FARGO — Jerry Rosburg has been an NFL assistant coach for most of the last 21 years, from Cleveland to Atlanta to Baltimore to Denver. He won a Super Bowl with the Ravens to cap the 2013 season. The former North Dakota State linebacker hasn't lost touch with his alma mater, though.
He spoke to the Bison last January in Frisco, Texas, the day before the Football Championship Subdivision game against Montana State, a contest won 38-10 by NDSU.
Rosburg has spoken at two recent Bison football clinics and, during a brief retirement respite from the NFL, attended NDSU's 2021 fall camp for a week at the invitation of head coach Matt Entz.
Rosburg was inducted into the Bison athletic hall of fame in September. He was an All-American in 1977 for a Bison team that won the North Central Conference. Rosburg was a team captain that season and recipient of the Dennis Drews Trophy as the team's most valuable player.
"Great guy. Ton of great football experience," Entz said Monday. "Someone I have leaned on in my first three or four years of being a head coach."
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Rosburg might need several people on whom to lean over the next couple of weeks.
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Rosburg, 67, was named the interim head coach of the Denver Broncos on Monday after the team fired first-year coach Nathaniel Hackett in the midst of a disastrous season. It's Rosburg's first head-coaching gig after more than four decades as an assistant in high school, college and the NFL.
The high school experience? A couple of seasons as an assistant at Fargo Shanley back in 1979-80.
After that, Rosburg's resume includes stops at six college programs (Northern Michigan, Western Michigan, Cincinnati, Minnesota, Boston College, Notre Dame) before finally landing his first NFL job as the special teams coordinator for the Browns in 2001. He built a pro career around being a special teams ace, having been the coordinator in Cleveland, Atlanta and Baltimore.
Rosburg spent 11 seasons with the Ravens under head coach John Harbaugh. The two coached together at Cincinnati.
"Jerry may be my best friend in coaching. We go way back," Harbaugh told reporters recently, according to the Denver Post. "I’ve learned so much with him and we’ve been through so many battles and so many good moments together. He’s a very smart man, smart football man."
It's likely Rosburg's tenure as the top man with the Broncos will last two games. That's what is left in the regular season for a Broncos team that is 4-11 and mired in one of the worst seasons in that proud franchise's history. Hackett was fired as the first fall guy because he was unable to mesh with highly compensated quarterback Russell Wilson, acquired prior to this season from Seattle for a pile of high draft picks.
"Our fans deserve much better," Broncos CEO Greg Penner said in a statement Monday.
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That Rosburg finds himself in this situation is semi-remarkable. He retired from coaching in March 2019, but was lured to the Broncos early this season to aid Hackett in game-management strategy.
Yes, game-managment strategy. If you saw Denver's season-opening 17-16 defeat in Seattle, you know why Hackett needed help in that area. The Broncos trailed the Seahawks by a point with 45 seconds left, facing a fourth and 5. Hackett had all three timeouts remaining, but declined to use one before letting the clock drain to 1 second. A 64-yard field goal attempt by Brandon McManus was off the mark and Broncos players, fans, front office and media were left to wonder what Hackett was thinking or doing.
Rosburg was hired shortly thereafter.
Several reports Monday said Rosburg was not the Broncos' first choice to be interim head coach. The team asked defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero to take the job, but Evero declined.
It's a mess in Denver.
But Rosburg becomes the third person with NDSU ties to become an NFL head coach. Former Bison coach Ron Erhardt led the New England Patriots in the late 1970s and early '80s. Former NDSU player and assistant coach Casey Bradley was head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars from 2013-16.
Rosburg arrived in Denver for Week 3 to help with game management.
"He’s definitely helped me quite a bit through so many different areas," Hackett said Nov. 30 before Denver traveled to Baltimore, according to the Denver Post. "I really appreciated him here and he brings it from that culture and that organization."
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The next time Rosburg stops in Fargo, he'll surely have more stories to swap with the Bison.
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