Blue Deckert

In a career that has already spanned more than three decades, character actor Blue Deckert has appeared in more than 70 film and television productions. Yet this Texas-born performer is best known for his work on the heralded Texas-set series "Friday Night Lights." Over the course of this football-centered drama's five-season run, Deckert gamely portrayed Mac McGill, the fiery assistant coach and sometimes rival to Emmy-winner Kyle Chandler's hard-nosed head coach. Interestingly, it was another Lone Star State drama that provided Deckert's first breakthrough in television. In 1983, Deckert scored a recurring role on the wildly popular primetime soap opera "Dallas." He returned to mix it up with the treacherous Ewing clan in the spin-off TV movie "Dallas: The Early Years," and from there established a niche playing blue-collared workers and cops in a string of less memorable made-for-TV movies. But these performances led to noteworthy film roles, like the sheriff in the quirky Drew Barrymore romantic-comedy "Home Fries" and the inspirational baseball scout in the 2002 Dennis Quaid sports drama,"The Rookie." Once Deckert was cast as the gruff Mac in 2006, he simultaneously began developing a new niche as a stern military man with one-offs on the crime drama "NCIS" and medical drama "ER." So by the time his character arc on "Friday Night Lights" came to a close, Deckert was fully prepared to take on the weighty role of General Armbruster on the ultimately short-lived mystery series "The Event."