Coy Wire's mother, who is of Japanese descent, christened her son after the Japanese word for “love.” But players lined up on the opposite side of the football don’t feel any love when they collide with the 215-pound, 6-foot-1 senior linebacker. And with the graduation of NFL-bound Riall Johnson and Willie Howard, they can expect to see even more of him.
“If our team is going to be successful, we have to have an outstanding defense,” says Stanford football coach Tyrone Willingham. “That can come in the form of a dominant defense or it can come, like it did in 1999, as an opportunistic defense. Whatever form it takes, you have to have a leader. You’d like to have one of your safeties or linebackers assume that role of leadership,” he adds. “Coy has already done that.”
Wire’s route to linebacker wasn’t exactly direct. He joined the squad as a running back; he has the distinction of leading the team in both rushing and tackles. As a redshirt freshman in 1998, he rushed for a team-high 298 yards, despite missing the last five games of the season with a dislocated thumb. But the next year, Wire shared time on the field with two other strong running backs—Brian Allen and Kerry Carter.
“I felt that I had more that I wanted to offer the team,” Wire says. “At the end of the season, when Coach [Willingham] asked if I had any thoughts about the team, I told him that I wanted to help the team win more and that maybe I could do that by playing defense.”
During the off-season, Willingham moved Wire to safety. But less than two weeks before the start of last season, Willingham switched him to inside linebacker. That gave Wire a week and a half to memorize a two-inch-thick book of plays.
“I’ve played football since I was 6 years old, so the instincts were there,” Wire says. “It was a matter of learning all the responsibilities of being on defense. That was the roughest part, learning all that info in a very short amount of time.”
Wire proved to be a quick study. In his defensive debut against Washington State in last season’s opener, he helped the Cardinal shut down the Cougars’ wide-open passing attack. He tallied six tackles (two for a loss of yardage) and one quarterback sack in Stanford’s 24-10 victory.
And Wire added much-needed speed to Stanford’s oft-maligned defense. Last year, the defense allowed 93 fewer yards per game than in 1999. Wire’s team-leading 81 tackles earned him an honorable mention on the All-Pac-10 team, as he finished among the league’s top 10 in tackles, sacks and tackles behind the line of scrimmage. “He just grew and his personality and leadership developed, and it just made all the right sense in the world to have him at linebacker,” says Willingham.
Wire thinks the team can improve upon last season’s 5-6 record. Although the Cardinal will miss outside linebacker Johnson and defensive end Howard, much of the defensive unit remains intact. Allen, ’02, and Carter, ’03, continue to anchor the backfield, and the offense, which returns all but two starters, hopes experience will compensate for the lack of a big playmaker. The team kicks off the season September 8 against Boston College.
