MADISON – Eric Mateos was out of a job for only a few hours when an old friend dialed him up.
Wisconsin Badgers offensive coordinator Jeff Grimes knew Mateos for more than a decade, worked with him at three schools and even allowed him to stay at his home for a stretch when Mateos as a grad assistant.
“He knew my situation at Arkansas,” Mateos said. “That’s the way it goes sometimes. Even if your position plays well, the new head coach, there’s nothing that says he’s got to keep you.”
Those are the breaks of being a coach. Sometimes a guy who doesn’t deserve to be let go, is relieved of his duties. But there is also the flip side. Sometimes a coach finds himself lined up for a perfect opportunity.
Mateos experienced both extremes in about four hours.
Mateos’ tough luck led to his next big break. Wisconsin, it just so happened, didn’t have an offensive line coach under contract for 2026 and now the offensive line coach with whom Grimes had his greatest success as an offensive coordinator was available.
Two days later news broke that Mateos was coming to Wisconsin. One day after that UW officially announced his hire.
Badgers coach Luke Fickell called Mateos a “perfect fit”. Grimes called him one of best offensive line coaches in the country and said he is “just what we need”.
Five months later Mateos is entrenched in the job. The Badgers are two-thirds of the way through spring practice and Mateos has put his imprint all over the unit. He is introducing different techniques, adjusting player’s pass sets and bringing his kind of edge to the group.
Technique and tenacity. If you wanted a succint explanation of Mateos’ coaching style. It would be that.
“He’s done a really good job at that and just embracing the nastiness of football,” sophomore guard Colin Cubberly said. “I think he does a great job at it. He promotes it. Being an offensive lineman, there’s some nasty stuff that we have to do. We have to get down and dirty in there and he really does a great job at that.”
Eric Mateos, Jeff Grimes first worked together in 2016 at LSU
Mateos joined the UW program at a critical time. The Badgers have suffered back-to-back losing season for the first time since the 1991 and ’92.
At the heart of the team’s struggles was an anemic offense that dealt with multiple injuries at quarterback and an underperforming offensive line. Perhaps nothing symbolized how times had changed than the Badgers’ struggles at a signature position in their program.
How well Mateos gets this group going could go a long way to determining the future of the Luke Fickell era beyond 2026.
Bring up the unit’s recent struggles or its revolving door of coaches in recent years and Mateos is undeterred. He believes he can do the job.
“I haven’t failed yet,” he said shortly after his hire. “I guess that’s maybe some cockiness, but I think you have to have that in this game.”
But there is a substance behind that confidence, especially when it comes to working with Grimes. There is familiarity and a fit between the two.
Mateos described it as adding someone who doesn’t color inside the lines to Grimes’ regimented, detailed approach.
Grimes, when asked why the partnership works, added an Xs and Os element, noting that when he was creating the offense Mateos was part of the process.
“All that time that we’ve put together along the way for multiple years at three different stops game planning different defenses, I think it just makes us more efficient with what we’re doing on offense,” Grimes said. “He sees the game the same way that I do. He’s a very intelligent guy, a really creative thinker.”
It’s hard to deny their impact. When Mateos joined Grimes at BYU in 2019, the Cougars climbed from 100th in total offense (364.9 yards per game) in 2018 to 28th (443.8) in ’19. In 2020, BYU continued to improve, climbing to sixth in the nation (522.2).
They spent the next three years at Baylor. The Bears enjoyed a similar upturn in Year 1, going from 118th in the nation in total offense (310.2) in 2020 to 53rd (422.7) in ’21. In the second year, the offense ranked higher (44th) but generated slightly fewer yards (413.8).
Tackle Kevin Heywood one of the players UW hopes to build around
Mateos has his hands on some of the Badgers’ most prized players. Cubberly and fellow redshirt sophomores Kevin Heywood and Emerson Mandell are part of the young core the staff hopes will be part of the program’s resurgence.
Fickell surrounded those players with pickups from the transfer portal that include fifth-year senior center Austin Kawecki and redshirt junior tackle PJ Wilkins, who have been working with the No. 1 unit this spring.
“He’ll tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear, what you need to focus on to do better,” said Heywood, who is lining up at right tackle. “There’s not one single practice where he’s just not focused on details and the small things, which I think lacked in the past.
“I think he does a really great job of studying, what you’re not great at and helping you find a way to make it better.”
‘Offer of a lifetme’ eventually led Mateos to Madison
This will e Mateos’ 10th season as an offensive line coah and seventh stop as a full-time assistant.
It’s a path he wouldn’t have taken without a key decision during the early days of his career. He was just starting out and having a hard time finding a job, so hard that he accepted a regular 9-5. Then his college coach called with the offer of a lifetime.
“He said ‘Hey do you want to coach tight ends?. We’re going to pay you $250 a month, you’re going to live in the dorm and eat in the chow hall, but we’ll pay you $250,” Mateos recalled. “That covered my gas and my car insurance and my cell phone bill.”
Mateos jumped at the sweatheart deal and set himself on the long-winding road that landed him in Madison just in time to possible fix the Badgers offensive line.
“He’s a tremendous teacher,” Grimes said. “I think he does a great job finding a way to get the information across to every player in the room. That’s the job of a teacher, being able to be relatable enough that you can find a way to get that information across to a way that that guy can actually take it and then apply it.”
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Why the reunion of Eric Mateos, Jeff Grimes could be good news for Wisconsin
Reporting by Mark Stewart, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
