Christian Parker is building out his defensive coaching staff, and on Saturday he added a big name: former Packers pass game coordinator Derrick Ansley.
Ansley will serve in the same capacity in Dallas as he did in Green Bay, coaching defensive
backs and coordinating the pass game. It should be noted that the Packers defense was one of the best in the league, so good that defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley was hired to lead the Dolphins after interviewing for a majority of the head coach vacancies this cycle.
Ansley was a big part of that, and he’s a huge get for the 34-year old first-time defensive coordinator.
For a while, Ansley was building a reputation as a top technician on the college level. The Alabama native played safety at Troy and later became a graduate assistant at Alabama under Nick Saban and Kirby Smart. When Alabama’s assistant head coach, Sal Sunseri, left to run the defense for the Tennessee Volunteers, he brought Ansley along to coach defensive backs.
From Tennessee, he had a brief stint at Kentucky before returning to Alabama, where he coached the likes of Minkah Fitzpatrick and Marlon Humphrey. Jon Gruden poached him for his first season back with the Raiders, where Ansley coached defensive backs under Mike Zimmer disciple Paul Guenther.
Ansley returned to the college ranks a year later for the chance to be the Volunteers defensive coordinator, this time under newly hired head coach Jeremy Pruitt, who had also been a longtime Saban assistant at Alabama. After two seasons, Pruitt was fired for recruiting violations, and Ansley went pro again.
This time, Ansley was coaching defensive backs for the Chargers, who had just hired Brandon Staley as head coach. Staley, a staunch disciple of Vic Fangio, went after Ansley in large part because he needed someone who had experience teaching pattern matching techniques to defensive backs. Ansley had effectively earned a PhD in that while working in the Saban coaching tree, where pattern matching is practically a second language.
Ansley’s first year in Los Angeles saw Derwin James reach the Pro Bowl for the first time since his electric rookie season. He would repeat that feat the next year, and also be named to the Second-Team All-Pro. The explosion in production had a lot to do with the hybrid nickel role that James assumed in Staley’s defense, which places a heavy importance on the position.
Staley and the Chargers thought so highly of Ansley that he was promoted to defensive coordinator in his third year with the team. Staley called plays as the head coach, but Ansley was heavily involved in installing the weekly game plans while Staley attended to other head coach duties.
Staley was fired towards the end of that year, which precipitated Ansley’s arrival in Green Bay. In his two seasons working with Hafley, the Packers were ninth in EPA/play and eighth in EPA/dropback. Obviously, Hafley was the one in charge, but Ansley played a big part in the game planning, especially on the back end.
Ansley has been praised throughout his career for his work as a teacher, focusing both on refining defensive back techniques and simplifying the complicated nuances of pattern matching for players to learn quickly. However, he’s also known for his passion, which has shown up in quite a few videos from practices over the years.
Adding a coach like Ansley to this staff is huge. Parker comes from a defensive backs background, but he has to feel confident in his defensive backs coaches so that he can oversee the entire defense now. Ansley has been teaching the same types of things as Parker for most of his career, and he’s even spent three seasons working directly in the Fangio scheme while with the Chargers.
Even though Parker and Ansley have never been on the same staff together, they speak the same language. That’s an important trait to have, and Ansley can be a vital asset in implementing this new scheme with a secondary that struggled all too often last year.
