Former Minnesota prep Gus Bradley was recently hired as an NFL head coach for the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Minnesota high school football will have two of its alumni serving as head coaches in the National Football League during the upcoming season.

Marc Trestman, who played at St. Louis Park and Paul Casey Gus Bradley, who prepped at Zumbrota, will coach the Chicago Bears and Jacksonville Jaguars, respectively.

Trestman was a quarterback at St. Louis Park under coach Bob Roy a former Ponies three-sport standout and NDSU Bison and SCVAA Hall of Famer. Trestman played football at Minnesota for a couple of years before transferring to Minnesota State-Moorhead. Trestman became a coaching nomad with stops as a quarterbacks coach at the U of Miami, two stints with the Vikings and had coached for eight different teams in the NFL.

The University of Minnesota passed over Trestman a couple of times so he looked for greener pastures north of the border when he landed in Montreal in the Canadian Football League in 2008. He spent the past five years there and won a pair of Grey Cup titles.

Those Grey Cup victories are like Super Bowls to the CFL bunch.

Trestman looked good to Chicago because of his extensive background coaching quarterbacks. I think the Bears were looking for someone who could get max results from Jay Cutler.

I will be pulling for Trestman because of my 48-year friendship with Bayports Bob Roy, a fellow NDSU Bison and the fact that Trestman never lost sight of his dream of being a head coach in the NFL.

Gus Bradley steered a slightly different course in pursuit of his job in the NFL. He was a standout at Zumbrota High School for good pal Ken Belanger and landed a scholarship to dear old NDSU. Ponies all-metro players Eric Thole and Tony Grilz were also recruited to the Bison and were teammates with Bradley.

Grilz was his roommate for three years and I got to know Gus when he visited our house.

Originally posted here:
Thole: Former state preps pave coaching path to NFL