Dean Kennedy was a newly-minted college grad when he took a job as a produce salesman in Baltimore, Maryland.
He worked for his friend’s father. That’s how the 2009 Scituate High alum got his first ‘Welcome to the real world’ gig.
But after a little over six months on the job, Kennedy quickly learned that 1) connections are key, and 2) “I needed to get back into football,” he said.
“It was right then and there that I realized,” said Kennedy, a former Scituate High and University of Rochester quarterback standout. “(Coaching football) is exactly where I want to be and what I want to do.”
Flash-forward to 2020: Kennedy sent 250 letters to college football coaches all over the country looking for an opportunity to hopefully be a quarterbacks coach, though any assistant role would do. He received seven letters back. While a few read ‘Thanks for writing’, one came with a surprise.
Bob Chesney, then the head coach at Holy Cross, donated to the ‘Jake Kennedy ALS fund’ set up in namesake of Kennedy’s late father who died of the disease earlier that year, and the family’s ‘Christmas in the City‘ benefit that has put on events for local families experiencing homelessness and poverty since 1989.
“(Chesney) donated to both charities without having met me,” Kennedy said.
Chesney and Kennedy stayed in touch and, one year later, a vacancy for a quarterback coach popped up at Holy Cross. The kid from Scituate got the job.
That same kid, now 33 years old, got a promotion when Chesney took a job as the head coach at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia earlier this year. Kennedy is in his first season as the Dukes‘ offensive coordinator, and the team have averaged 35 points through seven games.
“I’m very lucky and blessed to be working with that human being from that beginning stage of how first we met,” Kennedy said of Chesney. “He looked me up and saw the charitable side of things that my family has done. … He cares about the right things. He cares about the development of individuals and that’s what this program stands for.”
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James Madison scored 30 in its season-opener at Charlotte on Aug. 31, but perhaps the most memorable part of Kennedy’s debut season came in a two-week stretch in which the Dukes splashed 70 points on North Carolina in an ESPN-televised win, then 63 on Ball State the next outing.
“I was pumping my fist, like, this is a kid from Scituate!” cheered Scituate High football coach Herb Devine, whose first season was Kennedy’s senior year. “It gives me the chills thinking about him and what could be down the road for someone like Dean. It’s awesome to watch.”
Scituate roots
While his playbook doesn’t feature the Wing-T formations from his days quarterbacking the Sailors under Devine and former coach Steve Castle, Kennedy’s modern-day spread does favor deep-ball passes.
Just ask Matt Poirier, the Scituate High boys basketball coach of 25 years, about some of those.
In the 2009 basketball state semifinals, Kennedy’s famed play was a full-court pass that resulted in a Scituate bucket immediately following an opponent’s dunk.
He took the ball right out of the net and “we scored without the other team knowing,” Poirier said with a chuckle. “They all danced (celebrating the dunk). Dean threw the pass like a quarterback.”
On the football field, Devine credits Kennedy’s senior class for sparking the program’s growth into the two-time Super Bowl champion of today. The Sailors went 2-9 in Kennedy’s junior year, and, according to MaxPreps, haven’t had a sub-.500 season since. The team jumped to 7-4 in Kennedy’s senior year.
“They got the program going again,” Devine said of the 2009 seniors. “It was a good kickstart to the football tradition we now have at Scituate. Those were the guys that really started it. They had a rough couple of years and for them to have fun their senior year, win games and get a crowd, that’s what I remember most about that group.”
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Kennedy said that, from Devine, he learned most how to take pride in a program. And in college, Kennedy wrote an essay about how Poirier ran the basketball team with an emphasis on accountability.
“I’ve got a lot of (Scituate) pride,” Kennedy said. “Where you grow up and the people you’re around help shape you and define who you are. It’s a community that works really hard. That piece of it, you can’t stress enough for anyone.”
Climbing the ladder
Jumping back into the football world after the produce salesman era, Kennedy’s first opportunity came as a dorm manager and assistant coach at ASA New York, a junior college team in the NJCAA. He then became the offensive coordinator for school’s team on the affiliate campus in Miami, Florida.
Among the duties on Kennedy’s job description was sending his players’ highlight reels to coaches at four-year institutions. Former Mississippi State coach Dan Mullen once called in regards to one of Kennedy’s players and a connection between the two struck. Kennedy one day drove to the campus to network and coach a youth football camp at Mississippi State, when a graduate assistant opening later came available.
Kennedy spent one year there before he was one of the staffers Mullen brought to the University of Florida when the coach flipped SEC schools in 2018. Kennedy was brought on as the Gators’ quarterback quality control coach, a position he held for three seasons.
Mullen, who is now an analyst at ESPN, was on the call for James Madison’s 39-10 win over Coastal Carolina on Oct. 10.
“When you talk to (Kennedy) now, you know you’re really talking to a football coach,” Devine said. “He sounds like a head coach. He’s not a kid anymore. He’s this great coach that kids are following. It’s fun for me to see a kid from Scituate that was part of our program (do this).”
Kennedy became the quarterbacks coach at Holy Cross in 2022 and received the offensive coordinator title for his second season on staff in 2023.
During that two-year span, Holy Cross won two Patriot League championships and earned a 19-5 overall record while averaging 37 points and 466.6 yards of total offense per game under the direction quarterback Matthew Sluka, who won the 2023 Patriot League Offensive Player of the Year and recently played at UNLV before an NIL dispute with the school.
Asked about his offensive philosophy, Kennedy said the goal is to “put an immense amount of stress on the defense” by using the entire width of the field and “finding a way to get our best players, essentially, against (the opponents’) worst players.”
“A big piece of that,” he added, “is utilizing our running backs and tight ends all across the field and lining them up everywhere.”
In the 70-point outburst at North Carolina, redshirt sophomore quarterback Alonza Barnett II set school records with seven touchdowns (5 passing, 2 rushing) and 487 total yards. He was 22-for-34 passing for 388 passing yards and no interceptions. James Madison led 53-21 at half.
“Although the outside world might have said that was a surprise, for us, that’s something we expected to do.” Kennedy said. “We’re lucky to have the players and the belief we have, that, to be honest, it doesn’t really matter who we play. We expect to win. That’s how we play this game, and you can’t play this game timid. It doesn’t matter if it’s a (Power) Four opponent or not.”
Devine said he was texting with fellow Scituate High coaches while watching Kennedy’s record-breaking day: “I think I’ve stolen a couple plays from him, too,” he joked.
“We’re proud of him,” Devine said. “It’s exciting to see someone from Scituate take that path and have such great success like he has.”
This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Scituate’s Dean Kennedy is A rising Division 1 college football coach
