‘He’s like a little brother’: Inside Will Healy and Marcus Satterfield friendship

Will Healy and Brooks York didn’t want to enter the real world. So the soon-to-be graduated Richmond football teammates did what all college kids hoping to delay the inevitable do: They packed their bags and headed for Europe in spring 2009.

Well, that was the plan anyway.

“I had decided I was going to play professional football — if you can call it that — in Austria,” Healy told The State. “...I got an email from the club at the end of October saying they didn’t have room for (York). I didn’t know how to tell him. I told him they cut us both, so I needed to go find something to do.”

Three days after winning the FCS national championship in December 2008, Richmond defensive coordinator Russ Huesman was hired as the head coach at Chattanooga.

Healy figured he wanted to get into coaching eventually. The ill-fated European foray expedited that process. As did a call from Huesman asking him to be his quarterbacks coach — along with a chance to work directly under Chattanooga’s recently hired, 33-year-old offensive coordinator.

“I made [$12,000] or $16,000,” Healy said, “and I made copies for Marcus Satterfield.”

Saturday, Healy’s Charlotte squad will head to Columbia to take on his old boss in Satterfield and South Carolina.

The pair have remained close over the years, due in large part to their one-season overlap at Richmond during Healy’s playing days and subsequent time on staff together at Chattanooga.

Satterfield’s daughter, Harper, was a flower girl at Healy’s wedding in June 2012. Satterfield, naturally, was with Healy when he made his only ever hole-in-one on the seventh hole at Council Fire Club in Chattanooga during a recent spring recruiting period.

Next comes standing on opposite sidelines.

“He’s like a little brother — (I’m) very protective of him,” Satterfield told The State. “I love watching him on the sidelines. He’s running around. He’s a hoot to watch. You can tell his guys are going to play their ass off for him.”

A camaraderie within the Richmond staff

Healy knew two people during his playing career in Richmond, Virginia in 2004 — his quarterbacks coach, Mark Carney and Satterfield, then the Spiders’ receivers coach.

The Tennessee native had spent a year at the U.S. Air Force Academy Preparatory School in Colorado, intending initially to play for Falcons. But after a year, Healy sought a different path.

He floated the idea of transferring schools to his teammate and Carney’s younger brother, Shaun, who then connected Healy with his older brother, and on down the line.

Satterfield had some familiarity with Healy. Boyd Buchanan School in Chattanooga, where he set the local all-time passing record, was only an hour from where Satterfield’s father became a legendary coach in Greenback, Tennessee.

The Spiders staff quickly started a line of communication. Healy signed his national letter of intent and was en route to Richmond soon thereafter.

“I remember thinking (Healy) was smaller than I hoped when I initially met him,” quipped Carney, now Healy’s offensive coordinator at Charlotte.

While Healy spent that first year acclimating as a player, Satterfield and Carney worked on a staff that spent as much time in the office together as it did outside of it.

Satterfield, Carney and Huesman played golf incessantly during their down time at Richmond. The Hollows Golf Club in Montpelier, Virginia, or, as they called it, “Val-Hallows” — a nod to storied Valhalla Golf Club in Lexington, Kentucky, the site of three PGA Championships and the 2008 Ryder Cup — was their usual track of choice.

One spring day even entailefd the trio even sneaking out for 90 holes in a single day.

“I just remember playing golf and not wanting to stop,” Satterfield said. “We just kept playing and playing and playing.”

When football activities increased, staff pick-up basketball games in an auxiliary gym in the Robins Center followed early morning workouts. The games oozed intensity. Bringing together as many as a dozen young and hyper-competitive football coaches had that effect.

Offensive coordinator Wayne Lineburg suffered a gash above his eye one morning. Linebackers coach Mike Elko, now the head coach at Duke, hurt his nose, too.

Las Vegas Raiders defensive coordinator Patrick Graham, then an assistant defensive line coach for the Spiders, even had Carney, as Carney tells it, thrown into him by Satterfield during one particularly heated game.

“I don’t think Patrick spoke to him after that,” Carney joked. “Or at least for a solid month or so.”

Rekindling Richmond relationships at Chattanooga

Richmond wasn’t exactly a picture of football success heading into the 2004 season.

The Spiders had made the FCS playoffs all of four times in 26 years — two appearances of which had happened in the six campaigns prior. They had reached bowl games in 1968 and 1971, but that was in an era of football that was long past.

Still, head coach Dave Clawson had fixations on elevating the program.

That’s how — despite lacking history — the future Wake Forest head coach compiled a group that included three current FBS head coaches, an NFL defensive coordinator, two Southeastern Conference coordinators and one FCS head coach in one season.

“You see the pictures of the old LSU staffs, the old Texas staff — it makes sense those staffs went on to produce coaches that are at the highest levels now,” Elko told The State. “It’s interesting to put a photo of a Richmond staff from 2004 and see so many guys that have gone on to do successful things in this profession.”

Future staff successes aside, the Spiders’ 2004 campaign ebbed and flowed. Richmond finished the year 3-8 with a win over No. 9 UMass.

It did narrowly miss out on three other ranked wins that season, dropping four of its eight losses by nine or less points.

Satterfield left following the year for a gig coaching receivers at Western Carolina, before eventually being hired by Huesman at Chattanooga in 2009.

Healy spent five years as a player at Richmond and was voted a team captain his senior season despite seeing little playing time as a backup quarterback.

Then came the canceled Europe plan, which ultimately ignited his coaching career.

“I always tell our staff I want to have that picture where somebody says, ‘How in the hell did he get all of those people to Austin Peay, or Charlotte?’” Healy said. “That’s the goal.”

A wristband gaffe and reuniting in Columbia

Healy pauses in the middle of a diatribe about his time at Richmond and how Satterfield affected his path in coaching.

“Remind me to tell the Appalachian State story in just a second,” he said.

Oh, pray tell.

Healy’s weekly responsibilities as Satterfield’s quarterbacks coach at Chattanooga entailed color-coding and designing play-sheet wristbands for the Mocs’ skill position players.

Facing Appalachian State early in their tenure, the gameplan called for every Chattanooga skill position player to wear wristbands that week to ensure they could get the calls in quickly to speed up the Mountaineer defense.

The day of the game, Satterfield asked Healy if he could add a play — ”Head-31,” or “H-31” as it read on the wristband.

That was fine, in theory.

The only problem? Healy slipped up in his design process.

“We get to the game and (Satterfield) calls ‘H-31’ and we get lined up in the wrong formation, the wrong personnel,” Healy recounts. “Satt’s yelling and screaming and I’m like, ‘What is going on?’

“B.J. Coleman was our quarterback at the time, and B.J. comes over to me and I said, ‘I said H-31,’ and he’s like, ‘Yeah, I’m looking at H-31.’ When I moved (the play on the band), it pushed all the other ones to one off. The whole gameplan — every one of them — was one number off.”

Healy laughs about the incident now. Satterfield, too, cracks a smirk recounting the same story his ex-assistant retold over the phone the night before.

Time heals old wounds, I suppose. So does almost 20 years of friendship.

“I absolutely blew it,” Healy continued. “I never felt so small in my entire life.”

“He’s like ‘We’re good. If it says 40, just call 41,’” Satterfield added. “I was like, ‘There’s no way I’m doing that.’ We figured out some signals and got through it, but that was not funny at the time. Looking back, it’s really funny.”

Charlotte enters Saturday’s contest allowing an FBS worst 563.8 yards per game. South Carolina, by contrast, ranks 100th of 131 teams nationally in total offense.

Something has to give.

“Obviously Marcus is going to try and score 550 points on us on Saturday,” Healy said, laughing. “So we know what to expect.”

Healy might know what’s to come. Just don’t anticipate the Gamecocks using any wristbands this go around.

How to watch

Who: Charlotte (1-3) at USC (1-2)

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday

Where: Williams-Brice Stadium

Watch: ESPNU