The 2023 season will mark the first for Pete Shinnick as head coach of the Towson football team. Shinnick takes over for Rob Ambrose, who went 76-76 and took the Tigers to an FCS national championship game as part of a 13-season run as head coach.
Shinnick, 58, went 159-67 as the head coach at West Florida, UNC Pembroke and Azusa Pacific, winning the Division II national championship at West Florida in 2019. He is the son of Colts legend Don Shinnick, who played in Baltimore from 1957-1969.
Towson defensive coordinator and defensive backs coach Darian Dulin, special teams coordinator and outside linebackers coach Alex Krutsch and 2022 CAA Special Teams Player of the Year D’Ago Hunter spoke with PressBox’s Luke Jackson about what makes Shinnick special, what gives him a chance to be a successful FCS head coach and more. Dulin and Krutsch worked under Shinnick at West Florida before joining him at Towson.
PRESSBOX: What makes Shinnick special? Why has he been successful to this point?
Darian Dulin: I think the No. 1 thing, when you look up what servant leadership looks like, to me, if there were a dictionary with that, you’d see Pete Shinnick’s picture. For me, there are only a few men in my life that have been like that. My father is one. Jesus Christ is another one. Then there’s Pete Shinnick. I think the way he leads the program, the way he leads his life, the way he leads the coaching staff, to me that’s the No. 1 thing I can say about him. He’s servant leadership at its best.
Alex Krutsch: I think first of all, in my mind, he’s about as genuine as they come. I think he’s as down-to-earth as they come. And then I just think his foundation of who he is as a person, his faith in Jesus Christ and just how he treats people accordingly. I think that’s what people see, and I think good people attract good people, and he’s one of the best that I’ve ever been around. I just think young coaches aspiring to be better, players aspiring to be better people, it’s a man that you want to be around. I think anybody who’s been around Coach feels that. Even guys that have left programs before, guys that were disgruntled as players get sometimes, I think they always circle back and have been like, “Man, Coach was right and he was what I needed at the time.” I think that’s really what makes him special.
PRESSBOX: What gives Shinnick the opportunity to be a successful head coach at the FCS level? Why is he the right fit at Towson?
Alex Krutsch: I think first of all in terms of being successful, I do think you can be successful at any level if you can coach ball and you know how to recruit, and I think Coach does both of those really proficiently. FCS football I think is still very similar to D-II, where we had obviously a lot of success. To us, we see it as a great advantage because now we have more scholarships. I would imagine we should be able to be successful. There are very similar players. I think the difference is there are probably more of them. Specific to Towson, I think just his personal history here with his dad, it makes it special for him. I think you can tell for him this is a very special place. Towson has had success in the past, too. I think it’s got a great alumni base. I think it’s an awesome administration that’s supportive of us and the direction we want to go. I think we have great facilities. I think we’re on the up and up in terms of getting Towson to a place where we all think it’s capable.
D’Ago Hunter: The way he connects with the players and has the coaches all synched in as one and allowing everyone to play at their best abilities in their positions and just playing as themselves, allowing everybody to be themselves as well as just playing as one. Also, a big thing is that offense and defense, he focuses on us always playing together. He emphasizes that a lot — not playing against each other but always playing with each other and encouraging each other as well.
PRESSBOX: What makes Shinnick such a great offensive mind?
Darian Dulin: The way he’s able to break down a defense to figure out where the weak links are. “I know we need to attack this guy on this certain situation.” I think also getting in the minds of the quarterback. I think he did a great job of understanding who our quarterbacks were. The guy at Western Kentucky, Austin Reed, he was our quarterback when we won the national championship — a really good player but sometimes could be a little bit high-strung and Coach was able to balance that out with him. Then we had the guys before him that were a little bit more relaxed and needed to be pushed a little bit more to get out of their comfort zone to take a chance, throw that ball deep, just things like that. Part of it is just understanding the player and getting into their mindset and getting into where they’re at and meeting them where they are and also saying, “This is where I think you need to get to,” and being able to push them to get to that level.
D’Ago Hunter: He breaks everything down differently and allows you to see the offense differently and how you play and how everything is seen on the field and how he wants you to get after it. The way he approaches the game is different, so it allows you to see a different approach to the game, which allows you to improve your game as well. … I think the way he approaches the game differently is how we study film, what he tells us specifically. During practice, he’ll come by us one-on-one, like just randomly come by and give us pointers and allow us to see the play differently, allow us to see different ways we can run the ball maybe. When I’m running the ball, he’ll help me [with] a hole or who else to read as well. There are many different plays that I didn’t see how the game was played. He’s opened my eyes to what he’s told me and it has bettered my game.
PRESSBOX: What makes Shinnick a good voice for special teams?
Alex Krutsch: I would say one, as a skill set, he’s very observational. Two, he’s highly experienced at winning, too. As a program, we talk about winning field position and winning the turnover battle. I think if you do those two things, you put yourself in a really great position to win. That’s something that we believe in, that we talk about. So I think once you start getting into special teams, we try to emphasize skill sets probably more than scheme … and I think Coach is very supportive of that. We know it’s about kind of who you have out there, too, and then making sure they have an enhanced set of skill sets that gives that guy a better chance.
I think we speak the same language. We believe how we progress the same ways in terms of our drills and the scheme of how we implement it. I don’t think we always feel like we have to do something special. It’s about execution more than anything. When it’s a crazy moment on the field, having a leader who kind of epitomizes, “All right, we don’t have to do something special, let’s just do what we do. Let’s put in a call that we said we were going to do. If it’s there, let’s take it — if we have some kind of wrinkle that will work.” It’s just his calmness. You don’t have to panic. You don’t have to make any rash decisions. I think as a special teams coordinator, that’s huge.
D’Ago Hunter: He definitely is heavy on special teams. During spring ball, we had three to four different periods just specifically for special teams, which is a big thing. I really connected with Coach Krutsch, the special teams coordinator, a lot to see his different schemes and everything to really focus on my special teams and my ability there as well.
PRESSBOX: How have you personally developed a special relationship with Shinnick?
Darian Dulin: He hired me after [I was] let go at Abilene Christian, gave me a chance. I didn’t know him. He didn’t know me. I’m sure he knew some people that knew me. I think they had already interviewed some guys, so I kept my resume out and got a chance to visit with him on the phone. Our thoughts of how a program should be run were in line. One of the things that we had was the Greek word arete. It means excellence of any kind and living up to one’s fullest potential. One of my big things was always trying to reach excellence knowing that you will probably never reach perfection and what it looks like. But being able to always strive for it to me is something that you always have to be trying to do. I think those things aligned really well.
To me, the daily approach Coach has — I know a little bit more I guess on the fiery side, the more aggressive side at some times. Just learning how to balance that, Coach has really taught me really well on just how to control emotions in certain situations and then know also when it’s OK that guys see your emotions and understand what you’re trying to get done there. One word that he always talked about even with my personal life — family and football — is you’ve got to find a rhythm. Coach really helped me to develop that rhythm in my personal life and in my professional life there.
Alex Krutsch: I think Coach is just a great mentor. One of the things I’ve said, the biggest thing for me that I’ve learned from him is just patience. He lets things play out and he lets people be themselves. I think that’s sometimes hard for my personality, and I think honestly it’s hard for his personality. He’s had to develop that himself, too. But I think kind of just not overreacting to things. From a sideline standpoint during the game, his demeanor I think the players emulate because he’s calm. We still coach hard. It’s chaos on the sideline a little bit to a degree, but his demeanor keeps guys level-headed — that mistakes won’t kill us, we can overcome them, here’s how we do it kind of approach.
And then I just think as a guy to work for, Coach is great at sharing his perspectives and why he’s making decisions that he’s making. He doesn’t hide it. We know as a staff what we’re doing, how we’re doing it and why we’re doing it that way, which is not always the case everywhere. Coach shares all that. This is what he’s thinking, this is why he made the decision he made and then he asks for input. I think any time coaches have autonomy to do things the way they want to do it as well, obviously under the umbrella of the way Coach wants us to coach, [is good]. But I think that’s also why he hired us, too, because we all have that affinity for coaching for the right reasons and treating kids the right way.
PRESSBOX: How has Shinnick helped you off the field?
Darian Dulin: I am a workaholic by nature. I love my job. I love to invest in it. … Finding that rhythm and time of, “OK, this is the time I can set aside for my family. This is the time I can set aside for myself to enrich my knowledge, my faith.” Coach has really been great about just helping me personally structure that and really not saying, “Hey, this is what you do time-wise,” all that stuff — just giving us little tidbits of how he runs his family, how he runs his life, what his structure looks like, gives you a little bit of insight of, “OK, maybe I can adjust this, maybe I can do [it] this way with that.” I think that’s one thing. Coach is easy to talk to. You can call him with any situation that you have going on and he’ll give you some insight on what you need to do or what he would in that situation or just some different options of things. I think that’s always been great about Coach.
D’Ago Hunter: Right now, he’s just allowing us leaders to be able to lead, to be able to get our team to connect as players because he knows as a coach any good team is player-led, not just coach-led. So he’s definitely put us leaders into positions — he purposely did this, he told us that he wanted us to really take charge during the first half of the summer as they’re recruiting and everything. He’s really put a lot on us leaders to really get the team together and get this summer going. … It means a lot. I’ve come a long way from freshman year to walk-on to full scholarship. Being one of the leaders on the team, it’s a big spot to fill, so I’m excited. All my teammates, they really trust me, respect me, so it makes it easier to lead. I’m a person that leads by example. I don’t really talk too much, but when I do, I really want to impact my teammates so we can all be on the same level.
PRESSBOX: Is there a story involving you and Shinnick that resonates with you?
Darian Dulin: I think one thing that to me shows the kind of person he is, when I went to West Florida, I got there I think it was 10:30, 11 o’clock at night with my U-Haul. Coach showed up there to help me move stuff in, had a bag of UWF clothes there ready to give me. It was funny, when I came on my interview, we went the second day in his old but beat-up van. Most of the time you see head coaches driving very nice cars, different things like that. That was not Coach. Coach is going to do what’s best for the family, all that stuff. I think he had that van forever before it broke down on him there. Those are the things I remember about Coach — very even-keeled guy that you know what you’re going to get every day from him. I think that’s what I just enjoy about working for him.
Alex Krutsch: We don’t cuss in our program and Coach doesn’t cuss really at all. I don’t think in 10 years or whatever it’s been I’ve ever heard him cuss. The closest I think he got was we were in the playoffs. I want to say it was the semifinals at the school we were at before. The kids just weren’t having a great practice. There was just a lot of commotion and lack of focus. We were going into a big-time playoff game. Coach got so ticked at the end of the practice when he brought everybody up that he went JI-MI-NY! I think there were a couple smirks because that was the equivalent of Coach going off. It ended up becoming the equivalent online of a meme for the kids. I think he ended up putting it on the back of a shirt. That was a Friday pregame meeting before the kids went to bed. He took off his one shirt and then the back of the other one said JIMINY. That fired the kids up, man.
Photo Credits: Towson University Photo Services, ENP Photography
Issue 282: August/September 2023
Originally published Aug. 17, 2023