In 2011, Patrick Toney was a high school offensive coordinator. In 2017, he was the safeties coach at UTSA. On Thursday, Toney coached in his second practice as the co-defensive coordinator of the Florida Gators, one of the most storied programs and most recognizable brands in college football.
That’s the type of rapid career advancement that is very common in movies and television shows but not common at all in the real world.
While being the primary defensive play-caller for an SEC school at the age of 32 might seem like an incredible accomplishment to the outside world, Toney hasn’t really taken the time to reflect on the journey that brought him here. The way that he looks at it, he’s right where he expected to be.
“I always kind of begin with the end in mind, I guess,” Toney said. “This is where I always saw myself, to be honest with you. I’ve kind of surrounded myself with people that have been on a very similar journey if you look at the people I’ve worked for that are in this league or people I’ve replaced that have just left this league. So, I don’t think it’s anything that hasn’t been done before.
“It definitely did happen fast, but I haven’t had any time to really think about it. I think when it’s all said and done, hopefully 30 years, I’ll probably think about it.”
In the interim, we’ll think about it for him. As is often the case in a number of fields, one crucial connection gave Toney his big break.
Shortly after Billy Napier was hired as the head coach at Louisiana in December 2017, he hired Karl Scott as his defensive coordinator. Napier allowed Scott to choose one assistant coach to join his staff. Scott had worked alongside Toney at Southeastern Louisiana from 2012-14 and was apparently impressed by what he saw. Scott tabbed Toney as the one coach that he got to handpick as part of his defensive staff.
Napier called Toney on Christmas Eve to deliver the news.
“Coach Napier had originally considered hiring someone else as the defensive coordinator who I had been around, so I guess he had heard my name a couple places,” Toney said. “Then we finished fifth in the country in total defense at UTSA that year. I think we were No. 2 in pass efficiency, or we were up there. So, played good defense. He called me. I was looking to make a move. So, that was really it. Told him I’d be there in a couple days.”
As it turned out, Scott and Toney didn’t work together at Louisiana for very long. A few weeks later, Alabama swooped in and stole Scott away to be their defensive backs coach. Still, Toney had his foot firmly in the door at that point.
He took full advantage of his opportunity. In 2019, his safeties helped the Ragin’ Cajuns lead the Sun Belt in passing defense.
When defensive coordinator Ron Roberts left to take a job at Baylor after that season, Napier rewarded Toney by promoting him to that position.
Toney’s two seasons as the play-caller were a success by almost every metric. They ranked 31st in the FBS in scoring defense and 33rd in total defense in 2020, and they followed that up by ranking 11th in scoring defense in 2021. Those are tremendous feats for a program that has to play a game or two against bigger schools every year in order to pay the bills.
Toney then followed Napier to Florida in December as one of the first members of his staff.
“It means a lot to me that he promoted me there and gave me an opportunity to start calling plays, kind of on-the-job learning by being a coordinator at a young age,” he said. “That experience is invaluable, and I hope I’ve done my part to prove him right.”
Now Toney is facing one of the biggest challenges of his young career. He’s tasked with turning around a UF defense that fell off of a cliff, belly-flopped onto a metal spike and then burst into flames the last two seasons. They ranked 83rd in total defense in 2020 and gave up the program’s most yards per game since at least 1944. They were a little bit better in 2021, but they still finished in the middle of the pack in the SEC in both total defense and scoring defense.
To turn things around, Toney plans to implement an aggressive scheme. Like all defensive coordinators, his main focus is on finding ways to confuse the quarterback. With all of the run-pass option plays that offenses are calling these days, quarterbacks are more involved with the offensive decision-making than ever before.
Toney’s goal is to trick them into playing right into the strength of the defense that he’s called through the various pre-snap looks that he’ll show them. Basically, he wants to force the offense to do something instead of sitting back and reacting to whatever is thrown at them.
“We want to make the same things look different and different things look the same,” he said. “In today’s game, the person you’ve got to make things hard on is the triggerman. You’ve got to be able to disguise and make him decide post-snap what the coverage is, where are the strengths and weaknesses and where the coverage issues are. We’re going to try and put in a defense that poses problems for the quarterback post-snap.
“What everybody is trying to do in today’s game is get the ball handed off into a positive-numbered box. So, you want to show population one way maybe and force them to throw the football that way or maybe force them to hand the ball into a loaded box count.”
However, Toney doesn’t believe that the scheme is the most important part of his job. Instead, he prides himself on being an excellent teacher of the fundamentals of playing defense.
Pretty much every defensive scheme ever invented has been both wildly successful and wildly unsuccessful at different schools in different situations. If it were as simple as one scheme being vastly superior to all of the others, everybody would run that scheme.
Being an elite defense versus a bad one often comes down to the fine details, such as the defensive linemen playing with the proper footwork and hand placement, the linebackers being disciplined enough to fill the gap that they’re supposed to fill regardless of what the offense is doing, and the secondary communicating properly to avoid breakdowns and playing with the proper coverage techniques. The entire unit needs to make tackles on the first attempt and avoid costly penalties.
UF has been abysmal in pretty much all of those categories the past two seasons, and that’s a large reason why Toney is here in the first place.
“I think our players are extremely eager,” he said. “I think they’re very football intelligent, and they want to do things the right way. The first thing that we’ve got to do is play fundamentally sound defense. We’ve got to learn how to strike blockers. We’ve got to learn how to shed. We’ve got to learn how to leverage the football and pursue and get the ball carrier on the ground.
“Defense is not as much about what you do; it’s about how you do it. I think if you look at the blueprint of SEC defense right now, it’s a lot of guys that do very similar things. It’s about the level of detail and precision and execution they’re doing it with.”
Safety Trey Dean has already noticed a difference in the level of discipline and attention to detail through two practices with Toney as both his coordinator and position coach.
“We’re going to be a structured team,” Dean said. “We’re going to be a disciplined team. So, if somebody was to beat us, God forbid, they’re going to beat us. We’re not going to beat ourselves.
“We preach a lot of structure. It’s not going to be OK if you don’t go to class, or you’re going to have a consequence. If you don’t take this one-inch step, it’s going to be a consequence, or it’s going to be a gap open.”
Linebacker Amari Burney envisions this defense being the swarming, attacking type of unit that Gators fans were accustomed to prior to the last two years.
“We’re going to be aggressive every play we’re out there, 11 guys to the ball,” he said. “If you see somebody slacking, guess what? They’re off the field. We’ll get another guy in there to go be aggressive.”
While he’s young and only has two years of play-calling experience, Toney has the look of a rising star in the profession.
Because of Napier’s deep list of coaching connections through his time on Nick Saban’s staff at Alabama, he could’ve hired just about anybody that he wanted to be his defensive coordinator at Florida. He didn’t drag Toney with him because he was the only option. Napier chose to take Toney with him because he believes that he’s the best person in the entire country to be his defensive coordinator at this point in time.
Now Toney looks to prove Napier right, just as he did when he joined his Louisiana staff without having ever met him and just as he did when Napier promoted him to defensive coordinator in 2020.
“This is the second time I’ve been at the beginning with Coach Napier at a program,” Toney said. “I think it’s invaluable to learn from him and see how he does that at two different stops and assist him in any way I can. Obviously, the University of Florida is a premier program in the country, and I’m blessed to be here.”