Jeff Traylor recalls decision to leave Gilmer for Texas

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In February 2015, Jeff Traylor was living a small-town East Texas dream.

For 15 years, he’d been the wildly successful head coach in his hometown, winning over 87 percent of his games while leading Gilmer to 12 district crowns, five state championship games, and state titles in 2004, 2009, and 2014.

One younger brother, Kurt, lived next door and coordinated his run game and coached his offensive line. His youngest brother also lived in town, as did his parents.

Former players were in the NFL, with more to follow.

In the early hours of Friday the 13th, Traylor had a dilemma — two days before, second-year Texas Longhorns head coach Charlie Strong had called Traylor to offer him a job as his tight ends coach and special teams coordinator, giving him two days to make a decision. Strong’s deadline loomed in four hours.

The pressure on Strong to replace Bruce Chambers, a Mack Brown-era holdover, put pressure on Traylor to make a fast decision.

“I caught a lot of heck for taking the time to make the decision because I don’t know that people understand how hard a decision it really was,” Traylor recalled to Inside Texas this week, calling the job offer from Texas “a dream.”

Even so, Traylor came to a decision, telling his wife Cari that he was going to stay in Gilmer.

“You grew up in Gilmer. You told all your kids that any dream you ever could want, you could do from Gilmer, Texas, and yet here you go. You’re not going to take this chance,” Cari told him. “You could become a head coach. You could go there, become a great recruiter. You love to recruit. You love to talk to kids. You could be a head coach.”

Traylor wasn’t ready to relent, but in a moment that he took as a divine sign, he looked over at his phone. It was after 3 a.m. when the song “Beyond Me” by Toby Mac came on.

“It’s a song about the Lord picking up somebody out of some warm, comfortable water and moving into something that’s way beyond him,” Traylor said.

The lyrics rang out into the East Texas night.

“I’ve got some dreams that are bigger than me/I might be outmatched, outsized, the underdog in the fight of my life/Is it so crazy to believe?“ Mac’s song starts.

It gave Traylor the resolve he needed.

“Well, if my wife wants me to do it, and the Lord wants me to do it, I’m not going to argue with my wife and the Lord. That’d be a lose-lose there,” Traylor told his wife.

So Traylor was off to Austin, starting a college coaching career that subsequently led him to SMU and Arkansas with Chad Morris before landing him his first head coaching job at UTSA in late 2019.

In between, Strong’s tenure on the Forty Acres was an unequivocal disaster, ending after three years and a 16-21 record, but hiring Traylor was one of the few unequivocal successes as Traylor’s relationship-building skills helped land elite wide receiver prospect Devin Duvernay in the 2026 class after the Sachse secured a release from Baylor in the wake of the school’s sexual-assault scandal, months after shocking the college football world by securing a National Signing Day commitment from star Nacogdoches safety Brandon Jones, infamously the subject of a TexAgs documentary in anticipation of his journey to College Station. Traylor was named Scout’s Big 12 Recruiter of the Year.

“Feel terrible we didn’t win enough games, but I have so much respect for that place and the way they do work there. It was a great great time in my life and I’ll always be grateful for it,” Traylor said.

When Strong was fired and Tom Herman took over, he offered Traylor an off-field role after a 10-minute interview so he could bring another longtime Texas high school football coach, Houston Westfield’s Corby Meekins, with him from Houston.

The abysmal decision by Herman ended Traylor’s time on the Forty Acres, but it didn’t stop his ascent, and now the UTSA head coach returns to Austin for a third time leading the Roadrunners as a beloved figure in Longhorns lore thanks to a little help from a smart woman and a well-timed song.

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