Exclusive Interview With Former A&T Great, Darryl Klugh

By Semaj Marsh
bluedeathvalley.com
June 19, 2009

On every championship roster, there is usually one player who emerges as the undeniable team leader; someone who earns the respect and trust of his coaching staff and fellow teammates.  For the 1999 North Carolina A&T football team, that leader was none other than senior free safety Darryl Klugh. As four year starter in the Aggies’ secondary, Klugh possessed bone-crushing hitting ability, great intelligence, and a knack for making big plays.  During the Aggies’ march towards the mythical black college football national championship, Klugh served almost as a player-coach on the field, directing traffic before the snap and motivating everyone around him to work harder. He finished the season ranked second on the defense with 84 tackles, while also adding three interceptions and two fumble recoveries. His play on the gridiron was also matched by his accomplishments in the classroom. Recently we caught up with the former team captain– who now resides in the Washington, DC area – and talked to him about that magical season and the impact it would have on his life forever.

Bluedeathvalley.com: First of all, can you believe that 10 years have now passed since that unforgettable season?

Darryl Klugh: “Not only has time flown by, but I was just talking to my little brother four or five years ago, saying that it would be a long time before the ‘99 team would celebrate our ten year anniversary. And the next thing you know, here we are.”

Heading into that season, did you guys think that you were really a championship-caliber team?

Darryl Klugh: “Well, that’s the thing. For most of my years at A&T we were always a pretty good team and we had winning records. A couple of seasons we even got off to some pretty impressive starts. But I’ll tell you, there were always a few hurdles that we had most of my career. The biggest one was beating FAMU and deciphering their run-and-shoot style offense. And the second one was just manning up against South Carolina State (laughs).”

So at what point during the 1999 season did you first start to think that it could be a special year?

Darryl Klugh: “I would have to say after the Elon game. When we lost to Elon it was devastating, but we used that defeat to fuel the rest of our season. As soon as we got back the next day had an all-live practice - hitting and everything - right after the loss. It seemed crazy at the time and we were all complaining and disgruntled about it, but I think we held on to that anger and toughness for the rest of the season and we just went out and smashed everybody else on the schedule.”

That sounds like a classic Bill Hayes motivational technique. What was it like playing for him back then?

Darryl Klugh: “We knew Bill Hayes was an icon and a legend even back then. Playing for a guy like that, you could feel his legendary status just from dealing with him. He taught us just so much about life. We still discuss Coach Hayes to this day. There’s not a player on that team that shouldn’t be able to finish one of Coach Hayes’ quotes. I mean, we do it all the time. I just came back from a wedding with three dudes that played for him and we had a good 15 to 20 minute chuckle about Coach Hayes. It was mostly his strength as a man and his ability to lead other men that was so amazing. There are so many Hayes’ quotes that, to this day, we still giggle over.”

What was it like to be a key member of the Blue Death Defense back then?

Darryl Klugh: “We just had so much pride in our defense. There was just so much pride. Man, we were running around saying that our defense was our offense, because all we wanted to do was score. We told the offense ‘you don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to score any points but just don’t let the other team score [on a turnover]. Three and outs? We don’t care. I mean, you know how a lot of defenses today say that they want to get off the field? Well, we wanted to stay out there. Because we knew eventually that if we stayed out there, in a few more plays, we were going to get a fumble. Especially the guys in the secondary. We had so many rough-house dudes up front, we were always telling them to 'just let ‘em throw the ball sometimes’ (laughs).  ‘Just let ‘em throw the ball so we can get it.’ Everyone we had out there on defense was ready to make a big play.”

Who were some of the guys on the team back then who made that defense so dominant?

Darryl Klugh: “Any time you have Dwaine Carpenter on one side and Sammy Rogers on the other side as an outside linebacker … and we lined up in a blitz package - man, it was just crazy!  We would dial up a blitz and just wreck havoc. Sometimes if a play call was slow coming in from the sideline, I would just look around and tell the guys “hey, you know what? We’re going after them on this play.” Our D-line was a big part of it too. We got so much pressure up front with Big Rob (Robert Williams) and Leonard Reliford stopping the run. It was like our pressure in the backfield was just amazing. A lot of times we were actually begging our front line to let the quarterback throw the ball so we could get interceptions. But right before the quarterback would release the ball and throw that interception, they would get a sack. We were joking of course, but we’d go up to them and be like “man, just let him throw it! Just let him throw the ball sometimes.” (laughs)

As the free safety you were really the quarterback of that entire defense. You relayed the calls from the sideline and made sure everyone on the field was in the correct position. Talk a little about your role back then and the extra responsibilities you had.

Darryl Klugh: “Of course, I was a senior that season but I had been in that defense for four years. And not just in the defense, but really a student of the defense. So I knew every play inside and out. And dealing with (Defensive Coordinator Wayne) Hicks, I always put a lot of extra time in our meetings to make sure I was completely comfortable with our game plan and what we wanted to do. I knew what all eleven positions on the defense were supposed to do. So, for instance, if I saw that their offense was going to an unbalanced line I would call it out and have everyone on our defense shift down. Coach Hicks trusted me enough to basically allow me to make that adjustment. I mean, it wasn’t like I just called audibles the whole game but there were certain situations where I would see a formation and tell the defense ‘hey, we’re going to do this’ or ‘hey, it’s going to go down like this’, and everyone on the field would be like ‘yep, let’s do it; I’m with it.’”

So I would assume that you and Coach Hicks had a pretty close relationship, on and off the field.

Darryl Klugh: “Yeah we did … because he saw the work that I put in. It wasn’t just like I stepped on campus and said ‘I’m running the defense.’ Remember, I was there for four years grinding! In the weight room – I was always putting in extra work. And he saw that. It wasn’t like he just said ‘You know what, you’re a free safety and you’re a senior so go ahead and run the defense’. It was more like, ‘I know you’re prepared. I trust the work that you’ve put in, so I know you’re not going to let us down.’ And you have to understand, I was coming off of a stellar junior season. I was coming off a junior year where I had put in major work, so it was really a culmination of all the preparation I had made and all the hard work. It wasn’t like I was the coach’s pet or anything like that. He just saw the work that I put in and he recognized that, he respected it, and he basically said ‘Yo, I can trust you.””

Let’s take a look now at some of the more pivotal games that occurred during that regular season. After the Elon game, you guys came back a few weeks later and faced a very good Hampton team. Many people expected the Pirates to just waltz right into Aggie Stadium and trounce you guys, but things didn’t happen that way. A&T upset Hampton 41-24 that afternoon and really let everyone in the MEAC know the Aggies were a team to be reckoned with.

Darryl Klugh: “I remember going into that Hampton game I was almost dehydrated. I was so exhausted that I almost had to get an IV the Thursday before the game. After the Elon loss it was like I was working overtime. I was always in the film room, always working out, always getting ready. So I almost got burned out. I didn’t even practice that week. But when we got on the field for the Hampton game, it was suddenly a surreal feeling because we knew everything that they were going to do. We knew everything that they were getting ready to do and they couldn’t do anything about it! We just knew how to stop everything they had. Another thing that was kind of wild about that season was, except for maybe one or two opponents, everybody we played against seemed so much weaker than us. We just seemed so much stronger than everyone else! For instance, normally I wouldn’t want to run up against a lineman and take on a lineman who was trying to block me. But there were times during that season that I was like ‘I don’t care if their tackle in pulling; I’ll smash him.’ (laughs)  There were guys who outweighed me by 80 pounds but we looked at them like they were soft. I don’t know if it was just confidence or it was just sheer strength. But I remember back in that Hampton game they lined up and they maybe got about two yards on a play, and then on the next play they lined up and said “S.O.S” and immediately our whole defense looked at each other like ‘Are they serious?’ Because we knew what was coming next. That very next play they had a fumble and B.J (Little) scooped it up and almost ran it back to the house. (laughs)”

Another memorable contest that season was the one that took place down in Daytona Beach against Bethune-Cookman. You guys needed a pass interference call on fourth down and a field goal in the final seconds to knock off the Wildcats 19-18. Describe what it was like to survive that epic battle.

Darryl Klugh: “Now that was a good team; I can’t even front. They didn’t get a lot of respect but they were always a torn in our side. They were the MEAC’s best kept secret back then. They had this quarterback named Pa’Tel Troutman and a few other guys who were really explosive. When we got on the field with them we knew it was going to be a tough match-up. They had a crazy coach and some amazing athletes. You’re talking about guys who didn’t care – they just wanted to compete. It was like they had no fear against us. We couldn’t believe it, but these guys were really talking to us like we weren’t one of the top teams in the MEAC at that point. And it wasn’t like they were just some slack dudes. This guy Pa’Tel Troutman may have been the best player that I ever played against in college football because of his ability to threaten the defense.”

Was Bethune still running the Wyatt-bone offense at that time?

Darryl Klugh: “Yeah they were running the Wyatt-bone, but they just had so many weapons – on the outside and inside. That’s why the game was so close even though we mopped up everybody else we played that year. That game was won by a blocked extra point, I believe. It was close the whole time and we never felt comfortable until the end. I remember that there were quite a few big plays and odd occurrences that took place in that game. That might have been the most competitive, hard-fought game that I have every played in.”

A couple of weeks later you faced another big challenge when the mighty Florida A&M Rattlers and their vaunted “Gulf Coast Offense” rolled into town. The previous year FAMU dominated you guys 51-12 and there was some serious bad blood between the two programs. This was billed as a matchup between the two remaining undefeated teams in the MEAC and it would decide who would take the conference title. What was that game like?

Darryl Klugh: “Even though we were concentrating on our other opponents throughout the season, we always keep Florida A&M in the back of our minds. Florida A&M had been the bane of our existence all my career. We had never known how to completely shut down their offense. So that year we installed a completely different defensive package, just for them. It was like we broke the code. And we kind of knew it going in. Now imagine if you are going to go up against an opponent for the fourth time. And the three previous times you kind of felt them out but you didn’t really know how to stop them. But in this one week period you've got this new secret sauce. You’re anxious to try it out because you think it’s the one that’s going to work. That’s how we were feeling the whole week heading into that game. You know, everybody was so focused, so in tuned. Coach Hayes was even coming over to help coach the defense in practice. Our film sessions were longer, our scouting report meetings were longer – everything was longer because we had installed this whole new package. So on game day, we just came out like gangbusters. I mean we literally broke the code. A lot of it was due to our personnel too, because we had Dwaine Carpenter who could play linebacker and safety. He was more like a hybrid linebacker-safety. So we moved him back and we just allowed our front four to do more pass rushing. We didn’t blitz as much, we just did more coverage.  And man, we locked them down. I would say, after about the first three plays of the game we were like ‘Oh, this is it! Yeah, this is it!’ And after that, it was nothing.”

You had a big fumble recovery in that game, right?

Darryl Klugh: “Yeah, and I had a few big hits in that game also. And that was another thing – they had a lot of weapons. They had (Jacquay) Nunnally, (Cainon) Lamb, and another dude – I can’t remember his name, but even against them we felt like we were so much stronger. I had a couple of knockout hits that season and I always remembered feeling so much stronger than those other dudes. Everybody else on our defense felt that way too. We discussed it out on the field, like ‘these guys are weak out here!’ So now, we broke the code, we felt stronger than them, and so you can just imagine the amount of confidence we had out on the field at that time. It was like ‘I don’t care if their center comes running up at me. I’m gonna bust his face mask open … and I don’t care what they audible to, because we are already a step ahead of them.' So it was a foregone conclusion that we were going to win. It was just a matter of who was going to make the big play.”

Well, I’m sure you must have felt a great sense of redemption after that game. You finally got your revenge against Florida A&M and you guys were now MEAC champions. Describe your feeling after that victory.

Darryl Klugh: “That was the crowning moment. It was like, ‘Ok, we beat FAMU so now the sky is the limit.’ We had just toppled our arch-nemesis. And in the game after that – I believe it was South Carolina State – our defense was having a conversation on the field. It was me, Dwaine Carpenter, Von Keith, B.J. Little and maybe somebody else, and around the second quarter we were just talking on the field about who was going to get player of the game. We were like: ‘Carp, you gotta come on with it. B.J., you need to get a few more tackles so you can go ahead and get player of the game.' We knew we were going to beat them, it was just a matter of who was going to make the big play to win player of the game and we were encouraging each other. ‘You make the big play; no you make the big play. Alright cool. Now go ahead and make this pick and you can solidify it.’ We weren’t using this word back then but if we did, our ‘swag’ would have been on a thousand trillion. Our ‘swag’ was on a hundred thousand trillion back then. Any where we went, regardless of who we played, it didn’t matter.”

>> Read part two