The comeback story of Saluki linebacker Andrew Behm — Part One

CARBONDALE, Ill. — Southern Illinois linebacker Andrew Behm made a triumphant return to the field this fall, after missing much of the last two seasons with a foot injury. In fact, he’s coming off a 16-tackle performance at Purdue, the most tackles by a Saluki player since 2002.

It’s the culmination of an incredible comeback story for a player who was originally passed over by the Division I level out of high school. He and his twin brother, Josiah, wrote thousands of letters to FBS and FCS coaches to no avail. Andrew refused to accept no for an answer, and used a season at JUCO to earn a scholarship to FBS Akron.

So desperate to play, in his first game at Akron in 2021, he subbed himself in during the team’s game at Auburn. By the middle of the season, he was starting and among the team’s leading tacklers.

Coaching changes and a painful foot injury derailed his career with Akron. Cast aside by the Zips, he entered the transfer portal in March of 2024, but instead, found himself in the ER on the same day.

His enduring faith and a fresh opportunity with Saluki Football would rescue his career.

Andrew Behm

SD: Do you remember when you fell in love with the game of football?

AB: So I grew up in Appleton, Wisconsin, in the shadow of Lambeau Field. Everybody's a huge Packer fan, Cheesehead. Every Sunday after church, come home and just watch the game with our family, have friends over. So football was always a big part of our life.

I have a twin brother, Josiah, two minutes younger than me, so any sport we could get our hands into, we were all-in for it — football, basketball, baseball, we even did cross country one year. We couldn't play tackle football until seventh grade. My mom worked in a doctor's office and she saw all these kids coming with broken arms from Pop Warner football, so she convinced my dad to hold off until seventh grade, but we would go to high school games and play tackle football in the grass under the bleachers. Once we started playing football, we still played other sports, but I definitely realized football was the sport I had the most fun at and really excelled at.

SD: What’s it like to have a twin?

AB: It's awesome, a really big blessing. We would do everything together, every class, every sport, he's a built-in best friend and someone you have a connection with that you can't really find anywhere else.

There's this quote that I remember when we were in middle school, that there's always somebody who's working as hard as you, if not harder. That person might be across the street, next town over, next state over, somewhere. For me, I had that built-in. My brother's trying to outwork me every single day, so he was a huge inspiration and motivation, but it was also super-fun getting to play with him. I don't think anything can top playing in high school with your brother. We're both linebackers in the middle of the defense playing with each other.

Josiah and Andrew Behm

SD: You had a decorated career at Fox Lutheran High School, set the school tackles record.

AB: I have a lot of great memories from high school. The huge rivalry we had was with Xavier. We were the Lutheran school, they were the Catholic school. We beat them four years straight. That was always an awesome game to be in. Our senior year, a lot of guys in our class knew we wanted to have the best senior year possible, so we spent a ton of time in the weight room together. Those days were really awesome, a circle of friends on that team who I'm still close with today, and really great influences on my life.

SD: What were your offers coming out of high school? Did you try to play together with Josiah in college?

AB: We weren’t recruited by any Division I schools, and believe me, we tried. Me and my brother printed off a whole list of every single FBS school and a bunch of FCS schools, and we probably sent out thousands of emails, messages on Twitter to all these coaches, sent in our films and stats and stuff, trying to get recruited. We both knew in high school we wanted to play college football and see where it could take us.

We always thought it would be really cool if we happened to play together, but he went to a really good DII school where he liked all the coaches, had a really good scholarship offer from Minnesota State-Moorhead, and really enjoyed his time there.

In the back of my head, I wondered if I could go to a Division I school, go to a bigger school, if I decided to go the JUCO route. I just wanted to at least give it a shot and see if I could do it and not have to live with that regret in the back of my head. So I went to Ellsworth Community College.

SD: How was your experience at Ellsworth?

AB: It’s in the middle of Iowa, middle of nowhere. There's like 5,000 people there total, and people would drive an hour to Ames or Cedar Falls just to get a haircut or food. Three days after we got there, they announced that the season got canceled due to COVID, pushed back to the spring. During my first semester there, it was a total of like 35 days where I was quarantined in my room, stuck with four other guys in a two-room apartment. So one big lesson I learned was definitely patience, and also trusting what God's plan for me was. I thought I had it all mapped out, but God's plan was not that. It was, I’m going to teach you to trust me. You got to go through this.

SD: You were an honorable mention All-American in your only season at Ellsworth, but that opened the door for a Division I offer?

AB: Since every team really brought back all their guys from the year before, it was kind of a tough year to come out of a junior college, because people weren't recruiting it as heavily as in the years before. It was pretty late in the summer and a coach from Akron called me up, said, hey, we're interested in you, can you come down and basically do a tryout for us? There was some exception that season where you could actually do tryouts on campus during a visit. So me and my mom, we drove the next day out to Akron, woke up early in the morning, went and did a workout for them on the field with their coaches. They gave me a tour of the city, and afterward, they tried to convince me to walk on and we’ll give you a scholarship after the first year. I told them I’d rather go back to JUCO than just be a walk-on, paying money to go to Akron. They said, we're not sure, we'll call you if we have an offer for you. A few days later, they called me and said, hey, we actually do have a scholarship for you. So I decided to go to Akron.

SD: Take me through your first year at Akron, where you went from barely playing to eventually starting.

AB: Akron's program is not as organized and on top of everything as Southern Illinois is here. I got there July 12th, and for 35 days, I had to sleep on someone's couch until they found an apartment for me. So I started working out with the team, had a little foot injury during camp, but I was just playing through it the whole time. It started getting better once the games started.

The first game was at Auburn, great environment. Going from JUCO to SEC, just crazy change of atmosphere. In my head, I'm like, I just gotta get on the field. I told one of the other linebackers who was on kickoff, if you get tired, just let me know, I'll go in on kickoff for you. So I end up going in on kickoff one time. Then another time, there was a punt return and a different linebacker's helmet was broke, so I'm like, I got you, I got you, I'll go in for you! (Laughs) So I played two snaps on special teams and got yelled at in special teams meeting the next day for subbing myself in. Coach told me, I'm the only one who can make subs, you can't do that! But I didn't care, I got to play. (Laughs)

Week Four, we played at Ohio State and the starting linebacker, Bubba Arslanian, broke his hand during that game. Then Week Five, a different linebacker got a concussion. So Week Six, I'm starting. We played at Bowling Green, got a win.

SD: Looking at the stats for that game, you had 10 tackles!

AB: I don't remember exactly. Double-digit tackles? Yeah, so that was my first start, and the coaches liked what they saw after that game, so I started the rest of the year. I was still a freshman, and looking back at it now, I really didn't know what I was doing. I was just running around chasing the ball, didn't really understand the full defense, like I do now. I was just playing football. I didn't know any better.

SD: You played well, but the team struggled the rest of the season.

AB: With three games left, they fired our head coach, because we were 2-7 and not eligible for a bowl anymore. I didn't really know what that meant at that time in my career, that it's a whole staff change. The new coaches are going to bring in new players, and I didn't really know what that meant, so you just make the most of the situation. We lost to Kent State and they fired the offensive coordinator, so the team was falling apart at the end there. That's my first year at Akron.

SD: How was Year Two under a new coaching staff?

AB: So they brought in a new head coach coach, Joe Moorhead, and he was previously offensive coordinator at Penn State, so when we heard that he got hired, a lot of guys hit the portal. They kind of figured they weren't going to get any favors from the new coaches that didn’t recruit them. I didn't really know any better. I stayed there, and in my head, I'm still thinking, we're going to turn Akron around. This will be an awesome story.

They brought in a new transfer at every position, trying to create competition. About a week before spring ball, the defensive coordinator leaves to take a job at Air Force, so boom, another defensive coordinator. I thought I had a pretty good spring ball. We had high hopes for the next season, a lot of new guys on the team, but we still ended up 2-10 again.

SD: Year Three was pretty traumatic for you, wasn’t it?

AB: Before the 2023 season, I started having a bunch of pain in my foot, the heel all the way through the bottom of my foot. It was on and off, some days it'd be really bad, some days it'd be alright. Then during fall camp, it just kept getting worse and worse. Fall camp's pretty grueling. You don't really get any time off to recover. I'm trying to play through it, because you feel like if you take time off, you're gonna get behind, and especially when you're trying to beat someone out for the starting job at linebacker. It would be killing me during warm ups until the adrenaline kicks in and wouldn't be as severe during the rest of practice. I was hoping that once the season starts, we’d get into a more normal schedule and I’d able to get back ahead of the injury.

The first game we played at Temple, and I'm on the field in warm ups, and my foot still hurts. I can't run like I want to, push off my foot like I want to. I can't walk without feeling the pain in my foot. Every week it just kept getting worse and worse. Finally, during the fourth game, I knew I just couldn't play on it anymore.

SD: What was the medical diagnosis?

AB: They said plantar fasciitis, which has different severities, which is why I felt like I'd be able to just keep playing through it, because they kept telling me, you can't make it worse, keep playing through it and it'll be fine.

Well, I ended up missing 17-straight games, including the next season (2024), so that kind of tells you the recovery timeline from the injury. I would start running again and try to take a step forward with it, and it would just go back downhill to how it was before. It was a really long cycle of that. I was seeing physical therapists, seeing different doctors, trying to figure out what to do. I’d feel better for a little bit, and then it would just go back to how it was.

SD: What made you decide to enter the transfer portal after the 2023 season?

AB: So after the season, I met with the coaches, and they basically told me, you're not going to play here. It doesn't matter how many plays you make in practice, how good you are, that’s just the way things are, you should probably transfer. We just think the younger linebackers here are better than you, so you aren't gonna play here.

SD: How'd that make you feel?

AB: Yeah, I cried. That was painful to hear. I'm working my butt off, trying to do everything I can, trying to do everything the coaches are telling me to do, and it just wasn't enough.

SD: Tell me about the day you went in the portal in the spring of 2024.

AB: I announced on March 10th on Twitter I was going in the portal, and literally the same day, I went in to a physical therapy appointment, just trying to get my foot healthy. I was getting an injection in my foot to try to boost the healing process. My calf was hurting a little bit, and the physical therapist said, you should go to the ER, get that checked out. I ended up having a blood clot in my calf, deep vein thrombosis, and also a pulmonary embolism, which means a blood clot in your lung as well.

I remember a coach, not from Southern Illinois, called me while I'm in the ER, and I’m hoping they can't hear the beeping from all the machines and stuff (laughs). It was like, yeah, I can come play for you, but by the way, I'm in the ER right now. I got a few medical issues (laughs). So that was another setback, because I had to go on anticoagulant medicine for the blood clot for three months, and I really couldn't do the rehab I wanted to on my foot.

SD: You had a host of FCS offers. What made you decide to pick Southern?

AB: What I really liked about Southern Illinois was that Coach Hill's been here for eight, 10 years, and coming from a program where head coach turnover really derailed my prospects of playing there, being somewhere where they have an established culture was really attractive to me. They had just come off of their quarterfinals playoff run, and I loved Coach Mac’s (Mac McLeran) energy and just the opportunity to come here and help help a team make another playoff run and try to win a championship.

SD: How did you describe your foot condition to the coaching staff?

AB: Every coach that recruited me asked about the foot injuries. I told them that I was still working through it, but I've been feeling better as days go along. So I graduated from Akron in May of 2024, and about the week before I report for camp at SIU, I'm at home doing rehab on my own, and I can just tell, my foot's really not gonna get better by the time I get to Southern Illinois. So I called Coach Mac and I remember telling him, Coach, my foot's still not where I thought it would be. Right away, he was just super supportive. He's like, that's okay, we got you, I'll have (trainer) Mike (Lyznicki) call you right after we get off the phone. We'll have a plan built for you right away. Already, that's a huge change from the school I was at before, having that much support from a coach really meant a lot to me.

Tomorrow (Part Two): Behm’s foot injury goes from bad to worse, testing his Faith, building an unshakable bond with his new coaches and teammates, his long road to recovery, and his triumphant return to the field.