Thakkar Paints His Picture for Davidson Football

Shortly after 11 a.m. Friday, Dec. 20, Saj Thakkar stood at the podium in Gallery 18 of Game Changers Field House in his first official appearance as Davidson College’s head football coach, his Wildcat red tie as bright as the smile on his face.

“Our family is so excited to be here,” he said. “We’re thrilled.”

Thakkar is the program’s 29th head coach, and at age 33, he’s one of the youngest in all of college football. He arrives at Davidson after most recently serving as the head coach at Division II Bentley University (Mass.), after previous stops as an assistant, including at Harvard. He comes at a time when the Wildcats have posted a program-best seven consecutive winning seasons and when still-new Davidson College Stadium’s turf and concourse have endured only a season’s worth of traffic.

Introducing himself to media, alumni, fellow coaches and fans, Thakkar peeled back the curtain on what the new era of Davidson football will look like.  

“We’re going to play an exciting brand of football,” he said. “Offensively, we’ll run the football downhill, we’ll throw throw it downfield, we’ll use the full width of the field, 53-and-a-third (yards), and we’ll use tempo to our advantage. We’ll find ways to be explosive and put the ball in the end zone. Defensively, we’ll force turnovers. We’re gonna be an attack style defense. We’ll force turnovers, we’ll make quarterbacks extremely uncomfortable, and we’ll keep teams out of the end zone. On special teams, we’ll be extremely aggressive, but not reckless.”

Thakkar sees football success boiling down to two basic principles. One is toughness — he wants players who are mentally, physically and emotionally tough. The other is execution — he’ll demand high-level execution from offseason workouts, spring football, preseason camp and in-game situations but also in the classroom and the broader community.

He envisions an environment that is “extremely positive but is centered around growth and development. It’s fun but extremely competitive.”

To make it all work, he wants only the right people in the program, those of high character, who build relationships, are competent, efficient and detail-oriented, and who are students of the game and want to get better.

“We’re going to win here, but we’re going to do it the right way, our way, the Davidson way,” he said.