BOULDER — Sean Lewis likes a good gag. On gameday, though? Not so much.
“I’m one of those guys where if you give me one 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 to The =Post by phone late last week.
“We had a game and there was no coffee and someone (on the ‘Cuse staff) gave me my first Red Bull. The first half … the interactions (over the headsets) were so electric, and Sean couldn’t understand why, all of a sudden, I’m saying all these extracurricular words and all this other stuff.
“Someone told Sean after the game that they had given me some Red Bull. We’re having a staff meeting, and I find out later on that year that he had threatened the entire staff that if anybody gave me Red Bull again that they were going to have to deal with him.”
Lewis is 6-foot-7 with a shaved head and a black beard that flows from University Hill to downtown Louisville.
Spoiler alert: Nobody gave Babers Red Bull on gameday after that.
“But he’s a warm and respectful soul,” the Orange coach laughed. “You guys (in Colorado) got a really good one.”
To many observers, new Buffs football coach Deion Sanders got something of a coup, at least from a resume standpoint. Local and national pundits raised eyebrows last December when reports broke that Coach Prime had lured the 36-year-old Lewis, one of the most highly-regarded young minds in Group of Five football, away from the head-coaching slot at Kent State to become his offensive play-caller at CU.
“There (were) a lot of layers that went into the ultimate decision,” Lewis explained recently. “But it ultimately came down to what was best for me and my family. And that was something that me and my wife many years ago when we started garnering some attention for different opportunities, we put together a (specific) set criteria of what it is that our family desires and what our non-negotiables were. And the city of Boulder and CU hit all those marks.”
“Bit of an old soul”
Lewis is a Midwest guy with a Midwest work ethic, a Chicago kid from the suburb of Oak Lawn, Ill. He’d been recruited to Wisconsin as a quarterback but switched to tight end during the latter part of Barry Alvarez’s tenure as head coach from 2004-05.
From Madison, he went back to his prep alma mater as an offensive coordinator before stops at Nebraska-Omaha (2010) and then Akron (2011) as a graduate assistant, where he met Kim McCloud, then the Zips’ secondary coach — a man who would eventually introduce him to Babers.
“He’s a great teacher,” said McCloud, who, along with Lewis, joined Babers at Eastern Illinois for the 2012 season. “That’s 99% of coaching … (taking) something that 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 at me,” Babers chuckled. “He really was eager to learn, but there was a genuineness to him — there’s (a) factor that he’s had embedded in him 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 the old and the new.”
And the fast and the furious. At EIU, Lewis coached wide receivers and tight ends on an offense that had future Super Bowl runner-up Jimmy Garoppolo, another suburban Chicago kid, at quarterback. He and McCloud followed Babers from Eastern to Bowling Green, where as QB coach and co-offensive coordinator in 2015, Lewis helped Matt Johnson throw for 46 scores and break Ben Roethlisberger’s old MAC single-season passing yardage mark.
“Kids (at CU) are going to have fun and they’re going to be coached hard,” offered McCloud. “He’s able to do both.”
As for what’s coming, well — snaps. Lots of them. As co-offensive coordinator at Syracuse under Babers in 2017, the Orange led the FBS in offensive plays and averaged 456.3 yards per tilt, numbers that springboarded Lewis to becoming the youngest head coach in major college football, taking over Kent State before the 2018 season.
Taking Babers’ tempo with him and dubbing it “FlashFAST,” Kent State’s offense shot up from 12.8 points per game in 2017 to 29.2 points in 2019, 49.8 points during a four-game 2020 slate, and 33 points per game in 2021.
Since 1988, the Flashes have posted six winning records in the league, and Lewis was responsible for three of them — in ’19, ’20 and ‘21. Kent State, whose alumni include Nick Saban, Jack Lambert, Paul Warfield, Julian Edelman and Antonio Gates, has only reached four bowls since 1962, and Lewis was the coach for half of them, as well as the Flashes’ only postseason win — a 51-41 victory over Utah State in the 2019 Frisco Bowl.
“This (system) is all from Coach Babers,” Lewis explained last week, “and when we got together at Eastern Illinois, he taught me to play this way. And being with him for six years, the style of play comes from him — and then some of the schematics are taken from all over. But the style of play, what you guys see, is directly related to Coach Babers. I wouldn’t be standing here in front of you guys if it wasn’t for him.”
“He felt really good”
Prying Lewis from the MAC didn’t come cheap.
Multiple sources pegged the buyout from his contract with Kent State at $750,000.
Sanders’ deal at CU calls for a salary pool of $5 million 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 let go last December as Coach Prime swept out Karl Dorrell’s old staff, was in line to make $700,000 in 2023. Lewis reportedly earned roughly $530,000 last season with the Flashes.
“(CU) must be a great opportunity,” said McCloud, who’s now a defensive analyst at Montana. “I know he’s going to be a big part of what’s going on over there.
“That’s part of the business. Sometimes, you’ve got to do what’s best for you and your career … I know when he made the move, he felt really good about it and felt it was a great opportunity for him.”
And while Babers hinted that he might have counseled Lewis on the move …
“Yes, we’ve spoken but no, I’m not going tell you what we talked about,” the Syracuse coach countered, laughing again.
“(Lewis is) one of those guys that he’s got a lot of common sense to him. So there are times when he’s called me and we’ve talked about things. And there are times when I call him. He’s in my circle of trust, no doubt.”
Still, it really is something of a coup, isn’t it?
“I don’t know about the ‘coup’ part,” Babers replied. “I know you’ve got someone who’s very experienced as a head coach running an offense that he’s very familiar with. Denver and Boulder should be excited that they’ve got somebody of Sean Lewis’ caliber to be able to do that.”
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