What’s a California kid doing leading Coastal Carolina’s defense? Teddy Gallagher’s story
One might think Teddy Gallagher got lost on his way to playing college football.
Coastal Carolina does the overwhelming bulk of its football recruiting east of the Mississippi River, and has just a few players from the West Coast.
So it’s certainly an anomaly that a defensive leader and perhaps the most impactful player on that side of the ball this season found his way to the Conway campus from an inner-city Los Angeles high school.
So how did he arrive on the Grand Strand?
Gallagher attended Loyola High School, where he was coached by Marvin Sanders, who was hired as Coastal’s defensive coordinator in December 2017 and left the program this summer.
Gallagher spent one semester playing football at Glendale Community College in California before enrolling at Coastal in January 2018.
“I took an official visit and I fell in love with the place, with the players and the coaches,” Gallagher said. “And they added coach Sanders to the staff, which was my old high school head coach, so then it just seemed like the perfect fit for me to come here.”
Gallagher said he chose the junior college route after he committed to a Division I program but was left without an opportunity late in the recruiting process. “Things didn’t really work out the way I wanted them to, so I ended up going to JUCO to try to get a better opportunity,” he said.
Gallagher said he was recruited at the JUCO by some Mountain West Conference schools and also received a late scholarship offer from Vanderbilt, which he strongly considered before choosing Coastal after he was invited for an official visit by former CCU recruiting coordinator Cory Bailey.
“I just wanted to be a part of something . . . I could be the start of and build something from kind of like the ground up starting at the FBS level,” he said.
The 6-foot-1, 230-pound junior has certainly been a building block for new defensive coordinator Chad Staggs.
Gallagher has 73 total tackles – 37 solo and 36 assisted – to lead the team by 26 tackles this season. His 8.1 tackles per game is seventh in the Sun Belt Conference and he has three tackles for loss, a fumble recovery and a pass breakup.
In back-to-back games against Georgia State and Georgia Southern on Oct. 12 and 19, he matched a career high with 14 stops then set a new career high with 15, which was the most tackles by a CCU player since Shane Johnson in 2017.
His role increased in importance when fellow junior linebacker Silas Kelly was lost for the rest of the season to a leg injury at Kansas in the second week of the season.
“I’ve had to step up in a lot of areas because Silas is not only a great linebacker he’s also probably the best leader we have on the team,” Gallagher said. “So I’m usually not really the vocal guy in the room but I’ve had to kind of take that responsibility because he’s gone down, and I’ve obviously had to make a few plays because there are a lot of plays Silas would have made.”
Gallagher was a backup as a sophomore last season, playing predominantly on third down through eight games before Kelly was injured and he replaced him in the starting lineup. He played so well the coaching staff kept him in the lineup alongside Kelly after his return. So he started the final four games of 2018 has now started 13 consecutive games.
“I was waiting on it for a little bit but things happen for a reason,” Gallagher said. “I think everyone thinks they should play, and once I knew I got the opportunity I wasn’t going to let it go.”
He and Kelly were supposed to be the dynamic duo in the middle of the defense this season, and should have that opportunity next year.
Kelly is a more vocal leader, while Gallagher is “a football junkie so he may not say as much but he’s processing and doing his job really well,” said Staggs, who also lost backup inside linebacker E.J. Porter to injury this season. “But it was a really good duo. . . . They’re both really, really charismatic, they’re really funny, they’re awesome to coach.”
In Kelly’s absence, Gallagher has become a signal-caller on defense who implements Staggs’ schemes and calls, and makes in-game adjustments.
“We’ve actually had to count on Teddy to make almost all the checks. He’s one of the smartest if not the smartest football player I’ve ever had, so it’s not a challenge for him,” Staggs said. “What I’ve been able to do with him, maybe in years past with certain people in there I wasn’t able to do, like make certain checks, little tweaks of the fronts, the slants, the stunts we’re doing based off maybe backfield sets, maybe stances of linemen and tight ends.
“He’s able to see it all. He just gets it. You can go over something with him one time and he just gets it.”
In what has been a trying season for the Chants at 4-5 overall and 1-4 in the Sun Belt, Gallagher has provided some levity with his ever-changing hair.
He has had numerous hair styles and a couple hair colors this season, courtesy of Kelly and junior wide receiver Greg Latushko, who are his highly unprofessional hairstylists. He went bleach blond, transitioned to a blond Mohawk, completely shaved his head, then went with a natural hair color Mohawk prior to last Thursday’s game against Louisiana-Lafayette. His hair grows fast, so the sides are already catching up to the middle of the Mohawk.
The blond Mohawk was born out of the pact that several players made, including Gallagher and Kelly, to sport Mohawks. “I decided to take it a step further and bleach it,” said Gallagher, who was encouraged by teammates to go after the look of former Oklahoma linebacker Brian Bosworth. “After the App. State game I was a little sad and grabbed the clippers myself and shaved my own head. The recent edition was just for fun.”
Gallagher will stick with a style if the Chants go on a winning streak.
Prior to enrolling at Coastal, Gallagher wasn’t unfamiliar with the culture of the East Coast and Carolinas coast. Though he was born in California and attended high school there, he lived for about five years in New Jersey and his family vacationed at North Carolina’s Outer Banks.
He hasn’t second-guessed his decision to attend CCU. “I love it here. I have not regretted my decision one step here,” he said.
Members of his family have only been to three games in his two years – two at Brooks Stadium and CCU’s win at Kansas on Sept. 7.
“They watch all the games,” said Gallagher, a Finance major who is on pace to graduate next fall and hopes to play professional football. “. . . Everything is a plane ride away, whether it’s a five-hour plane ride or a three-hour plane ride it wasn’t really that big of a difference for me.”
This story was originally published November 14, 2019 at 6:31 PM.
