By Dan­ny Barletta
UConnHuskies.com
Octo­ber 4, 2019

The 2009 UConn foot­ball team cel­e­brates after their vic­to­ry in the PapaJohns.com Bowl. (Pho­to: UConn Athletics)

It’s been a full decade since UConn’s unfor­get­table 2009 foot­ball sea­son. It was a bit­ter­sweet sea­son which fea­tured some his­toric wins, heart­break­ing loss­es and the trag­ic mid­sea­son death of a teammate.

When the Huskies take on the USF Bulls this Sat­ur­day at Pratt and Whit­ney Sta­di­um at Rentschler Field, sev­er­al play­ers from that spe­cial team will be in atten­dance for their 10-year reunion. The play­ers return­ing include run­ning back Andre Dixon and kick­er Dave Teggart, both of whom were huge pieces to that team.

Teggart said the thing he remem­bers the most about that team was the amount of incred­i­ble tal­ent it had.

“We had a real­ly good group of guys,” Teggart said. “There are guys from that team that are still in the NFL … It’s crazy when you think about it, how many NFL ath­letes were on that one team.”

It’s true. Sev­er­al play­ers on that team spent extend­ed time in the NFL, includ­ing run­ning back Jor­dan Tod­man, defen­sive back Robert McClain, line­backer Sio Moore and wide receiv­er Mar­cus Easley. There are three play­ers from that team still cur­rent­ly play­ing in the NFL — Kansas City Chiefs full­back Antho­ny Sher­man, Atlanta Fal­cons cor­ner­back Bli­di Wreh-Wil­son and New York Jets tight end Ryan Griffin.

UConn fin­ished 8–5 that sea­son, but the five loss­es were by just a com­bined 15 points. The team was in a posi­tion where it could have won every game that season.

“That was crazy because no mat­ter who we lined up against, there wasn’t any kind of doubt,” Dixon said. “Every week we felt like, ‘Who­ev­er. Bring ‘em in. Line ‘em up.’ We were con­fi­dent. We didn’t care who was com­ing in, we were ready to rock. We knew we could win every game.”

The Huskies lost a heart­break­er 12–10 to No. 19 North Car­oli­na in Week 2, but they took care of busi­ness against oth­er teams and got off to a 4–2 start, capped off by a key 38–25 win over Big East rival Louisville on Oct. 17.

Just hours after that win, how­ev­er, an unthink­able tragedy struck that would change the course of the sea­son. Star cor­ner­back Jasper Howard was stabbed dur­ing an alter­ca­tion out­side the Stu­dent Union on cam­pus, and he died lat­er that night at the hos­pi­tal, leav­ing a void in the UConn sec­ondary but an even big­ger void in the hearts of the play­ers and coaches.

“I remem­ber going to West Vir­ginia the next week and it was like, ‘How are we going to play this game?’” Teggart said. “Everybody’s head was obvi­ous­ly some­where else. The recov­ery obvi­ous­ly took longer than just that year, but it was def­i­nite­ly some­thing that every­body ral­lied around and got behind.”

The Huskies had a new pur­pose to play for the rest of that sea­son, and Dixon said that brought the team even clos­er together.

“We all had each other’s back,” Dixon said. “We all car­ried each oth­er if we were down and out. It was a great team and fam­i­ly envi­ron­ment even before that, but the Jazz sit­u­a­tion gelled us clos­er even more. Such a bad sit­u­a­tion, but it kind of helped bring us together.”

After Howard’s death, the team would lose three straight one-pos­ses­sion games, two of them against ranked oppo­nents. Then on Nov. 21, the Huskies trav­eled to South Bend for their first-ever meet­ing with Notre Dame.

“I remem­ber our con­fi­dence,” Dixon said. “When we walked into that sta­di­um, every­body was like, ‘We’ve got what it takes to get it done.’ We ran out of the tun­nel with Jazz’s hel­met before the game. The ener­gy was crazy … We weren’t just play­ing against Notre Dame. We were play­ing for Jazz, and we were play­ing for the respect of our program.”

The pro­gram def­i­nite­ly earned respect in what was arguably the biggest win in UConn foot­ball his­to­ry. The Huskies won 33–30 in a dou­ble-over­time thriller. Dixon scored the game-win­ning touch­down, which he said was the most unfor­get­table moment of his foot­ball career.

“When I see a UConn fan or peo­ple from Con­necti­cut still today, 10 years lat­er, peo­ple still stop me and talk about that,” Dixon said. “They talk about how that was their great­est sport­ing event they have ever been to.”

That his­toric win sent the Huskies on a four-game win­ning streak to end their sea­son. Anoth­er key game was the reg­u­lar-sea­son finale against South Flori­da. UConn won that game 29–27 on a last-sec­ond 42-yard field goal from Teggart in the snow.

“It was the cul­mi­na­tion of the year,” Teggart said. “To end the year like that with every­thing that hap­pened, with the Jazz tragedy and every­thing. To hit that kick when everyone’s rely­ing on you, that’s what it’s all about.”

That kick would prove to be a fore­shad­ow­ing of the next sea­son, when Teggart once again hit a game-win­ning field goal against USF in the reg­u­lar-sea­son finale, this time to clinch the Big East cham­pi­onship and send the team to the Fies­ta Bowl. (Iron­i­cal­ly, the Huskies are play­ing USF this week­end for the reunion game too.)

The 2009 sea­son end­ed on a high note with a 20–7 win over South Car­oli­na in the PapaJohns.com Bowl, which was the third and most recent bowl vic­to­ry for UConn. 

“I thought that the Papa Johns Bowl was great because we showed we could play against a team from an elite con­fer­ence, with South Car­oli­na being from the SEC,” Dixon said. “For us to line up against them and get a win says some­thing about how we can play against any big team.”

Dixon was the MVP of that game with 126 rush­ing yards and a touch­down in what would be his final game at UConn. He said he ded­i­cat­ed that per­for­mance to Howard.

Ten years lat­er, both for­mer Huskies are excit­ed to be reunit­ed with some of their team­mates this weekend.

“I’m sure everybody’s gonna pick up right where we left off,” Teggart said. “I wouldn’t expect any­thing dif­fer­ent from this par­tic­u­lar group of guys. It’ll be great to see them.”

“The cama­raderie, the fam­i­ly, we all bled blue at one point,” Dixxon said. “I have mem­o­ries with every sin­gle one of those guys … Com­ing back and just shar­ing some of those sto­ries, some of those laughs, I think it’s going to be amaz­ing. What­ev­er the record is, I still have the same exact love for UConn foot­ball and for all my teammates.”