal’s Justin Wilcox, Oregon State’s Jonathan Smith and Boise State’s Bryan Harsin. Afterward, Petersen plans to take on a leadership advisory role in the Huskies’ athletic department.
But if you ask his coaches, they’ll tell you that’s been in his job description for years.
“He’d bring in speakers and his whole Built for Life program and us coaches are also back there scribbling in our notebooks writing notes down,” Lake said during his introductory press conference earlier this month. “I’ve used a lot of those things with my family, and it’s helped me become a better family man. It’s helped me become a better person. It’s not just about football with him, and that’s why it gets a little emotional talking about him.”
‘He knew right from wrong’
Choate was at the American Football Coaches convention, fresh out of an interview with Georgia Tech, when Petersen called him in 2006 with a question: Could Choate be at a Holiday Inn outside of Dallas-Fort Worth the next day to interview with his two Boise State coordinators, Harsin and Wilcox? Choate agreed. A few days later — after a stop back home to pick up a suit and tie — he was in Boise interviewing with Petersen. Soon after, he accepted a job as Boise State’s running backs and special teams coach.
“Not only did I get chance to be a part of some phenomenal teams and coach some amazing young men,” Choate said, “but I learned a lot about being a man and what it means to live by a set of principles and make tough decisions from his leadership.”
Petersen’s assistants are loyal, and Choate said there’s a reason for that. He’s true to his word, and he gives them whatever they want or need. Lake had several opportunities to leave UW over the years and while he was tempted, he always stayed. In return, he became one of the highest-paid assistant coaches in the country. But when Choate decided it was time to go in 2015, Petersen was as supportive as he said he would be.
“He’s a really good person,” UW wide receivers coach Junior Adams said in September. “He knows how to treat people, but he also coaches his coaches. He treats everybody the same, with the utmost respect, and I think that’s awesome. He’s truly one of the best in the profession in that way.”
Choate said he could spend hours listing everything he learned from Petersen. He limited himself to a few, like the importance of consistency and an ability to anticipate. Petersen used to bring up in Thursday meetings what assistants had only discussed with each other the night before. They would sit there, shocked almost every time, and think: “Does this guy have our offices bugged?”
Said Huff, “When he was our offensive coordinator, it was all about details. And then the big thing with my particular position — I played center — was kind of giving you the keys to the car, being the field general out there. It was a lot of that rein, that freedom to be a leader within the offense. I like to think that some of that stuff definitely influenced me and still does to this day.”
Choate described Petersen as observant and thoughtful. Never reactionary. He’s also fiercely competitive — “You never wanted to be around him on game day,” Choate said — and more than a little paranoid. He double-checks everything, down to the color of his players’ shoelaces. Choate used all of those building blocks while launching his head coaching career, but there was also one more piece. And if you asked Choate, it was the biggest one.
“He knew right from wrong and he wasn’t going to deviate,” Choate said. “It didn’t matter if we weren’t going to have the best chance to win a football game or get a recruit, that really wasn’t important. … That was the thing that impressed me the most about Chris was his personal discipline and that moral code that he had so strongly himself but also implanted in us.”
This story was originally published December 19, 2019 at 7:00 AM.
