Brian Young enters his seventh season as the club's pass rush specialist. In his 14th season as a valued member of the New Orleans Saints coaching staff, Young has worked with all of the club's front seven position groups after first breaking into the ranks as a coaching assistant from 2009-11 following the conclusion of a nine-year playing career and 124 games along the defensive line in the National Football League.
Since 2017, New Orleans' 233 sacks ranked third in the league, seven different defensive linemen have produced multi-sack games and the New Orleans defense went an NFL-record 55 regular season and postseason games without allowing a 100-yard rusher between the 2017-20 campaigns and has the longest current streak at 22 consecutive contests. The Saints have ranked in the top ten in sacks four of five seasons and have finished in the top five in run defense the last four campaigns.
With the National Football League's fourth ranked rush defense (93.5 yards per game) and the eighth-most sacks (46), Young helped produce standout campaigns from longtime veterans as well as overseeing development from the team's promising young pass rushers. Young helped defensive end Cameron Jordan earn Pro Bowl honors, as he finished the season tied for seventh in the NFL with 12.5 sacks. Along with Marcus Davenport, who posted a career-high nine quarterback takedowns, the Saints were just one of seven teams to have a pair of teammates record at least nine sacks.
Young first joined the Saints coaching staff in 2009 after concluding a nine-year NFL playing career, where he appeared in 124 games and had 22.5 sacks and eight fumble recoveries for the St. Louis Rams (2000-03) and the Saints (2004-08). During his five-year playing tenure with the Black and Gold he served as a valuable member of the Saints interior defensive line rotation, starting 58-of-64 contests.
Young played at Texas-El Paso from 1996-99. He was the Western Athletic Conference Defensive Player of the Year as a senior in 1999, when he had a career-high 121 tackles and eight sacks. The El Paso native graduated with a bachelor's degree in criminal justice. He was a 2016 inductee into the El Paso Athletic Hall of Fame and a 2019 inductee into the UTEP Athletics Hall of Fame.
PLAYING CAREER: Texas El-Paso, 1996-99; St. Louis Rams, 2000-03; New Orleans Saints, 2004-08.
COACHING CAREER: New Orleans Saints, 2009-.
