Andrew Davis was born to be a high school football coach.

His father, Wayne Davis, was a longtime football coach in the Mobile area. His mom was a teacher. His brother Owen? Also a coach.

“I blame it on my parents, particularly my dad,” Andrew Davis said jokingly. “The Davis family in west and central Alabama is synonymous with doctors. My grandfather was a fifth-generation doctor, but my dad decided to be a coach and that translated to Owen and me. It’s how we were raised.

“We all enjoy people and enjoy trying to help people.”

Davis will now get to do that in his first head coaching job. On Thursday, he was approved as the new football coach at Baldwin County High.

“I’m extremely excited to be here and be a part of the community, not just Bay Minette, but North Baldwin as a whole,” he told AL.com on Thursday. “The leadership in the school is really the biggest part of why I’m here, and that goes to Richard Paul as principal and the assistants underneath him.

“I know, just like anyone who has worked in this county or driven through, there are athletes and hard-working kids at Baldwin County High School. As a football coach, that in itself is enough to get excited about not to mention the growth that the new job opportunities will bring here.”

Davis replaces Scott Rials as the Tigers’ head coach. Rials was released following the 2023 season and is now the head football coach at Calera.

“It’s exciting,” Davis said of his first head coaching opportunity. “It’s a big change being in control of a program through and through. Everywhere I’ve been, I learned from the people I worked with. Some would see me kind of bouncing around to different jobs as a negative, but I feel like I’ve left each place I’ve been better than I found it. I’ve made relationships and those relationships have brought me full circle. I’ve learned from some great head coaches and assistant coaches as well to be honest.”

Davis is extremely familiar with the Baldwin County program. He spent 2017-2019 on Nate McDaniel’s Tigers staff as the offensive line coach. Baldwin County went 7-3 in 2017 and 6-4 in 2018.

“I think that is going to be a great help,” he said. “There are players here now whose siblings I coached. I was here as a teacher, and that’s big. Any good coach will tell you that you first have to be a teacher before you can consider yourself a coach. The relationships I’ve built as a teacher without a doubt helped me get this job and probably even more so than coaching contacts.”

Davis grew up in Daphne and played football at Daphne High for former Trojan head coaches Steve Savarese and Glenn Vickery. He went on to be a scholarship athlete at Delta State before finishing his college degree at Auburn in 2010.

His first coaching job came at McGill-Toolen where he coached tight ends for current Alma Bryant head coach Bart Sessions. He coached defensive line at Gulf Shores for one year under Ben Blackmon in 2012 before joining Vickery’s staff at Daphne as offensive line coach for four years.

After his first tenure at Baldwin County, the 36-year-old spent three seasons as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Elberta. He also handled strength and conditioning. Last year, he was the quarterbacks coach and passing game coordinator at Spanish Fort.

“The first thing I want to do is get in front of the kids and set expectations and standards for how our offseason is going to go and really just meet the kids and put some names with faces,” he said. “Obviously, I’ve watched them play. I’ve seen as much film of them as I could get my hands on. I’ve seen the potential, but to me it’s about building the relationships that will carry us for the future, trusting each other and working in one direction.”

Davis and Spanish Fort slipped past Baldwin County 14-13 a year ago. The Tigers finished the season 2-8 after a 1-9 record in 2022. Those two years came after a breakthrough 8-4 campaign in 2021. Davis knows Baldwin County can compete, even in the tough Class 6A, Region 1 race.

He’s seen it before.

“I grew up playing in Daphne,” he said. “I consider the teams I was on to be some of the best in the history of Alabama football. I think people forget that a lot of those teams had to go through Bay Minette to get to their championships.

“I was a freshman in 2001 who got moved up to the varsity. That was the year we won a state title. We played Baldwin County in the last game of the regular season for the region title (Daphne won 24-12). When I think Bay Minette football, I think speed. I think strength. I think grit. I think hard-nosed football. I want people to see a disciplined, hard-nosed football team that has electric kids playing for it.”