BOCA RATON — Zach Kittley’s coaching philosophy comes to him as naturally as the slight southern drawl he talks with.
“I’m from a small town in West Texas with a blue-collar background, and I’m a blue-collar-mentality guy,” Kittley said. “There’s no handouts here.”
Now in his first head coaching gig at Florida Atlantic after being hired last December and staring down a massive rebuild — which begins with the Owls’ season opener at Maryland on Saturday — that old-school, hardnosed approach he developed growing up in Lubbock, Texas, is the exact culture he’s trying to build in Boca Raton.
“With what we’re trying to do and where we’re trying to go here,” Kittley said, “you have to work for everything.”
At FAU, Kittley, the youngest head coach in the FBS at 34 years old, has his work cut out for him.
Last season, when the Owls went 3-9 and 1-7 in conference play under previous coach Tom Herman, was the lowest point in what’s been a four-year stretch without a winning season or bowl game. FAU’s last time going above .500 in a full season was 2019, when they went 11-3 and claimed a conference championship.
The hiring of Kittley, a former Texas Tech offensive coordinator who’s worked with two-time NFL MVP Patrick Mahomes and coached a record-setting offense at Western Kentucky in 2021, is supposed to lead the program back there.
“The goal, obviously, is to make the College Football Playoff, not just win a bowl game,” defensive back Wendol Philord said. “People want a bowl game, but we want more for our own program, so that’s how we’re attacking it.”
In addition to hiring a coach, FAU’s offseason was headlined by the significant roster turnover, as the Owls brought on 55 new players via the transfer portal and high school recruiting. The most notable of the newcomers is undoubtedly transfer quarterback Caden Veltkamp.
A 6-foot-6-inch, 236-pound mountain of a quarterback, Veltkamp comes from Western Kentucky, where he ran an offense nearly identical to the one he’ll be running at FAU and passed for 3,108 yards, 25 touchdowns and 10 interceptions on a 66.3% completion rate in 2024.
“(Caden) and I are extremely close, I think that’s what makes a great coach-quarterback combination,” Kittley said. “I think he’s slept on a lot. You’re talking about one of the top passers in the country from last year, a conference player of the year. He’s not getting the notoriety that he needs. But at the same time, he’s got a chip on his shoulder, and I’m expecting a huge year from him.”
Following him to FAU is transfer wide receiver Easton Messer, who linked up with Veltkamp for 55 catches, 793 yards and four touchdowns at Western Kentucky last season. They also added wide receiver Asaad Waseem, a transfer from Colorado and former three-star recruit according to 247Sports.
However, the defense — while still very active in the portal during the offseason — has some continuity.
Defensive coordinator Brett Dewhurst’s unit should be boosted by the return of Philord, one of their best defensive backs from a year ago, who appeared in 11 games and recorded 34 tackles. Also returning is defensive tackle Bryce Langston, a former four-star recruit going into his second season at FAU. The group of newcomers on defense are led by linebacker Tyler Stolsky, a transfer who appeared in five games for Minnesota last season.
“Guys that want to fight, that love ball, consistent learners that want to elevate and improve all the time,” Dewhurst said of his defense. “We wanted to bring in guys that we had previous relationships with or in-game experience that we can piece the puzzle together with.”
When the Owls opened fall training camp, Kittley said contending for conference championships should be the standard. To do so in year one of his tenure, Kittley has to lead FAU through the American Athletic Conference’s fourth-easiest schedule, per ESPN.
After the season opener versus Maryland, the Owls will finish nonconference play by visiting rival FIU for the Shula Bowl on Sept. 13 before starting their conference schedule by hosting Memphis on Sept. 27. Their budding rivalry with USF will be renewed on their home field on Oct. 18 before they’ll travel to meet AAC-heavyweight Tulane on Nov. 11.
“Clearly we’ve got to start getting regularly back to bowl games; there’s no excuse not to have that on a yearly basis,” Kittley said. “If you can build on stuff like that, you’ve got to start competing for the conference championship.”
