The Pittsburgh Steelers officially announced the hire of Gerald Alexander to serve as their new defensive backs coach, replacing Grady Brown. This is Alexander’s second stint with the team after serving as an assistant secondary coach from 2022 to 2023.
As we do with all major coaching hires, coordinator and positional coach, let’s get to know Alexander. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any true clinic tape as I’ve been able to do with past hires like OL Coach Pat Meyer and DL Coach Karl Dunbar but there’s a lot of background and still plenty philosophy to dive into.
We’ll break it down into three sections. Alexander’s time as a football player, background as a football coach, and philosophy/scheme.
Gerald Alexander – The Football Player
A Los Angeles native, Alexander is best known for playing and coaching safeties but began his college career playing cornerback for Boise State. He made the switch to safety as a senior 2006, his time with the Broncos spanning from 2003-2006. He finished his career with nine interceptions, including a WAC-leading five of them in 2004.
It was that final season with Boise State that turned into a magical run. That year ended with a historic upset of Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl, a game capped with a Statue of Liberty play followed by RB Ian Johnson proposing to his cheerleading girlfriend (fun fact: they’re still married). Alexander played a role in the game, picking off this third-quarter pass and running it back 24 yards the other way.
Alexander was just as known for delivering a hard hit as he was intercepted a pass. He once made SportsCenter’s Top 10 plays for this vicious collision against Utah.
His career resulted him in being taken in the second round of the 2007 NFL Draft by the Detroit Lions. In the front office that year, for what it’s worth, was Sheldon White on the pro personnel side of things. White is now the Steelers’ pro scouting coordinator. It was, of course, Mike Tomlin’s first draft class, too.
Alexander didn’t have the NFL career he imagined. After a strong rookie season in which he started all 16 games, recording 81 tackles, two interceptions, and two forced fumbles, he suffered a serious neck injury in 2008, cracking a vertebra and suffering a herniated disk.
In a 2009 interview with the Jacksonville Jaguars team site, Alexander described what happened.
“It was the fourth quarter, two-minute warning against Minnesota. They were running the clock out. They were giving it to (Adrian) Peterson. He broke through a hole, and I tried to put my head on the ball. He’s a powerful runner,” Alexander said of the play that ended his season.
“I walked off the field and I thought it was a stinger. After the game I took a shower, and I wanted to get on the plane and go home. They brought a stretcher in and I’m telling them they’re wasting their time. They took the X-ray and they saw there was a fracture.
“The greater concern was for the herniated disk, which required a fusion operation to stabilize that level.”
Alexander ended the season on injured reserve. The Lions ended the season without a win.
Though medically cleared for the spring, the Lions traded Alexander to the Jaguars for WR (and former Cleveland Brown) Dennis Northcutt. Now removed from the team that drafted him, Alexander became a journeyman. Eighteen months with the Jags. A brief stint with the Carolina Panthers in 2010. The Miami Dolphins and New York Jets in 2011. The Jets cut him in March 2012, his final NFL stop.
In total, Alexander appeared in 44 games and started 30. He recorded 159 tackles, 81 of which came as a rookie, with four interceptions, three forced fumbles, and two sacks.
If you’re wondering, Alexander never faced the Steelers. His team only played against them once, a 2010 game with the Carolina Panthers that he was inactive for.
Gerald Alexander – The Coach
Alexander’s first coaching stint began at his high school. He took a volunteer job at Rancho Cucamonga while waiting for his next NFL call. But it was there he realized he wanted to go all in on coaching. He got a call from the Dallas Cowboys to try out and flew out. His mind, however, didn’t make the trip.
“When I knew I wanted to coach was when I had a tryout with the Dallas Cowboys and I flew out there on a Thursday and the workout was on a Friday,” he told Skyline Sports in 2016. “We had a very important league game at Rancho Cucamunga on Friday night. Usually how that stuff goes is you go work out and if they are going to sign you, they are going to keep you there.
“The whole time after I’m working out and waiting through the whole process of if they were going to sign me or not, the only thing I kept thinking about was ‘What if this team comes out in trips and puts a receiver on the backside? How will we adjust?’ I’m not even thinking about getting signed at that point.”
Alexander wasn’t signed, flew home, went directly to the stadium, and coached his high school team’s game. From there, coaching became his calling.
Before the NFL, Alexander had a host of college jobs. Earned, for sure, but connections and networking helped (he even once admitted that) and Boise State was good to him beyond his playing career. His first college job came as a grad assistant at Arkansas State (where Mike Tomlin once coached) in 2013. The head coach? Bryan Harsin, who was in his first year and had been on Boise State’s staff during Alexander’s time there as a defensive back.
A 2013 Bleacher Report feature piece on grad assistants spoke with Alexander, who described his role.
“Our weekly game week preparation at Arkansas State was to get the scouting reports ready and break down four or five games depending on what the coordinator wanted. We’d print it out, put it together and give it to the players. I was in charge of studying routes for the game plan, and making sure the coaches had that information.”
Harsin would become Boise State’s head coach the following year.
That meant Alexander to find a new job. He ended up as an assistant at Washington. The head coach there? First-year man Chris Petersen, who was Boise State’s head man during Alexander’s college career. It’s worth noting Jimmy Lake was also hired to be the Huskies’ DB coach that year, a man Mike Tomlin has known for 20 years as he outlined during his pre-Week 1 presser in 2024.
The next season was a step up and down. Alexander got to lead his first room as a DBs coach, but it came at FCS Indiana State. There, he didn’t have a direct connection with a coach. But networking still helped him land the job. As he told former teammate and NFL offensive lineman Uche Nwaneri in April 2021 (tragically, Nwaneri died of a suspected heart attack a year later), Alexander was a late hire but got the job because of a Tennessee Titans internship.
Spending the spring/summer with the Titans, he was joined by Indiana State’s then-defensive backs coach. But that coach left to take a job with the Ohio Bobcats in July, leaving ISU scrambling to replace him. The coach who left recommended Alexander to Sycamores head coach Mike Sanford, who hired Alexander as a replacement. Alexander had played with Sanford’s son, Mike Sanford Jr., at Boise State where Sanford Jr. played quarterback from 2000-2004. Those connections brought him to Indiana State.
But not for long. In 2016, he left for Montana State. Again, his Boise State connections played a role. A finalist for the Broncos’ then-vacant DBs coach job, he instead went to Montana where Jeff Choate, who had coached at Boise State and Washington, became the school’s head coach.
Another year, another change. In 2017, Alexander worked his way back to the FBS level, hired as the Cal Golden Bears’ defensive backs coach and key recruiter. Once more, connections got his foot in the door. Justin Wilcox had just been hired as the school’s head coach and had served as Alexander’s defensive coordinator in 2006. Finally, Alexander found a measure of stability and spent three years there.
He moved around so much he became a focus of a 2018 Athletic article from Chris Vannini highlighting the difficulty of assistant coaches always on the move.
“Whenever her family orders a package, she and her husband, California defensive backs coach Gerald Alexander, fold up the boxes and keep them in the garage. The next time they move, they’re prepared to start packing.
“That’s what all coaches’ wives do,” Krystina Alexander told The Athletic. “We have a group, and they say, ‘You wouldn’t be a coach’s wife if you didn’t keep your boxes.’ That’s what you have to do.””
Alexander called his wife Krystina a “rock star” for handling the many moves around the country.
The NFL came calling in 2020. Alexander had an internship with the Miami Dolphins in 2019 during his final season at Cal. When Brian Flores had an opening, he hired Alexander as defensive backs coach. After Flores was fired following the 2021 season, Alexander followed him to Pittsburgh and served as the Steelers’ assistant defensive backs coach from 2022 and 2023. The team never acknowledged his hiring until the latter year, an unlisted assistant that first season much in the way Ryan Shazier and Vince Williams are today.
On his way out of Cal to the NFL, Alexander left a classy note that thanked the school, Coach Wilcox, his wife, and named all 29 players he coached in the DB room.
Alexander departed in 2024 to become the Las Vegas Raiders’ safeties coach, a step up in opportunity and having loose connections with head coach Antonio Pierce from their Pac-12 days. Alexander at Cal, Pierce at Arizona State (Pierce’s son also attended Boise State from 2016-2019). When the Raiders turned over their coaching staff after 2024, Alexander returned to Pittsburgh.
He’s been coaching since 2013. He’s worked at eight different places/schools/programs, including two stints with Pittsburgh. Hopefully, he’ll find stability.
But Alexander isn’t hoping to just be a DBs coach. As he told the Man to Man podcast in January 2021, his goal is to eventually become a defensive coordinator and NFL head coach.
“Coordinating thing is a goal of mine,” he told former NFL DBs Antoine Bethea and Darius Butler. “The head coaching thing is a goal of mine. I just want an opportunity to continue to lead. Right now, I’m the head coach of my room.”
Gerald Alexander – Coach/Scheme Philosophy
There is no hour-long clinic that details every bit of Alexander’s belief system. That leaves us more limited than we’d like. But there are plenty of quotes and nuggets to pass along.
From everything I’ve found, Alexander is high-energy and high-tempo. And he’s not afraid to get his hands dirty. While at Indiana State, Alexander wore his cleats to practice every day. In an interview with the school’s website, he explained why.
“I wear cleats every day just because you never know when you have to be an example. I want those guys to feel my energy because nothing great has ever been done without great energy. As long as they know that and we can practice like that, we’re going to be in a position to do something special.”
Fast forward to his time last season with the Raiders and you can see Alexander doing the same. Mic’d up one day during practice, he was out there simulating routes with the defensive backs. Direct, hands-on coaching.
While I’ve praised Grady Brown for furthering the Steelers’ turnover culture, Alexander seems to bring the same mentality. During his time at Cal, he dubbed the defensive back room as “The Takers” from the movie of the same name.
“I never want them to prepare or play the game where they’re playing not to get beat,” Alexander said in a 2019 article on the Cal football website. “Every time that we are on the field, we have to go out there with the mindset that we’re coming to take something.”
In one interview during a 2017 fall camp, Bears safety Jaylinn Hawkins described a set-up of the DB room charting their splash plays (interceptions, forced fumbles, etc). They’d be tallied on the white board, and it was even divided into safeties versus cornerbacks to ramp up the competition that much more. It sounds more basic but similar to what Pittsburgh had this year.
Throughout multiple interviews, Alexander lived by one mantra.
“I want these guys to play loose,” he said in a 2018 interview while at Cal. “You cannot play this game scared. I always tell them, there’s a difference between playing to win and playing not to lose.”
He later added the mentality of “not be afraid to be great.” In one of the other above interviews, he described it as a “huge difference in mindset.”
“You continue to empower this guy, continue to encourage this guy. To take those risks. Let’s continue to believe in our hard work we put in. Versus let’s not think about the bad result. Play to win. Go get the ball…versus, don’t let him catch it.’”
Alexander preaches efficiency and fundamentals. Even at the NFL level, he never assumes guys who made it this far understand the basics.
“Why assume that since you’re at this level you know how to tackle?” he said in the interview with Bethea and Butler. “Damn it, we’re going to cover tackling. We’re going to talk about body positioning, and getting off blocks, and making sure you got the proper leverage on the ball. That’s an annual deal. So when we get back to the lab and we get a chance to work with our players again for the ’21 season, we’re going back to the foundation of Football 101.”
Alexander told a story of how he kept players engaged, especially after being hired in 2020 during the COVID year when offseason meetings were held virtually via Zoom. He would set up a game of Jeopardy for his room to play featuring categories like “Football 101” and “NFL history” to teach the game for the big and small things. He offered one specific example.
“How many referees are on the field in an NFL game? Both teams got it wrong. They said like seven. Seven referees. I said no man, there’s one referee. All the others are officials. One referee. Little things like that…teaching the game and not assuming.”
He also taught things like how wide the football field is, how wide the hash marks are, basic things that might not seem important but educate those who might not ever wondered to look up or find out. During the interview, Butler said he only had that happen to him at one place in his NFL career. In New England under Bill Belichick.
Alexander shared his passion for teaching and molding players. A couple of quotes to highlight that point.
“That’s my responsibility. To make sure he understands the ‘why.’ And then maybe have that ‘aha’ moment. Oh, got it. And now they get it. Now they’re able to get it at a faster pace, a higher level. They go from thinking to anticipating. Now we can grow from there.”
“It’s my job to make you get to that point where you slow the game down because of understanding. That’s what drives me. Being able to give that person those tools of information in order for them to feel confident with what we just worked on.”
“It’s not just what to do. It’s why. It’s why it’s applicable. It’s why we do it this way you can be unsuccessful. And if you do it this way, you can be successful.”
It’s worth noting Alexander has said in most places he coached that the safeties were the “primary communicators” even more so than the linebackers. Will that be the same in Pittsburgh? Difficult to say but something to watch for.
Alexander requires his DB room to bring energy. A huge fan of the Seattle Seahawks’ iconic Legion of Boom, he once references how special the group was in an interview and tweeted when Earl Thomas was the last member to leave, signing with the Baltimore Ravens in March 2019. He wants the secondary to set the tone in practice for everyone else to feed off of.
“We gotta be the ones to set the tone, to bring the energy, to play a physical style of football…spread like wildfire through our team,” Alexander once said.
While hardly groundbreaking, he stressed the importance of the NFL being a “matchup league” in a 2021 interview with the Miami Dolphins and rotating personnel week-to-week based on game plan and the opposing offense’s strengths. Something Pittsburgh, and most teams, also do but still worth noting.
Referring back to the Mic’d up segment with the Raiders and similar ones with Cal, Alexander is a much more vocal and animated coach than Grady Brown, who was quiet and reserved. Alexander is a voice you’ll definitely hear at training camp. Here’s just a snippet. You’ll hear him repeat the “play to win, not to lose” line referenced above, emphasis on communication “verbal and non-verbal” and having fun around the guys, too.
In the interview with Bethea and Butler, Alexander told the story of an exercise he goes through with players on how to see the game.
“Here’s an exercise that I’ve done over the course of the years that I’ve coached. What I say is, ‘see a little, see a lot. See a lot, see a little.’ I’ll write on the board, ‘see a little’ in little small words. And next to it I’ll put, ‘see a lot.’ And I’ll do the same. ‘See a lot’ and then little words next to it I’ll put ‘see a little.’
“Focus on this ‘see a little’ right here. What do you see next to it? ‘See a lot.’ If you just focus on that, you can see everything you need to see. Now focus on this big ass ‘see a lot’ right here. Can you clearly see what’s next to there that’s written small? No. Because if you try to see too much, especially on the football field, you’re not going to see nothing.”
That’s not to say Alexander doesn’t want his players to understand the whole picture. But knowing your role and assignment comes first.
Alexander also has an open-door policy and wants to connect with his guys beyond a coach-player relationship.
“Obviously, we know how important mental health is,” he said in the Man to Man podcast. “Just making sure, ‘Hey man, come to me with whatever. Obviously, I am going to hold you accountable to the things that need to be done. But ultimately the first thing you know is I love you. And I love you enough to tell you the truth.'”
“Players just want to have great information that helped them become better,” he later added.
In a 2024 presser while with the Raiders, he offered this about football’s basics.
“Fundamentals are the engine that drive the scheme.”
And expanded on it in a separate interview.
“Teaching the fundamentals and holding the guys to a level of accountability to the standard that we set in our DB room. I want to make sure that our culture and things that we do, and how we operate, and I’ve always been this way with my groups no matter what level, that we’re the standard. That we’re setting the bar.”
In the Man to Man pod, he discussed the importance of the nickel corner whom he dubbed a “starter” given their high snap count. The need to play the run, blitz, cover, communicate, and have a high football IQ.
Finally, and this is more speculation on my part, could he bring over any players with past connections? We’ve already written about Raiders slot corner Nate Hobbs, who would be a great fit in Pittsburgh. Two other names to consider. Safeties Jaylinn Hawkins and Ashtyn Davis. Both played under Alexander while at Cal and both are slated to hit free agency. With neither likely to be ticketed for full-time jobs, Davis was a backup with the Jets in 2024 while Hawkins started only seven games with New England, I could see either being brought in for important safety depth behind Minkah Fitzpatrick and DeShon Elliott.
Damontae Kazee is unlikely to return, and depth is really thin. Miles Killebrew is a special teamer, and Ryan Watts just had neck surgery from an August injury. The Steelers need at least one veteran behind their starters.
Final Thoughts
Overall, it’s not a surprise to see Alexander as the team’s choice once it decided to move on from Grady Brown. His two years with Pittsburgh ease the transition for everyone. CB Joey Porter Jr., for example, isn’t new to him and vice versa. Alexander will be a new voice for guys like Elliott, CB Beanie Bishop Jr., and obviously whoever gets added this offseason, but there’s a level of continuity here that I can appreciate.
My suspicion is Pittsburgh wanted a coach more vocal and intense than Brown. Brown definitely had a quieter personality and perhaps the Steelers are looking for someone to light more of a fire under someone like, say, Porter to further his development. Not that Alexander is a yeller or “get in your face” guy but he has a bigger personality than Brown. All while still preaching core fundamentals and a turnover, “take the ball away” mindset that has served Pittsburgh well over the years.
While I’m still surprised and in many ways disappointed to see Brown depart, Alexander seems like a solid hire.
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