For Bears offensive coordinator Declan Doyle, it all started in a dorm room in western Iowa

The building was technically named Reiver Tower, but nobody called it that. To the students at Iowa Western Community College in Council Bluffs, Iowa, it was simply known as “The Bricks.”

It was a pretty basic five-story college residence hall made of, well, bricks. The rooms were classic college dorm rooms. Cinder block walls. Two twin beds. Two wooden desks. Communal bathrooms.

Iowa Western had newer, nicer housing options, but former Reivers baseball coach Marc Rardin mandated that his players stay at The Bricks. Rardin believed if his players were going to make a successful team, they needed to spend time together.

And his players spent a lot of time together.

It was in The Bricks that a first baseman from Iowa City West High School named Declan Doyle first started to envision a future for himself that didn’t include baseball.

A decade before he landed a job as the offensive coordinator for the Chicago Bears at age 28 — before head coach Ben Johnson made him the youngest current coordinator in the NFL — Doyle was a baseball player beginning to wonder what comes after baseball.

Last week, when news broke that Johnson was hiring a young coach many fans had never heard of, countless responses fixated on his age.

“I’ve had some people reach out and talk about how boring his bio is or that he didn’t have a Wikipedia page,” his brother Dillon Doyle said. “We’d laugh about that together because, to the outside eye, the path to where he’s gotten is really boring.”

That path started at The Bricks.

‘It’s in your blood'

During Declan Doyle’s sophomore season in the spring of 2016, he was seeing less playing time than perhaps he had envisioned for himself. Iowa Western was a junior college powerhouse. The Reivers made the JUCO World Series both years that he played on the team. Several of his teammates went on to play Division I baseball.

As teammate Jared Gates put it, “When you go to a school like Iowa Western, most every kid that goes there seemingly has a future in Division I baseball, even like backup players.”

As the son of longtime Iowa strength and conditioning coach Chris Doyle, football was a big part of the younger Doyle’s life.

“I was around coaching my whole life,” Declan Doyle said. “I grew up around it.”

He played quarterback until giving up football midway through high school to focus on baseball. Still, football tugged at his heart.

During his sophomore year in The Bricks he began reading articles about defensive coverages, pass concepts and run schemes. He read books about coaching and teaching, and he listened to audiobooks from coaching greats like Bill Walsh, Don Shula and Bill Parcells.

As former Iowa offensive coordinator Brian Ferentz later noted, “He reads more than anybody I know.”

Gates knew whom Doyle’s father was, but he never really connected the dots between Declan and a future in coaching. They were baseball players focused on the day-to-day of being baseball players.

And most of their day-to-day was spent either on the baseball field or at The Bricks. The baseball players lived on the same floor. If they wanted to hang out they simply knocked on a neighbor’s door.

At one point, Doyle suggested Gates, a second baseman from Kansas, read Jeff Olson’s “The Slight Edge: Turning Simple Disciplines into Massive Success and Happiness.”

The book focuses on how each day people are faced with hundreds of small decisions and each decision accumulates.

“He was like, you need to read this,” Gates said. “And then I, like everyone, I put it off.”

But that, Gates said, is the thing about Doyle. He would hold his friends accountable, even without really trying.

He would ask Gates, “How’s that book going?”

Gates would admit he hadn’t gotten around to ordering it yet.

It wasn’t until a few years later that Gates finally read the book. He called Doyle after finishing it.

“I should’ve read that three years ago,” Gates remembered telling Doyle.

“Yeah, I tried to tell you,” Doyle said.

The little decisions were where Doyle excelled. He showed up early and stayed late.

When thinking back on his time coaching Declan Doyle at Iowa Western, Rardin remembered only one clue to his future. The pitchers sometimes warmed up with a football to build up arm strength. Doyle’s eyes lit up whenever he saw a football.

“He could really throw the ball,” said Rardin, now the head coach at Western Kentucky.

As Doyle’s second year at Iowa Western drew to a close, Rardin sat down with him.

“A lot of my guys were getting placed [at colleges] and he hadn’t been placed yet,” Rardin said.

He asked Doyle what his aspirations were and if he needed to play summer ball somewhere to get in front of more college coaches.

Doyle said he wanted to go home to Iowa City and work for the Hawkeyes football team as a student assistant.

“I’m like, ‘Dude, I get it. It’s in your blood,‘” Rardin said.

‘It’s this or nothing'

Student assistants at big-time college football programs don’t have glamorous jobs. Those jobs, however, are essential.

They do the things that full-time coaches don’t have time for. Declan Doyle transferred to Iowa in 2016 and spent three years doing everything from scouting future opponents to being the sideline signal caller to helping coach the tight ends.

When Brian Ferentz, son of Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz, became the offensive coordinator in 2017, he took Declan under his wing.

Chris Doyle coached Brian Ferentz when he was an offensive lineman at Iowa in the early 2000s. Brian Ferentz had known Chris Doyle’s three boys — Declan, Donovan and Dillon — since they were young.

“Chris Doyle really shaped how I saw coaching and the world,” Brian Ferentz said. “He made a huge difference in my life and I felt like, boy, if I could just pay that forward by taking care of Declan, that would be great.”

Brian Ferentz, the tight ends coach at Fresno State, might have taken Doyle under his wing, but he certainly never had to hold his hand.

Doyle quickly became in charge of assembling film on the next opponent’s defense for Ferentz.

“A lot of times with young guys, you’re kind of teaching them how to do that on the fly,” Ferentz said. “With him, I walked in there and it was exactly what I’d asked for, what I wanted. In most cases, quite honestly, it was better.”

Pretty quickly Doyle became more than simply a helping hand.

“He was a guy that I came to rely on pretty heavily and trust,” Ferentz said.

At Iowa, Declan took his understanding of the game to another level. This wasn’t watching YouTube videos in his dorm room at The Bricks. This was the beginning of a career.

“I got to Iowa and I basically said, ‘It’s this or nothing,’ you know?‘” Declan Doyle said. “I don’t have a plan B.”

Tyler Cropley was a catcher and a teammate of Doyle’s at Iowa Western. Cropley transferred to Iowa and joined the Hawkeyes baseball team the same year Doyle began working for the football team.

Cropley remembered times he texted Doyle to ask if he wanted to hang out and Doyle politely declined.

“I can’t,” Doyle would text back. “I’m going into the facility at 3:30 in the morning. I’ve got some scouting to do.”

In 2018, Declan’s younger brother Dillon joined the Hawkeyes as a freshman linebacker. Dillon remembered the weeknights when they would have dinner together. They sat on the couch with the NFL Network on the TV. A rerun of an NFL game would be on the screen.

Doyle would say things like, “Watch this next play.”

The offense would run some unique formation or do something unexpected. Doyle had already broken down the team’s whole season. It reminded Dillon of a scene in the movie “50 First Dates,” when Sean Astin’s character predicts exactly what’s about to happen in the Vikings game because his family watches a rerun of the same game every day.

Every time Dillon watched a game with his brother, Declan had already seen it and broken down the tape. He understood why teams were calling which plays and he knew the backstories of all the coaches. The living room would grow dark, just the glow of the TV lighting up their faces. When other 22-year-olds might have been playing video games or watching Netflix, the Doyle brothers were breaking down NFL film.

“His play recall is extremely impressive,” Dillon Doyle said. “For some reason, learning the game has come more naturally to him than it does to other people.”

If it was part natural inclination, it also was hard work. Those 3:30 a.m. film sessions were paying off.

“If he wants to learn something, what he would do is he would go in there on his own,” Brian Ferentz said. “That’s where he was different from young guys.”

‘Love, passion and knowledge’

Declan Doyle wanted to learn from the best. During this time, he contacted Saints assistant offensive line coach Brendan Nugent. Nugent had been an offensive assistant for the Hawkeyes a decade earlier.

“I knew him from kind of when I was a little kid and he didn’t know me at all as a coach,” Doyle said.

He asked if he could watch the Saints' OTA practices in the spring. Doyle paid for his own plane ticket and spent two days following Nugent around the Saints practice facility. He sat in on meetings and soaked up everything he could. He met Saints head coach Sean Payton and he listened in as tight ends coach Dan Campbell led a meeting.

In those days the Saints offense was rolling with Drew Brees at quarterback. Campbell was the future head coach of the Detroit Lions. Joe Brady, the future offensive coordinator for the Buffalo Bills, was working his first NFL gig as an offensive assistant. Offensive line coach Dan Roushar (an NIU graduate whom the Bears hired this week) once upon a time recruited Brian Ferentz when Roushar was the OC at Northern Illinois.

“They were gracious enough to allow me in there,” Doyle said.

Following the 2018 season, Brady left the Saints to take a job at LSU. New Orleans had an opening and Doyle was approaching the end of his time at Iowa.

He threw his name in the hat.

Dillon Doyle said the most exciting news wasn’t when his older brother landed the job in New Orleans. It was more exciting when he landed an interview.

“We felt like if he got in front of anybody, he would be able to display his love, passion and knowledge for the game as soon as he got in the room,” Dillon Doyle said.

Doyle did enough to impress Payton and the coaches in New Orleans. He landed the job.

Days later he told Brian Ferentz about the new job he had lined up.

Every student assistant at a Division-I school, naturally, wants a job in football after graduation. Landing jobs for some require a little more string-pulling than for others.

Ferentz was blown away when Doyle told him about his new gig.

“I never picked up the phone,” Ferentz said. “He had no help getting that job.”

Doyle was soon moving south. Once he settled into his new place in New Orleans, he slapped two sticky notes on his mirror so he would see them every morning.

One read, “Too young.”

The other said, “Youngest OC in NFL history, 27 years old, February 2024.”

‘It’s really not shocking’

Declan Doyle spent four seasons in New Orleans and then moved to Denver to be the Broncos tight end coach for Payton. The fact that Payton, a Super Bowl-winning head coach, brought him along to Denver speaks volumes.

When Johnson hired Doyle in Chicago, it raised some eyebrows. But while everyone on the outside was wondering if he was too young, in Doyle’s mind — at least according to the sticky note on his mirror in New Orleans — he was a year late.

Three years ago, Johnson was the up-and-coming 35-year-old offensive guru whom Campbell hired to run the Lions offense. Johnson’s Detroit offense caught the nation’s attention in 2022. He now plans on building a new offense in Chicago, and the man he wants to help him do it is Declan Doyle.

The two coaches have never worked together. Based on how Doyle landed his job in New Orleans, Brian Ferentz had a pretty good idea of how Johnson and Doyle connected.

“I can promise you Declan saw what Ben Johnson was doing and sought him out at some point,” Brian Ferentz said. “I would almost guarantee that.”

Two years ago, former Iowa offensive line coach Tim Polasek called Doyle to ask him a few concept-related questions. Polasek, now the head coach at North Dakota State, was blown away by Doyle’s understanding of the game and how to teach it.

“It’s just pretty clear that his understanding of all 11 on offense is at a pretty elite level,” Polasek said. “I think we’re probably at a point now with football where we’ve got to get over a guy’s age.”

The last 10 years have been building toward an opportunity like this. A chance to learn from one of the game’s best offensive minds in Johnson, and a chance to take on even more responsibility as an offensive coordinator.

During his introductory news conference last week, Doyle noted that the job in Chicago came as somewhat of a surprise to him. He was focused on being the best tight ends coach he could be in Denver.

But to those around him, Doyle landing an offensive coordinator job — even at 28 years old — comes as little surprise.

“It’s really not shocking,” Gates said. “If he’s not the smartest guy in the room, he will be. That’s who he is.”