Chinander sees golden opportunity on field, recruiting trail at Nebraska
For Nebraska defensive coordinator Erik Chinander, a move back to the Midwest came without little hesitation.
One of the first additions to head coach Scott Frost's staff at NU, the native of Allison, Iowa, was ready to bring his wife and two daughters back "closer to grandma and grandpa." And after being the defensive coordinator at UCF for the past two seasons, he said taking the job at Nebraska was the perfect cap to a wild year.
“Obviously it’s been an exclamation point on a great season to win the conference championship and get invited to the Peach Bowl, and then also being able to accept a dream job with the Huskers and with Coach Frost,” Chinander said on Sports Nightly on the Husker Sports Network. “It couldn’t be a happier time for me and my family and I’m just so happy to be part of the Huskers.”
Chinander and the majority of the Husker assistants have made their way to Lincoln just three times so far - Frost's introduction and both official visit weekends - and have split their time between bowl preparations at UCF in Orlando and canvassing the recruiting trail.
With coaching experience at Northern Iowa, Oregon and UCF, Chinander has seen his fair share of the football landscape, but for him, nothing compared to walking into Memorial Stadium for the first time.
“When you walk inside that building, you feel different," Chinander said. "You can feel it in your heart; you can feel it in your whole body when you walk into that building. You feel the tradition; you feel the national championships running through your veins.”
The defensive coordinator has no doubt been filled in on the Husker traditions by Frost, who he's known for nearly 10 years. Four seasons into Chinander's tenure at Northern Iowa, he was able to connect with Frost at a coaches' convention while Frost was a graduate assistant at Kansas State.
Once in Cedar Falls, the two recognized each other as great football minds and formed a strong bond from there. That bond carried them to Eugene, Oregon, and Chip Kelly's staff, where Frost coached receivers and Chinander worked with outside linebackers. When Frost departed for UCF, he brought Chinander with him. When Frost went home, Chinander was one of his first choices to come along.
Ever since then, Chinander has fallen in love with Nebraska. He said he "got chills" the first time he entered the stadium, then the second time, and even the third time and each time thereafter. Even though he's spent a short amount of time in Lincoln, he knows exactly what he's selling.
“Well I think the first thing is the facilities are second-to-none and obviously the fan support is the best fans in the country, the best fans in all of college football," Chinander said.
"You celebrate that with the recruits, you celebrate that as the tradition of Nebraska, as well as the tradition of the football program speaks for itself – the national championships and the conference titles, the tradition of the Blackshirts, which I’m so proud to be the caretaker, if you will, for the time being. That’s the best tradition in all of college football, the Blackshirts."
A former Iowa offensive lineman, Chinander got his start on the opposite side of the ball under coaches Hayden Fry and Kirk Ferentz. While at Northern Iowa, he coached everything from defensive line and linebackers to tight ends and running backs.
When he was hired on the defensive side at Oregon, he worked to soak up knowledge from mentors like defensive line coach Jerry Azzinaro, linebackers coach Don Pellum and defensive coordinator Nick Aliotti. Before Chinander became a coordinator, he picked the brains of defensive masterminds like Dick LeBeau and Rex Ryan, among others.
Chinander doesn't look at the stats very often. Working with a fast-paced offense likely would cause any defensive coordinator to shy away. But for Chinander, it's all about adjusting to how Frost runs things on the offensive end.
“Being with a head coach, especially an offensive head coach, you have to mirror his personality,” Chinander said, detailing how the defensive objectives are geared toward keeping the points down for the opponent. “I want to keep yards down as much as the next guy, but sometimes when you play more plays, you play three or four extra games than everybody else in the country.
“Sometimes the yards aren’t as manageable as you’d like them to be, but for us, when Coach Frost has the offense humming the way he does, we need to minimize explosive plays, take the football away and keep the points down, and I think we’ve emphasized taking the football away and we’ve done a great job with that … I think the kids buy into that and they want to play an aggressive style of defense just like Coach Frost wants to on offense.”
While Chinander and Frost have yet to spend extensive time with the players on the current roster, they've had good response from promoting the aggressive style. After making a national brand of "#UCFast" in Orlando, Chinander said he's discovered promoting the fast pace in Husker red has a little more pull with recruits.
“I think walking in with that shirt on brings immediate smiles to kids’ faces,” he said. “I think it excites people, and just about everyone we’ve talked to is very interested.
“The guys that we’re probably not going to be in the game with are guys that have been recruited by another staff for two-plus years and they’ve developed a strong relationship with them. Those are the kind of kids we want, that want relationships and don’t want to switch late, but a lot of these guys we’ve talked to in the past, maybe we didn’t think we could get them before, but now we can.
“We have relationships with some of these guys, but the reception from coaches and players has been unbelievable. I think, moving on, this will be an opportunity for us to recruit the best players in the country regardless of where they’re at in the nation.”
