William Gay’s days of playing football are long over. But he’s still working closely with the game and has his first NFL job this summer. In an Instagram story he shared on Monday, Gay posted that he’s been accepted to coach with the Dallas Cowboys as part of the Bill Walsh Fellowship Program.
Gay joked on the caption that the email had him feeling like it was 2007. That, of course, was the year he got drafted as part of Mike Tomlin’s first-ever class. A 5th-round pick out of Louisville, Gay went on to have a long and largely successful career.
He appeared in 176 games, starting 101 of them, recording 577 tackles and notching seven sacks. Gay picked off 13 passes and returned an incredible five of them for touchdowns, tying the Steelers’ record also held by Rod Woodson. Gay spent total 10 seasons in Pittsburgh and one in Arizona. That season with the Cardinals came in 2012 and Gay returned to the Steelers in 2013, finishing his career with the team, though he briefly spent time in camp with the New York Giants before being released in 2018.
Soon after his playing days were over, Gay got into coaching. He had an internship with the Steelers in 2019, joining former TE David Johnson. Then-OC Randy Fichtner praised the job Gay did working with the receivers during that time.
“We’re glad to have him,” Ficthner said at the time. “He’s got a lot of energy. He wants to learn. He wants to be a coach. And what better opportunity to kind of pull the whole thing together, learn maybe some things from an offensive perspective that might make him a defensive coach if he so chooses that’s where he wants to go? If he wants to stay on offense, then he’s going to be a good, young coach.”
After completing his internship, Gay took a job as a defensive backs coach at Missouri State, though he left the school just months later to focus on his family. It’s not clear what coaching work, if any, Gay has been involved in since but he’s now back in the NFL for the summer. The Steelers have a coach as part of Walsh’s Fellowship program this year in Tremaine Jackson, who is currently the head coach at Valdosta State.
