In February, the new quarterbacks coach at South Carolina loaded up his Yukon with clothes, shoes, a bunch of winter coats and his kid’s computer.
Dan Werner drove through four states to reach his family’s new home in Columbia. His wife Caysie was next to him. His 13-year-old son Ian sat behind him.
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You could forgive Werner if he got a bit nostalgic on the eight-hour drive from Oxford, Miss. Lord knows this wasn’t the typical coach-on-the-move story.
It was Werner’s 15th job change since breaking in as a high school coach 35 years ago, but this one was different. Werner had spent a dozen years in Oxford, more than twice as long as he’d been at any previous stop. His time in Mississippi was equal parts heartbreaking and invigorating. His experiences the previous decade were unlike those of any other college football coach in the country. This was where his life had been flipped upside down, and with it, his perspective on coaching, parenting and family.
Staring at the road, his mind kept circling back to two basic questions: Are they going to be OK with this move, and is this the right move for us? After all, this was the first time in his career that he was moving and it wasn’t just about him.
Caysie, whom Werner had married a year earlier, had never lived outside of Oxford. She was moving away from her parents, her children from her first marriage and a lifetime of close friends. Several times along the ride Caysie assured Werner she’d be fine.
Ian’s situation was more nuanced. He’d been diagnosed with autism as a toddler. Werner understood how important schedules and a comfort factor are for autistic children. When Werner had broken the news to Ian about a month earlier that the family was going to move to South Carolina, the teenager didn’t take it well.
Werner had figured out over the years that anytime they knew there was something Ian had to do that he didn’t want to do, they would come up with a little game plan. “We’d give him several cues about why it might be good,” Werner says. “He always has to have a plan. That’s a little how it is in coaching. We make it detailed about what is gonna happen and why it’s gonna happen.” From there, Ian would take over and could talk himself into things. Literally. “OK, Columbia is gonna be a good place to live.”
It helped that Werner was keeping their house in Oxford. He told Ian that when he’s done with his job with the Gamecocks, he’s going to return home to retire in Mississippi. The coach made it sound like a long vacation, only Ian would still have to go to school.
Dan Werner, 59, has won four national titles working under four different head coaches. Five months ago, he earned his latest championship ring with Alabama despite not attending a Crimson Tide game in person the entire season.
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He was the quarterbacks coach for the 2001 Miami Hurricanes, perhaps the greatest college team of all time. He has coached under Jimmy Johnson and Nick Saban. He has produced record-setting offenses.
But if you really want to know about the man the Gamecocks hired, forget the rings and the records, and start about a decade ago when he was he was on the road in Louisiana and got the phone call that changed his life. Werner had just accepted the offensive coordinator job at FCS Northwestern State. A month earlier, the Ole Miss staff of which he had been a part had been fired. His family was still in Oxford. His wife Kim, whom he’d met 15 years earlier when he coached at Louisiana Tech, was busy planning a surprise 50th birthday party for him.
His phone rang. Their 10-year-old daughter Maya was on the line. Something is wrong with Mommy, she told him. Werner drove back to Oxford as fast as he could.
Kim had died of an enlarged heart. She was 37.
The initial thought in Werner’s head when tragedy struck was, “Why me?”
Thirty-seven years old?!?
But when Werner sat down that day after returning home, all of those things he’d preached for years — the kind of stuff that becomes second nature as a second-generation football coach — surfaced. All of those talks to kids about how to handle adversity, about how to respond, about how bad things are going to happen in a game — how do you handle that?
“Well,” he thought to himself, “here it is, Dan.”
Sitting around all day in an empty house and thinking about his loss wasn’t an option. “Football carries over to life, or vice-versa,” he says. “Immediately, I had to get into attack mode. Everything I had in mind football-wise was out the window. It was all about, how am I gonna take care of these kids?”
Reality sunk in fast. That job in Louisiana he just accepted? He couldn’t take it.
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“He dropped everything in his life for me and Ian,” Maya says now.
“A normal football coach, as soon as he takes another job, you’re gone within a couple of days,” Werner says.
“Well, how would I have moved the kids? You gotta find a sitter, or for me basically a nanny. Then get them into a new school. Normally, the wife takes care of it and packs the house and the family moves in the summer. But I wasn’t going to leave my kids behind. I couldn’t. I didn’t have anybody to leave them with. I knew that Oxford was a good town for them. Ian was settled in. He did well with his school, and Maya was doing well in hers. I didn’t think it was the right thing to do. It wouldn’t be fair to them.”
Werner, instead, accepted the head coaching job at North Delta School, a small private school that was K-12 and about a half-hour from Oxford. He’d gone from coaching in the SEC to working at one of the smallest schools in the state.
He didn’t realize it at the time, but working at that tiny school — maybe 250 kids total — would be a blessing.
“When I was at North Delta, it was like God said, ‘You need to go to this school because you’re going to meet a lot of people that can help you,’ ” Werner said. “Of the maybe 50 teachers and people who worked there, 45 of ’em were women. Every morning it seemed like I’d come in and go, ‘OK, now, here’s what I’m going through with my daughter, what do I need to do?’ And they would coach me up.
“Being a single parent is hard. I don’t care if you’re a man or a woman, but especially for me, I’d never had any sisters or anything. I didn’t know anything about little girls. And to raise one from 9 to 18, that was tough.”
Werner spent three years at North Delta, winning two district titles and compiling a 27-7 record. In 2012, after former Ole Miss assistant Hugh Freeze was hired as the Rebels’ head coach, he recruited Werner to be his quarterbacks coach and co-offensive coordinator. Freeze’s hiring was serendipitous because Ole Miss was probably the only college coaching job Werner could have managed at that time in his kids’ lives.
Robert Ratliff, a former backup quarterback at Ole Miss, recalls, “Very early on, I remember Coach Werner going around the table: ‘Hey, tell me about your family, what drives you and what your goals are.’ He said, ‘I’m gonna start this and told us about Ian and then about how Maya loves theater.’
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“You could tell that is his life. He said, ‘I’m gonna be with y’all way more, but I love them more.’ ”
Ratliff came to Ole Miss as a walk-on and credits Werner for fighting for him to get on scholarship for his last two years in Oxford. “He put his neck on the line for me multiple times even though I probably only played 25 snaps,” he says. Ratliff, who later worked as a graduate assistant at Ole Miss, leaned on Werner after the quarterback’s mother suffered a brain aneurysm. Ratliff and his brother drove all night to Chicago, texting Werner at 2:53 in the morning to let him know they’d gotten there safely.
“One of the reasons why I stuck around there for three years was because I wanted to work for him,” Ratliff says. “He’s a great family man.”
Werner’s second stint with the Rebels was dramatically different from his first. Under Freeze, the offense had transitioned to an up-tempo spread scheme that was on the front end of the run-pass option craze. Werner turned Bo Wallace into one of the 10 most prolific passers in SEC history, transforming a team that ranked near the bottom in every offensive category the year before he arrived into one in the top five. In 2013, the team set school records for total offense, passing attempts and completions. In 2015, the Rebels broke more school records offensively and led the SEC in scoring, total offense and passing. Even more impressive, they beat Alabama in two of three meetings from 2014 to 2016 and averaged more than 36 points per game.
Off the field, Werner’s kids were growing up fast. Maya got more into theater. He took her to New York a few times just to see Broadway shows. “We went because he knew how much I loved it,” Maya says.
Back in Oxford, she’d have rehearsals at night. Ian’s babysitter would pick him up from school and help him with his homework, and then Maya would cook them dinner. Werner would get home from the office later that night and fold clothes and clean up before he went to bed. “I think he did everything right, in my opinion,” Maya says. “I don’t know how he dealt with a teenage daughter by himself.”
It was about 2½ years after Kim died before Werner considered going out on a date. It seemed everyone around Oxford wanted to try to fix him up. He turned down most of the blind dates friends tried to set up. He wouldn’t introduce his children to any of the women he’d go out with.
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One day he was at his favorite restaurant, the Rib Cage, when a buddy texted him. The bar’s owner happened to be walking by as Werner looked at the message. Werner showed it to him. “He looks down and sees the text and says, ‘I know her. She’s real good-looking. You need to look into that,’ ” Werner says. “I was about ready to delete it. He talked me into it.”
Caysie had three grown children. She never wanted to get remarried. She says on two previous occasions friends tried to set her up with Werner after her divorce. “I said, ‘I’m not touching that with a 10-foot pole’ — a sad man who was just getting over the loss of a wife was more than I could handle.” But she relented after her daughter who worked at the Rib Cage met him. She wondered, “Who is this guy that all of these people want me to meet?”
They agreed to go out for a drink. She thought he was standoffish. She later found out that he’d met some women who tried to get too close too fast. “By the fourth date, he was fun,” she says.
They dated for about six months before Caysie met Maya and Ian. “He was very cautious about Maya and Ian meeting anyone,” Caysie says. “I was the first one. That was a huge big deal to me, but I didn’t how big of a deal that was. One of the reasons I fell for him was he was just the best dad.”
Werner was relieved that his kids took to Caysie so easily.
“She’s great,” Maya says. “She’s just so nice. It was very easy for us to click.”
A marriage in June 2017 was set. But, unfortunately for Werner, his career took another rough turn. Freeze let him go after the 2016 season. The Rebels had ranked in the top 35 in the country in yards per play, but Freeze wasn’t happy with how they’d done in the red zone that year. He wanted to make a change.
Werner interviewed for the offensive coordinator job at Alabama, a program his offenses had given a lot of headaches. Saban ultimately hired one of his old protégés, Brian Daboll, for the job but opted to bring on Werner in an analyst role. But Werner didn’t want to uproot his family for just an analyst job. He and Saban worked out a deal in which Werner would spend half the week in Tuscaloosa, making the 2-hour, 45-minute drive early Sunday mornings and driving back to Oxford on Wednesday afternoons. He got some good-natured ribbing when he’d leave to go home right before the Tide began practice, his peers often saying, “Hit ’em straight!”
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“I didn’t see one game (in person),” Werner says. “I watched all of their games in Oxford.”
As an analyst, Werner could attend practice and observe, but per NCAA rules he was not allowed to instruct players. He shared an office with fellow offensive analyst Chris Weinke. “My whole thing was to try and help game-plan,” Werner says. “I would give my ideas. I’d watch the film the week before, and when I left on Wednesday, I’d start watching the film already of the next opponent. Then I’d say what I thought we should do within our game plan. I would meet with Coach Saban about what I thought of our game the previous day.”
Werner would give Saban a written report of what he had jotted down while watching the Tide at his home in Oxford, but observing the TV broadcast wasn’t the extent of it. “They’d send me home with an iPad and laptop. On the iPad, they’d send me the video as soon as it was over, and I’d watch it again. And then when I got there, I’d watch it with the staff and watch it with the QBs, too. I’d probably seen it three or four times.”
Werner’s expertise with RPOs was a big plus. “It’s one thing to say run this play and then here’s the rules on it, but there’s always the little things that may happen if, say, there’s a different technique by a DB, what happens then?” he says. “That’s what I was there for since I was doing it the last five years. I could give a little hint for them about what to tell the receiver or to tell the QB.”
Werner would make his suggestions to Daboll and was upfront about the dynamic. “Look, my job is to give you ideas. If you take none of ’em, all of ’em or anything in between, that’s up to you. You’re the one calling the plays. Believe me, I won’t feel bad one way or the other. I don’t wanna infringe on you.”
Daboll was great about it, Werner says.
At his home, he watched the games alone. “It was weird watching a game of a team that you’re working for and you’re watching it on TV,” he says, “but I didn’t want to be sitting there with some football fan who was going to tell me something or complain about that or whatever.”
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It also wasn’t like Werner was texting anyone on the Alabama staff during the games, because coaches don’t take their phones up to the press box.
“I thought that was gonna be super fun, and it wasn’t quite as fun as I thought it would be,” Caysie says of having her husband at home watching those games. “He was concentrating. He gets serious. He gets very zoned in. We started out trying to watch it together. I tend to ask too many questions — ‘Why do they do that?’ I could tell he enjoyed being alone during the games.”
Maya had moved to New York to study film at Pace University. She had been apprehensive about moving so far away from her dad and Ian but knew she couldn’t stay with them forever. Knowing Caysie was with them made things much easier.
“I had to grow up,” Maya says. “I’d always wanted to live in New York. This is where I want to be. It was difficult moving up here, but I still talk to them every day. I call my brother before he goes to bed. It’s an adjustment, but I think we’ve all handled it very well.”
Werner’s name bounced around for several coaching opportunities over the winter. The quarterbacks job at South Carolina looked like an ideal fit. He liked the town. He thought the Gamecocks program, fresh off a nine-win season, was on the rise. Better still, he thought he’d be working with two really good guys in head coach Will Muschamp and offensive coordinator Bryan McClendon, who both told him he’d have a lot of input in the offense.
More important, Werner had researched the local school district and learned it would be a comfortable environment for Ian.
“My wife could see I was getting sort of antsy,” he says. “I was mowing the lawn every other day. She’s never lived anywhere else. I think this would be fun for all of us. ‘You need to be a coach. Let’s go back into it.’ That’s when I opened it up, when I knew that she was good with it.
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“My daughter is in college. I wanted to make sure, is it gonna be good for (Ian)? And so whoever offered a job, we had to make sure it was a good place for him. We did that and found out that it was good for him.
“Then came from the football part, where I was going to work for someone who does what I like to do — go fast, high-tempo and throw the football down the field, have an exciting style of offense. Will said, ‘We want to do the things that you guys did at Ole Miss.’ Everything just sort of fit. I didn’t want to go somewhere where they wanted to sit on the ball and win 14-10. I would’ve gotten out of coaching.”
The Werners have fallen in love with their new home. Caysie can walk to a nearby Whole Foods, and there’s plenty of great restaurants to try. Ian is thriving. “He’ll say, ‘I love Columbia!’ The cool thing for Ian here is there are a lot of extra camps,” Caysie says. “He is super talented with computers. He’s really brilliant in what he loves and has this photographic memory. I just know that he is going to do something really cool with the knowledge he does have.”
Like many who have been around her husband, she is in awe of how he’s handled everything.
“He’s just taken it all in stride. ‘OK, that happened, let’s do this.’ He’s just real positive. He’s been through so much, but you would never know that. After one of the first bad losses, I wondered, is he gonna be in a bad mood? Will he come home yelling? But nothing was ever brought home. And that was a big deal. I think when you’ve been through as much as he has, you really appreciate the good stuff.”
The coach who once helped Miami’s Ken Dorsey become a two-time Heisman Trophy finalist has evolved quite a bit from the pro-style guy who came to Oxford from Coral Gables. His first wife died two days before his 50th birthday. Most coaches, most men, often don’t change much at that age. Werner did. Raising Maya and Ian in the wake of such tragedy also made him a better coach.
“It’s made me a better teacher because of all the little things you have to explain and be patient with,” he says. “It’s definitely made me a lot more patient, not only with (Ian) but with the whole situation that’s happened over the last nine years. Everything has just flown by, man. It’s hard for me to believe that it was nine years ago when everything happened.
“I’m 59 years old, and I walk into a meeting with my quarterbacks and you feel like you’re young again. I’ve never really felt old, just because this is what I’ve always done. Other than when I look in the mirror, I don’t feel like I’m 59. When I hang out with those guys, talk football, the thing I always tell them is, ‘Man, I’ve been through a lot in my life.’ I want them to come and talk me about the things they have issues with, things that they might not feel comfortable telling other people about, because there’s a good chance in my 59 years that I’ve been through it. There’s not a whole lot of things that I haven’t seen.”
(Top photo of the Werner family, with Ian and Maya to their father’s left, by Kathie Wilson and courtesy Caysie Werner)
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