Brett Gordon has been named the Philadelphia Eagles High School Coach of the Week. Gordon, who played quarterback at La Salle College High School in Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania, led the team to two Philadelphia Catholic League Championships before graduating in 1998. He later played at Villanova, where he was teammates with Eagles Hall of Famer Brian Westbrook and earned recognition as the 2002 Atlantic 10 Offensive Player of the Year.
Gordon returned to La Salle in 2005 and spent 14 out of the next 15 seasons as an assistant coach under his father, Drew, and John Steinmetz. During this period, he helped guide the Explorers to a PIAA Class 4A State Championship in 2009. After a four-year break from coaching while working in the corporate sector for several software companies, Gordon decided to return to football last year when offered the head coaching position at his alma mater.
“I had spent the previous 16 or 17 years in the corporate world, working for a few different software companies. So even through all the years where I was an assistant coach, I was not your traditional kind of teacher, administrator, coach-type,” Gordon says.
“Part of the reason the timing was never quite right was because of my corporate career with travel and a lot of demands on my time. It just made it very difficult to continue coaching. At that same time, when the opportunity was presented to me at La Salle, my son, Luke, was entering his high school career at the very same time when this opportunity presented itself. He’s a sophomore quarterback on the team right now.
“So when I kind of put everything into perspective and took an assessment of my professional career at that point, and then having an opportunity that most people would dream of, to go back to your alma mater to be the head football coach, and do it literally at the same time that your eighth-grade son was entering high school, I just kind of looked at it and said, ‘I feel like if I don’t do this, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.'”
Gordon noted that he had opportunities elsewhere but chose La Salle because of its significance in his life.
“If I was going to invest the amount of time it takes even to be an assistant coach, but certainly a head coach, it was going to be at La Salle,” he says. “La Salle is near and dear to my heart. A lot of my closest friends are guys I went to school with there. The alumni support, the school community in general, it’s unlike anywhere else. So that was really going to be the only opportunity that would have caused me at the age of 44 at the time, to make the decision.”
Since taking over as head coach last year after periods where La Salle finished with records below .500 in prior seasons (5-6 and 6-5), Gordon led them to a Philadelphia Catholic League Red Division title with a perfect regular-season record (10-0) last year and has started this season undefeated (4-0). He received recognition as PCL Coach of the Year for 2024.
Gordon described his coaching style as combining elements from both traditional and modern approaches—a perspective shaped by lessons learned from his father’s coaching methods.
“My dad was a very kind of Type A, an almost military style-type coach of really just the premise of no excuses and figure out a way to get it done,” Gordon says. “I catch myself probably once a day saying something that I probably heard him say before. And I have a certain expectation and standard that I demand our players live up to which probably is more of the Type A.
“But I also think that in this day and age you have to have a somewhat different approach to kids… What I’ve learned more recently is in order to demand certain levels of excellence… they have to know that first and foremost you care about them besides just what they can do on a football field… That doesn’t mean I’ve mastered it by any stretch but I am very cognizant…”
For Gordon, connecting with players remains central: “Outside of competition… what this is all about is connecting with players… seeing them become better versions… both as individuals and as a team,” he says.
He also raised funds for Guardian Caps—padded helmet covers designed for concussion prevention—to enhance player safety during practice sessions.
“We’re very fortunate at a place like La Salle in that we have a lot people invested… alumni who are interested… There was topic about Guardian Caps … within our program we really didn’t have,” Gordon says. “I had parent come forward … ‘if this is something you guys are interested I’d be more than happy cover portion cost.’ And it was simple.”
