Wyoming Area grad Julian Campenni signed a contract as one of eight new coaches for the Los Angeles Chargers.
Submitted Photo
Wyoming Area grad Julian Campenni signed a contract as one of eight new coaches for the Los Angeles Chargers.
Submitted Photo
The temporary home in California includes a “makeshift futon” and a television perched atop a card table.
Julian Campenni is “living the frat lifestyle until my stuff gets here.”
Campenni is not complaining.
At 32 years old, the Wyoming Area graduate is not just chasing his dream; he’s living it.
Campenni flew cross country Feb. 11 and signed a contract as one of eight new coaches on Jim Harbaugh’s staff that will try to take the Los Angeles Chargers from playoff team to the next step as a more serious contender for the top of the entire National Football League.
Within hours, Campenni was at work for the next 10 days while living out of a hotel room. A break later in the month gave him time to head back east to close out his apartment and retrieve his car.
Campenni, an assistant defensive line coach, is a month into his job in the NFL, where even when there are no games — or even players on site — the work never stops.
“Really, I’m trying to learn the whole defense conceptually, schematically, what we do, what’s our philosophy, but my primary focus is the D-Line,” Campenni said.
Campenni is right where he always wanted to be, if only in a different role.
“Since I was a little kid, my dream was to always make it to the NFL,” said Campenni, who went from being an all-state player with the Warriors to being a team captain at the University of Connecticut, where he made 36 starts over his final three seasons. “When I was a player, it was what I wanted to do more than anything. My dream was to play in the NFL like every kid’s dream was to play in the NFL.”
Campenni got close, making it to the rookie mini-camp with the Indianapolis Colts.
Upon returning home, uncertain about his future but knowing he had always been interested in teaching and coaching, Campenni followed a suggestion from his old high school coaches to lead the defensive linemen as part of Randy Spencer’s staff.
That one season was all it took for Campenni to be hooked. He headed out on the college path as a graduate assistant at Boston College and has climbed steadily since — all the way to the highest level the sport has to offer.
“I’ve always been fascinated by the NFL, the competition, the challenge,” Campenni said in a Friday phone interview. “You’re coaching the best players in the world; you’re coaching against the best players in the world; and you’re coaching against some of the best coaches in the world.
“Ever since I got into coaching, it’s always been just a dream of mine to be able to coach in the league and coach at the highest level you possibly can in football.”
Though his career is developing rapidly, Campenni said he has learned that it is important to approach things like a novice. He credits Rutgers University coach Greg Schiano, his boss for the past two years, with that.
“One of the things I learned with coach Schiano is beginner’s mentality,” Campenni said. “No matter how much you know, treat it like you don’t know anything. I’m just continuing to do that and continuing to grow as a coach and find the best way to do things.
“I might have done something the same way my whole career so far, but maybe there’s a better way, a more efficient way, a better way to communicate it — just not to be afraid to continue to grow and evolve to help me get to where I want to get to.”
In his early days on his new job, Campenni, who aspires to one day be a defensive coordinator, is both evaluating and learning. He has introduced himself to Chargers players he will work with by text, and he is contributing to assessments of NFL Draft prospects while also studying the league as a whole and the Chargers in particular.
“A lot of what we do right now is we do a lot of self-scout, going through the year, seeing what we like, what we didn’t like, what was good for us,” Campenni said of the film study that is a large part of his current daily work. “We’re just kind of evaluating that right now. We’ll do projects where we’ll look at certain things throughout the league, trends of what this team is doing well. ‘Let’s study it and see if maybe we want to do it.’
“There is certain situational football. This team was really good in this area. What are they doing? Also, what we did well, what we need to improve on, and a lot of trends throughout the NFL.”
There’s no place Campenni would rather be studying those concepts and continuing to learn — and teach — the game he loves.
