Oklahoma native D.J. Eliot's move to the Philadelphia Eagles has taken him 'past my dream'
D.J. Eliot pulled into the parking lot on his first day of work and had a pinch-me moment before he even put the car in park.
His spot was marked by a sign with his name and a Philadelphia Eagles logo.
“Wow,” he marveled. “This is pretty cool.”
He never expected to make it to the NFL.
Never even dreamed of it.
It’s been a month since the Eagles hired Eliot, 46, to be their linebackers coach, and even though the Oklahoman is coaching football much the same as he has for almost 25 years, he admits his new gig is different. For example, he has never walked through the locker room before and seen the likes of Jalen Hurts and Jason Kelce.
“It’s still football,” Eliot said in an interview with The Oklahoman. “But I have had a few like, ‘Wow, this is really happening.’”
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For most of his life, moving to the NFL wasn’t anything Eliot aspired to, even though he grew up with lots of football dreams.
Born in Stillwater and raised in Edmond, he spent Friday nights as a kid going to high school football games at Edmond Memorial.
“And all I dreamed about was playing football for Edmond,” Eliot said.
He also went to Oklahoma State games with his grandparents and Oklahoma games with his friends. When he played football with his buddies in the backyard, they would pretend to be Barry Sanders or Jamelle Holieway.
Eliot hoped maybe one day he could play in college, too.
“But I never had dreams of anything in the NFL,” he said.
“I really feel like I’m past my dream now.”
After playing linebacker at Wyoming, Eliot began a football coaching odyssey that included a dozen jobs in eight states over two decades. He was a graduate assistant at Wyoming, Houston and Miami. Then, he became a position coach at Texas State, Tulsa, Rice and Florida State. That led to defensive coordinator jobs at Kentucky, Colorado, Kansas and Temple.
None of those stops lasted more than four seasons.
While there were successes along the way, there were struggles, too. Getting let go. Losing a job when the head coach got fired. But along the way, Eliot realized something.
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“Some of the things that I got better at was from screwing them up,” he said.
That was never more evident than when he became defensive coordinator at Kentucky in 2013.
He had been an assistant at Florida State, moving to Tallahassee when Jimbo Fisher took over as head coach in 2010 and coaching defensive ends in Mark Stoops’ defense. Things went so well Stoops got the head coaching job at Kentucky and hired Eliot, who was playing at Wyoming when he first got to know Stoops, then the Cowboys’ secondary coach.
Heading into the first game at Kentucky, Eliot was confident. They’d had success at Florida State. Why wouldn’t they have it at Kentucky?
“I kind of feel like I got it all together,” Eliot said. “Everything that I’ve ever known in football was working for me at Florida State.
“And we come out and lose to Western Kentucky.”
Western Kentucky 35, Kentucky 26.
“My first game,” Eliot marveled a decade later. “I can remember heading back into the locker room after that game thinking, ‘So maybe I don’t have it all figured out.’”
He chuckled.
Less than a month into the season, Eliot made the decision to switch defensive schemes. Running the same ones at Kentucky that they’d run at Florida State wasn’t working. The reasons were many, but the bottom line was Eliot knew he couldn’t hold fast to what he’d been doing. He had to do something different.
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Kentucky moved to a 3-4 defense.
“That’s what I’ve run ever since then,” Eliot said. “But it was that moment that we realized that we need to reinvent ourselves, especially in that scheme.”
Eliot also realized he was the one who had to make the tough decisions and live with the consequences.
“Reality hits because when I turned around in my chair, there was nobody behind me,” he said. “This is all falling on me. And I realized that there’s a lot of things that go into winning, and you’ve got to have all the pieces together.”
Over the next few years, Eliot enjoyed the challenge of figuring out how the pieces fit best in a variety of programs. He took challenging jobs at Colorado and Kansas and finally last year, Temple.
But two or three years ago, Eliot started thinking about trying to move to the NFL.
“Until that point, I was grinding away, I was thinking, ‘I was an assistant coach in college. I’m a defensive coordinator in college. My next step is going to be a head coach in college,’” he said.
Why the change in thinking?
For starters, Eliot was contacted by an NFL team that was interested in him. It wasn't something he sought out, but he interviewed with the team. While he didn’t get the job, that experience planted a seed.
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Maybe he could coach in the NFL.
Then in the past few years, the college football landscape began to rapidly and significantly change.
“There’s always been recruiting, there’s always been dealing with your players and academics, there’s always been the coaching element, there’s always been the booster functions,” Eliot said. “Now on top of that, there’s the transfer portal, and there’s the NIL (name, image and likeness). So there’s a lot of irons in the fire in college.
“There’s so much time spent on so many different things, where in the NFL, it’s all football.”
Eliot started to pursue more NFL opportunities in the past couple of years, and finally, he landed with the Eagles. He was a known commodity in Philadelphia ― Temple plays its home games at Lincoln Financial Field, same as the Eagles ― but Eliot believes he had a strong interview, too.
Among the things he got to talk about was his Oklahoma roots, how he dreamed of playing high school football in Edmond, how he hoped he’d one day get to play college ball like Sanders or Holieway.
But coaching in the NFL?
He had to admit that has surpassed anything he ever thought about as a kid.
“My job, now that I’m coaching in the NFL,” he said, “has taken me past my dream.”
Jenni Carlson: Jenni can be reached at 405-475-4125 or jcarlson@oklahoman.com. Like her at facebook.com/JenniCarlsonOK, follow her at twitter.com/jennicarlson_ok, and support her work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.
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Red Dirt Rising
After D.J. Eliot got hired as linebacker coach by the Philadelphia Eagles, he got a call from a friend back home in Oklahoma. “Dude, I think you’re one of the only guys in the NFL coaching that’s from the state of Oklahoma,” the friend said. Eliot isn’t alone, but the list isn’t long. Here’s a look:
● Zac Taylor, head coach, Bengals, Norman High
● Press Taylor, offensive coordinator, Jaguars, Norman High
● Rob Ryan, senior defensive assistant, Raiders, born in Ardmore
● D.J. Eliot, linebacker coach, Eagles, Edmond Memorial
● Wes Welker, receiver coach, Dolphins, Heritage Hall
● Tyler Tettleton, assistant running back coach, Jaguars, Norman North
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahoman D.J. Eliot surpasses dreams as NFL assistant with Eagles
