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oledo had allowed 31 points in the first half.
It was Oct. 15, 2022, and Kent State was running laps around the Rockets. Its lead had grown to 21 points in the opening seconds of the second quarter. Frustration reigned in the Glass Bowl.
“We are way better than this, and we’re better than these guys we’re playing,” former Toledo defensive tackle Judge Culpepper remembered thinking.
Vince Kehres watched from the stadium box aerie. The then-Toledo defensive coordinator had his defensive players huddle on the sideline. He used a headset microphone to relay a message.
“Guys, sh-t hasn’t gone our way,” Culpepper recalls Kehres saying. “I promise you, we’re gonna win this game. I’m gonna put together a great plan at halftime. Do not lose sight of the goal. Everything’s gonna be fine.”
There wasn’t a single player who didn’t believe him, Culpepper said. Halftime came, the second half commenced and Kent State didn’t score again. Toledo romped to a 52-31 victory.
“We beat them, smoked them and it was a testament to V.K. just keeping a cool head and just letting us know, ‘Look, guys, we got this. Things go south. We just got to trust in each other and trust in this plan, and we’re gonna put you guys in the right spot to succeed,’” Culpepper said.
That’s what Kehres has made a career of — putting his guys in the right spots to succeed. In 2025, Toledo boasted the nation’s second-best total defense (254.3 yards allowed per game) and the fourth-ranked scoring defense (13.31 points surrendered per contest). With Kehres in charge, his players were likely to be drafted and flourish in the NFL.
First Team All-Pro Eagles cornerback Quinyon Mitchell? Giants starting defensive tackle Darius Alexander? Browns 2026 second-round pick Emmanuel McNeil-Warren? All of them count Kehres as a source of their thriving professional careers.
“He would always tell us to compete out there and to play hard. Every down, every day, every rep,” Mitchell told The Daily Orange. “I just try to compete against others and myself as well.”
Syracuse defensive coordinator Vince Kehres shows Toledo defenders a tactic when he held the same position for the Rockets, who became a top-five defense. Kehres now aims to bring SU’s unit to similar heights. Courtesy of Toledo Athletics
Now, after six years at Toledo, Kehres, 50, looks to replicate his success in a new spot. Syracuse head coach Fran Brown hired Kehres to be his defensive coordinator after the Orange allowed 34.9 points per game last season, seventh-worst in the country.
“I don’t know if there’s anybody that loves the game of football more than Vince Kehres,” Culpepper said.
As Syracuse’s 2025 campaign concluded with eight straight losses, Brown decided his team needed a new defensive coordinator. On a Sunday night in early November 2025, Kehres received a call from Brown while watching his beloved Pittsburgh Steelers. Brown wanted to gauge Kehres’ interest in the position.
At a team meeting on Dec. 1, Brown informed the Orange then-defensive coordinator Elijah Robinson would be demoted to co-coordinator. Kehres was hired on Dec. 6, and a few weeks later, Robinson departed the program to become Texas A&M’s defensive line coach. Kehres was Syracuse’s sole defensive leader.
“There will be answers to things,” Brown told Sirius XM’s ACC Radio when asked what would be different about this year’s defense. “There will be adjustments. There will be more adjustments because of (Kehres’) experience. I feel like there were times I put Coach Robinson in a bad situation.”
Syracuse is Kehres’ third coaching stop. He spent 20 years at Division III Mount Union, where his father, Larry Kehres, boasts the highest winning percentage in college football history at 92.9%. Kehres replaced his father as the program’s head coach in 2013, leading the Purple Raiders to a 95-6 record and two national championships in seven years.
In 2020, Kehres moved to Toledo. On Dec. 6, 2025, the same day he signed with SU, Toledo head coach Jason Candle departed for UConn.
We beat them, smoked them, and it was a testament to V.K. just keeping a cool head and just letting us know.Judge Culpepper, former Toledo defensive tackle
Kehres is content with how it played out. He said his move came down to “who was I going to work with, and do we have the opportunity to be successful?”
“I felt those boxes were checked here at Syracuse,” Kehres said.
Kehres brought defensive backs coach Perry Eliano and defensive analyst Dan Bolden with him from Toledo, along with Third Team All-Mid-American Conference linebacker Chris D’Appolonia and defensive back Amare Snowden. When Kehres arrived at SU, he first asked his players how they wanted to be taught, defensive back Davien Kerr said.
On top of that, Kehres said he’d be available as early as 3 a.m. to go over the playbook or film. Culpepper estimates Kehres has watched 100,000 hours of film in his life. At Toledo, Kehres even finalized his film for the following Saturday opponent the Sunday before.
“I go home on a Sunday night after a win, enjoy my team victory meal and watch a little bit of film that’s already been broken down by the numbers, and understand what I’m looking at,” said Culpepper, a 2023 First Team All-MAC member. “And once you understand what you’re looking at, the game slows down, and you’re able to really make a lot of plays.”
Right now, the Orange defense is probably getting tired of seeing Toledo film, Kehres admitted during training camp on Aug. 7. But it’s all intended to build SU into one of the Atlantic Coast Conference’s top defensive units.
“He’s gonna create a very cohesive unit that he’s going to strip down complicated things and make it easy to learn,” said Mike Hallett, who coached alongside Kehres at Toledo and against him at Mt. Union.
“Vince’s dad had a great adage about coaching: Coaching is teaching. Teaching is inspiring learning,” Hallett added. “Vince does that very well. He does a great job of getting kids interested in learning all the ins and outs and nooks and crannies and intricacies of what our defense is able to do, and the kids are thirsty learners.”
That’s what Kehres did at Toledo. The defense underwent a 180 when he arrived, safety Tycen Anderson said. The Rockets played “stickier coverage,” and there was more accountability and attention to detail, said Anderson, a 2022 fifth-round pick and current Denver Bronco.
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The summer Toledo hired Kehres, Anderson remembers talking to him on the phone for over an hour. They reviewed Anderson’s tape, with Kehres pointing out his flaws and strengths. Later that summer, Anderson was playing video games with his friends when Kehres called again.
“Next thing you know, my iPad was up, and we were watching tape,” Anderson said.
Cornerback Samuel Womack III, who was a senior when Kehres was hired, said Kehres “brought a different type of enthusiasm, a different type of grit” to his game. Because the COVID-19 pandemic granted players an additional year of eligibility, Womack played two seasons under Kehres and became Toledo’s all-time leader in pass breakups (46) before he was selected in the fifth round of the 2022 NFL Draft.
Womack said he’d previously relied on his strength and athleticism to make plays. Once Kehres arrived, Womack better understood what was needed to beat receivers on contested balls.
“I remember (Kehres) just telling me, I can go to the NFL, I can be a great player, but I won’t be doing that if I just take plays off,” Womack said.
That message was best exemplified, Womack thinks, in a three-point loss at then-No. 8 Notre Dame in 2021. The Rockets forced the Fighting Irish into three turnovers — a total team effort. It was a prime example of Kehres’ defensive polestar: 11 as 1.
“Great defense is a collection of a bunch of people that really believe in the unit,” Kehres said of his philosophy. “And if you’re not giving great effort, then you’re being selfish. And honestly, you’re not going to be on the field here.”
But Kehres wasn’t omnipotent. Womack remembers Kehres consulting him and Anderson in a tight game against Western Michigan. He let them choose the coverage for an important down. It worked; Toledo won. Postgame, Womack thanked Kehres for taking his players’ input.
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“He molds the playbook to us, which allows us to play very fast, very physical and not have to hesitate at all, which I think is why we’ve been so good under his defensive system,” D’Appolonia said of Kehres, noting he runs an “NFL-style” defense.
Anderson credits Kehres for recruiting defensive backs and setting them up to play with “confidence and swag.” Kehres also saw things in recruits others might not. When Alexander arrived at Toledo in 2019, Candle wanted to move him from defensive line to offensive line due to injuries in the unit. Kehres was hired the following year and convinced Candle to move Alexander back to defense.
“He told me I better ball out every chance I get, because if I don’t, he brings me back to offense,” Alexander said of Kehres. “So that was gonna be pretty easy on my part.”
It sure seemed easy. Alexander was an All-MAC selection twice, a 2025 NFL Draft third-round pick and looks set to start for the Giants in his second professional season.
McNeil-Warren, now a Cleveland Brown, added SU is getting “the best coach ever” in Kehres, whose main goal is to win and set records. Culpepper said no one in the JMA Wireless Dome knows more about football than Kehres, calling him a walking “football algorithm.”
However, off the field, Kehres can be easygoing. He always had a joke to tell, Mitchell said. During one defensive meeting, someone turned on a song by the rapper Lil Baby, Culpepper recalls. Then Kehres entered the room.
“All right, loving this one,” Kehres said.
He kept listening.
“This guy’s pretty good. Who is this?”
A defender piped in: “It’s Lil Baby, Coach. You don’t know Lil Baby?”
“Hmm, little baby,” Kehres responded. “I’m not really sure I know that one, but I’ll mark it down. Maybe I’ll put it on my playlist.”
SU defensive coordinator Vince Kehres addresses his unit at a practice. Kehres has made every player feel worthy with an “11 as 1” mantra and looks to transform the defense, which surrendered 34.9 points a game last year. Zoe Xixis | Asst. Photo Editor
However, Alexander heeds an important warning about Kehres’ disposition. When you see him on Thursday, he’ll be silly, he’ll laugh, he’ll smile. But on game day, “he’s a whole different guy.”
Meet Kehres’ alter ego. Straight face. Serious. But energetic and loud. Alexander thinks Syracuse fans will love Kehres’ duality.
Good defense, synonymous with Kehres, is fun to watch. How about playing in it?
“You go one drive, the first drive of the game, and you get a three-and-out, and then you get another three-and-out, and it’s like, ‘Oh my god, I love this,’” Culpepper said. “Playing football is the best. And when you’re doing well, and you’ve got a good plan in place, it’s very easy to buy in.”
The team might change, but Kehres’ credo doesn’t. After each defensive drill or practice rep, his defense gathers together in a huddle and chants Kehres’ lodestar, “11 as 1,” before returning to their positions. That’s how he’s always functioned.
The man and the mantra have moved to central New York.
Now, he’ll look to bring defensive dominance — and with it, set Syracuse and its defenders up for success.
“He’s just going to give it his all,” Womack said. “He’s not going to shortchange you. He’s not going to hold things back. He’s going to pour into his players. He’s going to make his players better each and every day. And he just pulls a different type of dog out of you.”
Photo by Zoe Xixis | Asst. Photo Editor