Nice Bio On Sean Desai......

[soulman]

The Bears’ Bulldog: Inside the rise of Sean Desai, NFL’s first Indian American coordinator

Adam Jahns Sep 24, 2021

In 2006, first-year Temple head coach Al Golden presented Satyen Bhakta with an offer: If Bhakta could find his own replacement as the Owls’ academic graduate assistant, he could take over the team’s recently vacated defensive graduate assistant position.

Down the hallway from Golden’s office, Sean Desai sat at a desk stuffing recruiting mailers. Bhakta frequently passed Desai, a volunteer and fellow Indian American, on his way into the office. They had spoken a few times.

Desai was getting his doctorate in educational administration, which included an emphasis in higher education. He was a perfect fit for a job that needed doing, even if it wasn’t glamorous. Bhakta explained the opportunity. Their conversation spanned maybe 30 seconds.

“I went back to coach Golden’s offense, and I’m like, ‘I found my replacement. He’s out there,'” Bhakta said. “It was done from there.”

Desai oversaw a group dubbed the “Fab 5,” a handful of important players who needed to become academically eligible. They were his focus group for the first six months. “It was all-consuming,” Bhakta said. “It was no football.”

Desai’s ability to connect with and get the best out of players emerged early on. He constructed a 24-hour grid for each of them. Every hour was mapped out, helping them find structure.

“We had to get those scholarships back and kind of get Temple on a level playing field,” Desai told The Athletic. “They needed the extra tutoring and really extra mentorship to help them navigate the college life.”

The Fab 5 became eligible. Others did, too. And everyone noticed how Desai did it.

“I remember he was dressed all nice and writing down notes, folders, plans,” Bhakta said with a laugh. “I’m like, ‘What the ****, man?'”

Desai’s roles evolved. He went from running scout teams to serving as one of the youngest special-teams coordinators in Division I football in 2010.

A little more than a decade later, on Jan. 22, 2021, the Chicago Bears promoted Desai from safeties coach to defensive coordinator, making him the first Indian American coordinator in NFL history.

“There’s no easy way to success,” said Bhakta. “(Desai’s) not someone’s son. He wasn’t born into a football family. What he did, he did all on his own.”

---

Desai’s football story starts in Shelton, Conn., where Sean, younger brother Semil and older cousins Shyam and Nihar played two-hand touch in the front yard of the family’s home. Kickoffs were thrown and run back. Each team got four downs, but more were awarded if you crossed the halfway point of the yard. On defense, you were allowed one blitz every four downs.

The teams were separated by age. Sean always ended up covering Shyam, his oldest cousin, whose three-year age advantage posed challenges.

“(Sean) was always there in every single down,” Shyam said. “Maybe once and a while if a throw’s off he might be able to stop the play. But overall, when you have a height and age difference at that age, he had no shot.

“But every single down, he felt he could do it. He was just like a constant pit bull going at it with no regard to having a shot at it or not. He didn’t care. He was just going to keep coming with a tenacity.”

Sean’s competitiveness came out in intense basketball and Wiffle ball games, but football was different. It called to Sean in his front yard, then later in high school and college. He was the first in his family to play high school football, where he suited up at defensive back and receiver for the Shelton Gaels.

Sean would return home with drills for his younger brother and cousins — the coach in him coming out early.

“He would set up cones and we’d do the ‘W’ drills where you backpedal, go forward and backpedal,” Semil said. “He would make us do suicide drills on our basketball court. It would be in the dead heat of July and August, where it’s just blistering hot. We’re like, ‘Listen, we need a water break.’ He goes, ‘You’re not getting a water break until you do 20 up-downs.'”

Sean played on a state championship-winning team that included future NFL quarterback and current ESPN analyst Dan Orlovsky. Semil would follow him, eventually becoming Shelton’s starting quarterback.

“I do remember (Semil’s) swag and his competitiveness,” Sean said, laughing. “He’d throw a touchdown pass and he’d be doing the arms-out helicopter dance, midfield and all that stuff. He wasn’t bashful.”

In those years, the Desais said they didn’t think too much about race, but they knew they were different. Or, as Shyam said, “You get singled out.” The majority of Shelton was White, and though the Desais all expressed deep appreciation for their hometown, there were difficult moments.

“My dad got into a parking spot and some guy was pissed and started calling him some racial slurs,” Sean said. “‘Go back to your country,’ and that kind of stuff. And we’re going to have dinner at a restaurant.”

In a household where cousins are as close as brothers, the family endured such episodes by finding strength in each other — like when Semil was the target of taunts from opposing fans while playing quarterback.

“You heard people calling you names and saying things that I shouldn’t be doing this,” Semil said. “That just added fuel to my fire. That’s what I’ve learned from my brother, that strong will, to deflect out the negativity and just stay positive, stay with the game plan and go out there and perform and perform at a high level.”

“When you’re not in the majority, in my experience, there’s always going to be some chatter and feelings and things like that directed towards you,” Sean said. “And it’s a matter if you let that in or not.”

---

 

(Robin Alam / Getty Images)

The grind of a football coach’s life isn’t for everyone, especially when you’re a graduate assistant with little money and even less sleep.

“A lot of people came into those entry-level jobs and they quit,” said Bhakta, now an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator at Cornell. “I knew guys that were big-name college football players, and they came in for like a month and they quit.”

But those low-level jobs can provide opportunities for those who stick it out, and Desai attacked the challenges presented by his first jobs at Temple as doggedly as he used to cover his older, bigger cousin. So much so, in fact, that offensive coordinator George DeLeone nicknamed him “The Bulldog.”

“The Bulldog got everything done. He just bulldogged his way in,” Bhakta said. “Whatever was asked of him, he did at a high level. He did it while other guys quit: ‘It was too hard.’ I think that right then and there shows ambition.”

Players sent to Desai saw their grade point averages improve, and he later became an adjunct professor at Temple. Internally, he began to form core beliefs about equity in education.

“There are varying degrees of preparedness that everybody has, and that’s not necessarily a factor of will or want-to,” Desai said. “Sometimes it is, but sometimes there are other issues going on that cause people not to learn or to achieve at the level that they need to achieve at.”

Preserving eligibility became as important as earning it, so Desai personalized learning plans, showing players they could get B’s instead of settling for C’s. His work at Temple evolved into an education in coaching.

“You got to meet them where they’re at, and I take that same philosophy to coaching,” Desai said. “All of our guys, even at this level right now on our current team, they all learn differently and they all want different information. They all process information differently.”

Details mattered to Desai. Bhakta remembered how Desai helped out other graduate assistants, which included taking their suits to the dry cleaners.

“People say this as a euphemism,” said Bears college scouting coordinator Bobby Macedo, who was a student assistant at Temple with Desai. “But I don’t know when Coach Desai slept.”

Desai followed Golden to Miami in 2011, then moved on to Boston College a year later. Dismissed as part of a full coaching staff change at BC, he was looking for work in January 2013, so he headed to Mobile, Ala., to watch Senior Bowl practices and participate in its quasi-coaching convention made up of late-night beers and trips to Wintzell’s Oyster House.

Desai admittedly “didn’t have many contacts in the NFL,” but he had the phone number of Andy Bischoff, the Bears’ tight ends coach and then-head coach Marc Trestman’s top confidante, after the two met at a coaching clinic. A text message turned into a conversation in the stands at Ladd-Peebles Stadium, then a brief introduction to Trestman.

“I kind of just went up and said hello,” Desai said. “That was a quick three- to five-minute conversation. … It was obviously very nice of Andy to even think about introducing me to Marc.”

A few hours later, Bischoff called Desai and asked if he’d be interested in interviewing for a special-teams quality control position with coordinator Joe DeCamillis. Desai met with Trestman, DeCamillis and general manager Phil Emery in the same hotel where the Bears were interviewing draft prospects.

As Desai was preparing to leave Mobile, his phone rang again. It was the Bears: “They called me later to reschedule my flight and to come back the next day to interview with Mel Tucker for the defensive quality control job.”

Desai’s college stops at Temple and Boston College included work with running backs and linebackers. At Miami, he worked in football operations. His resumé was diverse. He brought packets and was prepared to make demonstrations. But Desai expected he needed to show them more than X’s and O’s.

“They obviously want to get a good gauge of your football knowledge and your background,” he said. “But when you’re in those quality control roles, they want to get a good gauge of your work ethic and your ability to learn and grow and your willingness to be humble and do some jobs that a lot of people don’t want to do.”

The Bears, the only NFL team to meet with Desai in Mobile that week, were impressed.

---

The life of a quality control coach in the NFL is busy. There is film to break down, scouting reports to compile and much more, basically anything and everything a respective coach asks you to do. It’s also a proving ground.

For Desai, it was an opportunity to impress and learn from former Bears defensive coordinators Mel Tucker and Vic Fangio.

“If you get work done and you want to go to meetings and do that, then go to the meetings,” Desai said. “They treated me just like another coach.”

Inside Halas Hall, general manager Ryan Pace and other staffers identified certain traits and talents in Desai. It’s how he’s endured through regime changes, from Trestman to John Fox to Matt Nagy.

When it comes to Desai’s rise with the Bears, Nagy deserves special mention. He blocked the Broncos and Fangio from interviewing Desai in 2019, when Nagy promoted him from quality control to safeties coach.

“Give the credit where it’s due,” Desai said. “That’s a big jump in this league. It’s almost like a big stepping stone in terms of your peers start probably respecting you a little bit different — the ones outside of the building — because titles mean something.”

The promotion demonstrated Desai’s value to the organization, in particular because it was given by the second head coach who inherited him. Said Macedo: “You’ve got to be pretty darn good to survive all the coaching transitions that he has.”

Because of those transitions, Desai counts a number of coaches as influences, starting with Fangio and including Jon Hoke, Ed Donatell and Deshea Townsend in the secondary, Reggie Herring at stack linebacker and Clint Hurtt at outside linebacker. A wide range of influences resulted in a wide range of players Desai could work with at practice.

“When he was a safeties coach and quality control coach, players would come over and ask his opinion, whether it was techniques, pass patterns, leverage, landmarks,” Macedo said. “You know who the players respect, and players respect coach Desai. They have his back.”

 

“That Desai name means a lot to us. And to see him propel it and take it to the level he’s taken in, we only see it getting bigger for him.” — Semil Desai, left (Courtesy of Sean Desai)

---

When the Bears played in Atlanta in Week 3 of last season, a Falcons assistant saw Desai and pointed him out to Mayur Chaudhari, then Atlanta’s assistant special-teams coach.

“Hey, they got an Indian guy on the staff,” Chaudhari recalled his colleague saying.

Chaudhari went over and said hello. He heard about Desai when Desai was still at Temple. And like Desai, Chaudhari’s entry into coaching came with some stubborn stereotypes attached.

In 2008, he volunteered as a graduate assistant for San Jose State. “The only place they could kind of find a spot for me in the office was like right in the front where you walked in, and that was where the computer was.

“I was drawing cards (for practices) and all that stuff,” Chaudhari said. “At least three people brought me their laptops to fix them. They have no idea you coach football. Like zero. It’s just a funny thing. That’s how it goes.”

When Desai was named Chicago’s defensive coordinator in January, Chaudhari thought about his own experiences and what Desai’s advancement could mean for those who look like them.

“It’s just really cool for young Indian kids who are trying to convince their parents or their families, that ‘Hey, I want to play football. I want to do this,'” said Chaudhari, now a special-teams assistant for the Chargers. “Growing up, I got told it was a bad idea. ‘Don’t do this. Don’t even play.’ I think my parents didn’t understand it. They didn’t know what it was about.

“When you’re 16, 15 and you’re just wanting to play football, having someone like Sean, someone like that, they can say, ‘Hey, look Mom and Dad, this guy played and is coaching. He’s making a career out of it. Why can’t I?’ I think it’s important for the world to see that.”

Perseverance is a prerequisite for young NFL coaches, especially when you look different from most of your peers. For Chaudhari, Desai’s promotion gives him an opportunity to educate players, colleagues and others when questions arise about his Indian American heritage, something he’s always enjoyed doing.

“That’s the great thing about this game, is that you can bring a lot of different people together,” Chaudhari said. “I think it just paves the way for other people.”

Dr. Nirav Pandya’s parents immigrated to Chicago during the 1970s. He was born on the West Side, grew up in Prospect Heights and attended Hersey High. Sports were always a part of his life. He ran track and played basketball. But the Bears were special for him because they had a special team at the time.

Sitting down with his family on Sundays and watching Walter Payton, Dan Hampton and other Bears greats became a routine during those formative years. In first grade, Pandya remembered receiving a day off from school after the Bears won the Super Bowl to cap their famous 1985 season.

“For first first-generation Indian Americans, sports and football were a way for a lot of our parents to kind of gain currency when they moved here and talked with a lot of their comrades at work,” said Pandya, now an associate professor of orthopedic surgery at UC San Francisco and director of sports medicine at Benioff Children’s Hospital.

Now Pandya gets to cheer on a Bears defense led by an Indian American, like him. And Desai’s presence helps break down restrictive stereotypes.

“People see us and they’re like, ‘Oh, you’re going to be a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer. You’re going to produce academically,'” Pandya said. “And for a handful of us, particularly in the ’90s and early 2000s who were involved in sports or played in sports, there was this additional barrier to prove that we belonged.”

Sometimes those hurdles can exist within one’s home. Desai’s parents, Suresh and Shila, wanted him to be a doctor or a professor, but they supported his decisions and dreams, as did his wife, Ojus, whom he met at Temple.

“He always wanted to be a coach in the NFL, and I’m glad he pushed through and followed those dreams because the pressures were there to be a doctor,” Sean’s cousin Shyam said. “I can’t imagine how much pressure he was in because he was smart enough to do whatever he wanted.”

A steady flow of congratulatory letters, emails and texts followed Desai’s appointment to defensive coordinator. They came from Indian Americans but also White and Black Americans. His story — the story of a job well earned — connected with everyone.

“Their feedback to me has been, ‘Man, it’s great to see somebody work their way up and earn a spot that way,'” Desai said. “I think a lot of people are relating to the hire in their own way.”

Desai realizes the importance of representation. In May, he shared a story about his 4-year-old son asking if he could paint his skin white so he could become a professional baseball player because he hadn’t seen an Indian American player. Given the NFL’s track record of minority hires in coaching ranks, Desai knows his presence makes an impact.

“This league has had issues in terms of access to opportunities,” he said. “If some people can use me as a resource or get encouraged by seeing somebody that looks similar to them, then I’ll embrace that also.”

“We’re just super proud of him that he’s able to represent the Indian community and our family in the NFL the way he’s doing,” Shyam said. “Hopefully he can open doors for other minorities who may want to kind of do what’s not the norm for their ethnicity and just follow their dreams.”

Desai said he doesn’t think about his place in his NFL history as the league’s first Indian American coordinator because getting to this point is just part of the process. Becoming a coordinator was a goal — now he wants to show everyone why he got the job.

“I still got to earn the role that I’ve been given,” Desai said. “I’ve been given a title right now and I’ve been given these responsibilities, but … I still have to earn it on the field, which I’ll embrace.”

(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; Photos: Nuccio DiNuzzo / Getty Images, Robin Alam / Icon Sportswire)

Adam L. Jahns covers the Chicago Bears as a senior writer for The Athletic. He previously worked at the Chicago Sun-Times, where he started in 2005 and covered the Blackhawks (2009-12) and Bears (2012-2019) Follow Adam on Twitter @adamjahns.

[JAF-N72EX]

I don't care about his bio. What I care about are defensive results and so far I'm not overly impressed. The front 7 is getting after the QB on 1st and 2nd downs and Jaylon is doing work in the secondary and that's cool and all...but that doesn't mean anything if they can't stop em on 3rd down no matter how far back they are.

How good or bad a defense plays on 3rd down vs good or bad offense can tell you alot about the defense and it's trajectory, and so far we're one of the worst in this category. I just hope **** changes like last year when we couldn't defend the run to the start season.

For all the flack DT gets (myself included) he has been missed.

[soulman]

Are the issues with 3rd down stops scheme issues or coverage issues?  The former is more easily fixable than the latter.

[JAF-N72EX]

13 hours ago, soulman said:

Are the issues with 3rd down stops scheme issues or coverage issues?  The former is more easily fixable than the latter.

Hard to say without all-22 since the NFL still hasn't released any game yet after 3 weeks and it's hard to see assignments without it.