Colorado offensive coordinator Sean Lewis speaking at a new conference in February 2023. (Cliff Grassmick/Staff Photographer)
BOULDER — Sean Lewis likes a good gag. But on game day? Not as much.
“I’m one of those guys where if you give me a cup of coffee it’s like two. Give me two cups, it’s like four,” Syracuse football coach Dino Babers, one of the close friends and mentors of the new CU Buffs offensive coordinator, recalled over the phone to The =Post late last week.
“We had a game and there was no coffee and someone (the ‘Cuse staff) handed me my first Red Bull. The first half…the interactions (through the headphones) were so electric and Sean couldn’t understand why I suddenly saying all those extracurricular words and all that other stuff.
“Someone told Sean after the game that they gave me some Red Bull. We have a staff meeting and I find out later that year that he threatened the entire staff that if anyone gave me Red Bull again they would have to deal with him.”
Lewis is 6ft 7 tall with a shaved head and a black beard that flows from University Hill to downtown Louisville.
Spoiler alert: nobody gave Babers Red Bull the game day after.
“But he’s a warm and respectful soul,” laughed the Orange coach. “You guys (in Colorado) have a really good one.”
For many observers, new Buffs football coach Deion Sanders was something of a coup, at least from a resume perspective. Local and national pundits raised eyebrows last December when reports emerged that Coach Prime had lured 36-year-old Lewis, one of the most respected young minds in Group of Five football, away from the position of head coach at Kent State become an offensive play caller at CU.
“There (were) a lot of layers that went into the final decision,” Lewis recently explained. “But ultimately it came down to what was best for me and my family. And that was something that me and my wife did many years ago when we started attracting attention to different occasions, putting together (concrete) set criteria of what our family wanted and what our non-negotiable things were. And the City of Boulder and CU achieved all of those goals.”
“little old soul”
A Midwestern guy with a Midwestern work ethic, Lewis is a Chicago kid from the suburb of Oak Lawn, Illinois. He had been drafted to Wisconsin as quarterback but switched to tight end during the latter half of Barry Alvarez’s tenure as head coach in 2004-05.
From Madison, he returned to his preparatory alma mater as an offensive coordinator before stopping at Nebraska-Omaha (2010) and then Akron (2011) as a graduate assistant, where he met Kim McCloud, then-secondary coach of the Zips — man who would eventually introduce him to Babers.
“He’s a great teacher,” said McCloud, who joined Babers in Eastern Illinois with Lewis for the 2012 season. “That’s 99% of coaching…taking what might be a complex concept and keeping it simple. And he’s a great motivator.”
Again: 6-7. shaved head. Dark beard.
“He’s the only assistant I’ve ever had that I’ve let look down on,” Babers chuckled. “He was really studious, but he had a realness — there’s (a) factor he’s embedded in himself that’s a little bit of an old soul in a new look and a new type of body… He’s kind of a bridge.” between old and new.”
And the fast ones and the furious ones. At EIU, Lewis coached wide receivers and tight ends on an offense that included eventual Super Bowl runner-up Jimmy Garoppolo, another suburban Chicago kid, as quarterback. He and McCloud followed Babers from Eastern to Bowling Green, where Lewis, as QB coach and assistant offensive coordinator, helped Matt Johnson throw 46 points and break Ben Roethlisberger’s old MAC mark for single-season passing yards in 2015.
“Kids[at CU]are going to have fun and be trained hard,” McCloud said. “He can do both.”
What’s coming, well – snapshots. Many of them. As co-offensive coordinator at Syracuse under Babers in 2017, the Orange led the FBS on offensive plays and averaged 456.3 yards per pitch, numbers that made the springboard for Lewis to become the youngest head coach in major college football and Kent State to take over ahead of the 2018 season.
Picking up Babers’ pace and calling it “FlashFAST,” Kent State’s offense shot from 12.8 points per game in 2017 to 29.2 points in 2019, 49.8 points during a four-game tally in 2020 and 33 points per game in 2021.
Since 1988, the Flashes have set six league records, and Lewis has been responsible for three of them — 19, 20 and 21. Kent State, whose alumni include Nick Saban, Jack Lambert, Paul Warfield, Julian Edelman and Antonio Gates, has since Reached just four bowls in 1962, and Lewis was the coach for half of those, as well as the Flashes’ only postseason win — a 51-41 win over Utah State in the 2019 Frisco Bowl.
“This (system) is all Coach Babers,” Lewis explained last week, “and when we got together in Eastern Illinois, he taught me to play that way. And since he’s been with him for six years, the playstyle comes from him – and then some of the schemes are taken from everywhere. But the style of play you see is directly related to Coach Babers. I wouldn’t be standing here before you if it wasn’t for him.”
“He felt really good”
Getting Lewis out of the MAC didn’t come cheap.
Multiple sources put the buyout of his contract with Kent State at $750,000.
Sanders’ deal at CU includes a $5 million salary pool for Buffs assistants. Former CU offensive coordinator/interim coach Mike Sanford had a salary of $650,000 approved by the Board of Regents in early 2022. Sanford, who was fired last December when Coach Prime swept Karl Dorrell’s old staff, should earn $700,000 in 2023. Lewis reportedly made around $530,000 last season with the Flashes.
“(CU) has to be a great opportunity,” said McCloud, who is now a defensive analyst at Montana. “I know he’s going to play a big part in what’s going on over there.
“It’s part of the business. Sometimes you have to do what is best for you and your career…I know when he made the move he felt really good about it and thought it was a great opportunity for him.”
And while Babers did hint that he might have advised Lewis on the move…
“Yes, we talked, but no, I’m not going to tell you what we talked about,” the Syracuse coach replied, laughing again.
“[Lewis is]one of those guys who has a lot of common sense. So there are times when he called me and we talked about things. And sometimes I call him. Without a doubt, he belongs to my circle of trust.”
Still, it’s really something of a coup, isn’t it?
“I don’t know about the ‘coup’ part,” Babers replied. “I know you have someone who is very experienced as a head coach and runs an offense that he is very familiar with. Denver and Boulder should be happy to have someone of Sean Lewis’ caliber capable of doing it.”
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