New Marquette head coach Ken Carlson is looking to continue program’s success

After seven camp days, the Marquette football team, under new head coach Ken Carlson, had a chance to get an early gage of their offseason progress on Tuesday in a 7-on-7 scrimmage against La Salle-Peru at Howard Fellows Stadium.

“I thought we did a lot of good things, a lot of things I was hoping to see,” Carlson said. “We still have a lot more to work on, obviously, but this was good for us. La Salle-Peru is going to have a really good team, possibly a playoff team, so to get a chance to go through some scenarios against them was good for us. These things are very vanilla, but I thought we did OK.”

Carlson, an assistant coach and defensive coordinator for the Crusaders the past 10 years, was hired for the top spot in December of last year after former head coach Tom Jobst retired after 15 years, 12 consecutive playoff appearances and a 6-5 record in 2024.

Previous to his time at Marquette, Carlson spent eight seasons as the quarterback and defensive backs coach at Streator High School under head coach Kelly Kane and five seasons as special teams coach and defensive coordinator under head coach Kirk Melody.

“Our main focus has been about accountability, Carlson said. ”We have drafted four teams with four senior captains for each of those team named ‘Relentless Effort League’ where they get points for attendance, personal records in the weight room and speed training.

“Inside of that is servant leadership, doing things for each other and making sure what we do on and off the field is about the team before ourselves.

“Our workouts have been mainly working on the fundamentals and being relentless in everything we do.”

Senior quarterback/linebacker Anthony Couch said Tuesday’s 7-on-7 was a confidence builder for him moving forward through the offseason and beyond.

“I was happy with how much work I got in,” said Couch, who will be the signal caller for the third straight season for Marquette. “This was the first time we ran a no huddle with our new offense, so it was nice to get that experience under my belt in kind of a game like setting. I felt like everything went pretty well.”

Three-year starting running back/linebacker senior Grant Dose said it was just nice to line up against someone in a different colored uniform.

“It was nice to have a little competition and to be able to get after it a little against someone other than us,” Dose said. “We wanted to come out, do well, and also get comfortable with the speed of things. This was a great change of pace for me, and I think a lot of our guys are better for having this today.”

Carlson said that while Marquette followers will see some of the same things they’ve come accustomed to over the past decade when the team hits the gridiron for the regular season, there will also be new things as well. But he says beyond the schemes, putting the kids first will stay the No. 1 focus.

“Over the past ten years working with Coach Jobst I’ve learned so much,” Carlson said. “I think the main thing is understanding it’s not all about the wins or losses, but it’s about taking care of and doing what is best for the kids. Like he always told me, ‘twenty years from now, how are the kids going to remember you and their experience? Are they going remember you as a coach they couldn’t stand, or one where they knew you cared about them?’

“We’ll be doing some things differently as far as Xs and Os, sure, but we’ll also be doing some things like we always have because they work. Tom told me when I took over ‘Always do what you think is right. Don’t worry about my feelings because as long as you’re doing it to make the program better it’s the right thing to do.”