Brian Young enters his ninth season as the club's pass rush specialist. In his 15th 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 in 2009 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' 315 sacks rank fourth in the NFL, 11 different defensive linemen have produced multi-sack games and the defense went an NFL-record 55 regular season and postseason games without allowing a 100-yard rusher between the 2017-20 campaigns. The Saints have ranked in the top ten in sacks five of the last seven seasons.
In the 2023 season, Young helped tutor a pair of young Saints defensive linemen to impressive production. Carl Granderson blossomed under Young's tutelage with a career-high and team-best 8.5 sacks as part of a 78-tackle effort. Bryan Bresee, the club's first round pick, finished with 4.5 sacks and six passes defensed, the top totals in club record books for a Saints rookie defensive tackle.
Young joined the Saints coaching staff 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 playing tenure with the Black and Gold, he served as a valuable member of the Saints interior 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-.
