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This is one of the most depressing things I have ever had to look up... After leaving Texas, the landing spots for many of the coaches and assistants we hired over the last decade for one of the top jobs in CFB are:

Shawn Watson: Wofford

Drew Mehringer: New Mexico

Derek Warehime: New Mexico

Charlie Strong: USF/Unemployed from NFL

Todd Orlando: FAU

Tom Herman: Analyst in NFL

Vance Bedford: Out of Football

Herb Hand: UCF

Les Koenning: Out of Football

Oscar Giles: Wyoming

Bruce Chambers: High School

Sterlin Gilbert: Syracuse

 

 

Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck

 

 

 

 

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45 minutes ago, Vertigo said:

This is one of the most depressing things I have ever had to look up... After leaving Texas, the landing spots for many of the coaches and assistants we hired over the last decade for one of the top jobs in CFB are:

Shawn Watson: Wofford

Drew Mehringer: New Mexico

Derek Warehime: New Mexico

Charlie Strong: USF/Unemployed from NFL

Todd Orlando: FAU

Tom Herman: Analyst in NFL

Vance Bedford: Out of Football

Herb Hand: UCF

Les Koenning: Out of Football

Oscar Giles: Wyoming

Bruce Chambers: High School

Sterlin Gilbert: Syracuse

 

 

Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck

 

 

 

 

A murderers' row of ineptitude and incompetence.

Edited by Rockwell Torrey
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11 hours ago, OB3 said:

 

 

Charlie Strong back in college football

The move is, ahem, a strong one for new head 'Cane Mario Cristobal.

ZACH BARNETT           21 MINUTES AGO

Slowly but surely, Mario Cristobal is putting together a formidable coaching staff at Miami.  His latest hire is Charlie Strong, who joins the staff as linebackers coach, according to Chris Low of ESPN.

The former Louisville, Texas, and South Florida head coach will be a position coach in college football for the first time since he coached Notre Dame's defensive line from 1995-98. That job led to South Carolina's defensive coordinator role in 1999, and ever since he was a coordinator (that, to be clear, also coached a position) or a head coach through his final season at USF in 2019.

Strong spent 2020 as an analyst at Alabama and 2021 as Urban Meyer's assistant head coach and inside 'backers coach in Jacksonville.

Strong joins a staff that includes offensive coordinator Josh Gattis, defensive coordinator Kevin Steele, and offensive line coach Alex Mirabal. 

Including Cristobal, all five of Miami's coaches have ties to Nick Saban and/or ties to the South Florida recruiting scene. 

Strong's Louisville teams at one point had 38 Floridians and 28 from the Miami area. In a related story, Strong went 21-3 in 2012-13 before leaving for Texas. 

 

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5 hours ago, LTtxfan said:

 

Charlie Strong back in college football

The move is, ahem, a strong one for new head 'Cane Mario Cristobal.

ZACH BARNETT           21 MINUTES AGO

Slowly but surely, Mario Cristobal is putting together a formidable coaching staff at Miami.  His latest hire is Charlie Strong, who joins the staff as linebackers coach, according to Chris Low of ESPN.

The former Louisville, Texas, and South Florida head coach will be a position coach in college football for the first time since he coached Notre Dame's defensive line from 1995-98. That job led to South Carolina's defensive coordinator role in 1999, and ever since he was a coordinator (that, to be clear, also coached a position) or a head coach through his final season at USF in 2019.

Strong spent 2020 as an analyst at Alabama and 2021 as Urban Meyer's assistant head coach and inside 'backers coach in Jacksonville.

Strong joins a staff that includes offensive coordinator Josh Gattis, defensive coordinator Kevin Steele, and offensive line coach Alex Mirabal. 

Including Cristobal, all five of Miami's coaches have ties to Nick Saban and/or ties to the South Florida recruiting scene. 

Strong's Louisville teams at one point had 38 Floridians and 28 from the Miami area. In a related story, Strong went 21-3 in 2012-13 before leaving for Texas. 

 

Why did young Zack Barnett leave out Charlie’s record at usf?

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15 hours ago, LTtxfan said:

 

Charlie Strong back in college football

The move is, ahem, a strong one for new head 'Cane Mario Cristobal.

ZACH BARNETT           21 MINUTES AGO

Slowly but surely, Mario Cristobal is putting together a formidable coaching staff at Miami.  His latest hire is Charlie Strong, who joins the staff as linebackers coach, according to Chris Low of ESPN.

The former Louisville, Texas, and South Florida head coach will be a position coach in college football for the first time since he coached Notre Dame's defensive line from 1995-98. That job led to South Carolina's defensive coordinator role in 1999, and ever since he was a coordinator (that, to be clear, also coached a position) or a head coach through his final season at USF in 2019.

Strong spent 2020 as an analyst at Alabama and 2021 as Urban Meyer's assistant head coach and inside 'backers coach in Jacksonville.

Strong joins a staff that includes offensive coordinator Josh Gattis, defensive coordinator Kevin Steele, and offensive line coach Alex Mirabal. 

Including Cristobal, all five of Miami's coaches have ties to Nick Saban and/or ties to the South Florida recruiting scene. 

Strong's Louisville teams at one point had 38 Floridians and 28 from the Miami area. In a related story, Strong went 21-3 in 2012-13 before leaving for Texas. 

 

Maybe Strong is a strong coordinator who got Peter Principled?

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Seems like there's always a Rutgers connection... 😋

Fran Brown will leave Rutgers to coach defensive backs for the defending national champs.

ZACH BARNETT       FEB 18, 2022

Report: Georgia fills secondary role with Big Ten assistant

Rutgers secondary coach Fran Brown will join the defending national champions in the same role, according to multiple reports on Friday.  A New Jersey native, Brown was the first defensive member of Greg Schiano's staff in Piscataway.

Brown played at Western Carolina while Matt Rhule was a staff member there and followed him to Temple, joining the staff in 2011 as director of internal operations and eventually becoming associate head coach in Rhule's final season in Philly.  

Brown joined Rhule at Baylor as assistant head coach and cornerbacks coach in 2017, then returned to Temple as co-defensive coordinator and corners coach in 2019. 

Brown has been honored for his recruiting at Temple and Rutgers; 247Sports regarded him as the top recruiter on Rutgers' staff -- and a top 10 recruiter in the Big Ten -- in 2022. He also chopped 100 yards per game off Temple's passing defense average, and oversaw the most takeaways by a Rutgers defense in eight seasons during the shortened 2020 campaign.

Brown replaces Jahmile Addae, who took the secondary job on Mario Cristobal's new Miami staff.  

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15 minutes ago, Nope said:

Guessing because this job is a step down from his last two (receivers coach at WVU and UH)

Yeah, has to be something going on. When he went to UH he also had a assistant head coach title which was removed in 2020 and then Holgerson up and let him go in May 2021 after a meeting described as in best interest of both parties.

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Sources: Temple, Stan Drayton tab new player personnel director with East Coast ties

Andrew Liacopolus is a Penn State alum who broke into the profession at Boston College

JOHN BRICE    MAY 26, 2022

Andrew Liacopolus is back on the East Coast.

A former player personnel director at Boston College, as well as in the Mountain West Conference at Colorado State, Liacopolus is returning to the region as the director of player personnel for Stan Drayton’s Temple University program.

With the move to the Owls’ program, Liacopolus is set to replace JT Hill following Hill’s departure for a position with the NFL’s New England Patriots.

A Penn State grad, Liacopolus logged six years on Chestnut Hill with the BC Eagles’ program, filling a variety of roles that included recruiting and operations responsibilities, earning distinction as a staff specialist in those areas across his final two years at BC.

Having worked in the Nittany Lions’ football program as an undergrad, there Liacopolus served as both a recruiting and scouting intern in James Franklin’s program before launching his career at Boston College.

The 2021 season was his lone year atop the Rams’ director of player personnel.

Drayton was hired by Temple in mid-December to revive the Owls’ program. Drayton has had numerous successful stints as an assistant coach in college football at some of the sport’s biggest programs, including Florida, Ohio State, Tennessee and Texas.

The Owls open their 2022 season at Duke Sept. 2. 

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The 15 most important assistant coaching hires of 2022 -- No. 15: Tim DeRuyter, Texas Tech

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In the new-look Big 12, Texas Tech will have as good a chance to run the league as anyone else. So long as they can play defense.

ZACH BARNETT       12 HOURS AGO

Who: Tim DeRuyter, Texas Tech

Title: Defensive Coordinator

Previous stop: Oregon defensive coordinator/outside linebackers coach (2021)

Why he's important: Texas Tech played its first football season in 1925. The Red Raiders joined a conference in 1932. In the near 90 seasons since, Tech has hoisted a conference championship trophy 11 times; the most recent was in 1994, the last outright conference title came in 1955, when the Raiders won the Border Conference with a 3-0-1 record.

The point here is not to disparage Texas Tech football, it's to provide context for what comes next.

Despite a remote location and sharing a conference with Texas, Texas A&M and, later, with Oklahoma for almost all their history, Texas Tech has built a successful program with a more-rabid-than-you'd-expect following. Tech has played in 39 bowl games -- more than UCLA, Oregon, and Michigan State. Twenty-one of those bowl games have come since 1993. 

When imagining what this program can be moving forward, it's not as if one has to make improbable leaps of logic to get them to win consistently. That's already happening. In fact, AD Kirby Hocutt fired Matt Wells last October with a 5-3 record at the time. Simply winning more games than one loses is not enough in Lubbock. Texas Tech wants to win championships again.

On that front, Texas Tech received a break last summer when Oklahoma and Texas announced their impending departure for the SEC. (Let's be honest, getting OU out of the way is more advantageous than Texas, whose last conference title came 12 seasons ago.) For the first time since 1956, the Red Raiders will not share a conference with the Longhorns, the Aggies, or the Sooners.

Looking forward to what the Big 12 will be in the years to come, it's difficult to imagine one school lording over the conference as Oklahoma did for years. Every school will have its plusses and its minuses, and championships will follow the coaching staffs that maximize their resources.

Enter Joey McGuire and company. McGuire can't move Texas Tech closer to the Texas population centers, but he's done his best to mitigate that by embracing the "Pumpjack Mentality" (coined by former interim head coach Sonny Cumbie) of West Texas while rallying the support of the Red Raider Nation near and far. Red Raider Nation has responded.

On offense, we know what we're going to get. McGuire hired Tech alum Zach Kittley to run the offense, fresh off coordinating a Western Kentucky attack that led the nation in passing yards, passing touchdowns, and points.

What will ultimately determine McGuire's success level in Lubbock is his ability to field a competent defense, something very few of his predecessors managed to do. 

In the last seven seasons, Texas Tech has finished in the 100s nationally in yards per play allowed more often (four times) than not (three). In the dozen post-Mike Leach seasons, Texas Tech's average finish in that metric is 91st. Part of that is schematic. Texas Tech's offensive style lends itself to a lot of plays, a lot of clock stoppages, and a lot of plays to defend. But part of it is also cultural. Why would a defensive recruit pick Texas Tech over other options?

That's where Tim DeRuyter comes in. 

For starters, DeRuyter is the only coach on staff who's actually been a head coach at the college level. "There's been so many times I've walked in his office and said, 'Hey, take your defensive coordinator hat off, put your head coach hat on, and make sure I'm going in the right direction,'" McGuire said at Big 12 media days. 

A native Californian, this represents DeRuyter's second stop in the Lone Star State. He coordinated two top-20 defenses at Texas A&M before landing the head coaching job at Fresno State in 2012. After five seasons at that job, he ran Cal's defense for four seasons -- a unit that ranked 122nd the year prior to his arrival was ninth by Year 2 -- and Oregon's for one. 

At Texas Tech, DeRuyter plans to run multiple fronts and coverages while disguising his looks from snap to snap.

"I know it's coach-speak to say multiple but that's truly what we are. We're going to bounce between 3 and 4 man fronts, play zone and man, and show sim pressure and hopefully create some angst on the opposing side," DeRuyter told FootballScoop.

“One of the biggest things that I was so attracted to in getting Tim here is that he is very similar to Ron Roberts and Coach Aranda in what they do on defense schematically,” McGuire told The Athletic.

Both defenses utilize a Star, basically the do-it-all fifth defensive back tasked with playing behind the line of scrimmage or deep in coverage from down to down. "You've got to go have a guy that can play some man coverage, pressure off the edge, a great feel for the game so he can disguise when he's coming and get out when he's not," DeRuyter's said. Texas Tech's success defensively likely hinges on finding a Jalen Pitre, a safety who led Baylor's Big 12 champion defense with 18.5 tackles for loss and also swiped two interceptions. (Pitre was the Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year in 2021, so finding a replica of Pitre may be more realistic than an exact duplicate.)

DeRuyter also stressed the importance of the Edge defenders, and highlighted senior Tyree Wilson as a player with All-Big 12 and NFL potential in that spot. The 6-foot-6, 275-pounder led the Red Raiders a year ago with seven sacks and 13.5 TFLs. "He's got that potential and as coaches we've got to get that out of him," DeRuyter said.

The biggest change Texas Tech expects to employ, though, is effort. A lot of effort. McGuire has pledged since his early November hiring to field the "hardest-working, most competitive team in the country."

"Our brand's going to be how we play. They're going to see a group that's excited to play for each other, that are smart football players, that play exceptionally hard," DeRuyter said. 

On defense, that starts with no longer treating players like second-class citizens. 

"He's obviously not just an offensive head coach," DeRuyter said. "He's preached defense and loved defense. He wants Texas Tech, TTU, to be Take Three University. We've got to play defense to win championships." 

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The 15 most important assistant coaching hires of 2022 -- No. 14: Rob Sale, Florida

ZACH BARNETT            2 HOURS AGO

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At Florida, the third revolution will begin up front.

Who: Rob Sale, Florida

Title: Offensive coordinator/offensive line coach

Previous stop: New York Giants offensive line coach (2021)

Why he's important: Going back to when Steve Spurrier invented Florida football in 1990, 30-odd years of history tell us the Billy Napier era in Gainesville will go one of two ways. He'll revolutionize offensive football and win a national title or two along the way, or they'll run him out of town relatively quickly. Spurrier and his Fun 'N' Gun brought one title to Florida, Urban Meyer's power spread brought two. Otherwise, Ron Zook got three seasons, Will Muschamp got four, Jim McElwain two and a half, and Dan Mullen four. The Mullen case is especially instructive. His Gators tenure started 29-8, and as October began last he had Florida ranked No. 11 in the AP poll following a 2-point loss to No. 1 and defending national champion Alabama. His tenure was all but over a month later.

So, what's Billy Napier's plan to revolutionize football and dominate the game? 

Rob Sale.

That's a little unfair. Okay, that's a lot unfair. Rob Sale can't be expected to transform the game on his own, in part because he won't be designing and building the offense on his own.

An LSU offensive lineman under Nick Saban, Sale was an original member off Saban's Alabama staff as an analyst and an assistant strength coach under Scott Cochran. In 2011, a young analyst named Billy Napier joined the staff. The pair split after the 2011 national title -- Napier to Colorado State with Jim McElwain (irony!), Sale to run the offensive line at McNeese. Sale's work at McNeese led him to the O-line job at Georgia in 2015, but he was swept out after a year when Mark Richt was let go after that season. He spent 2016 at ULM and then re-joined Napier the following year, at Arizona State, with Napier as the offensive architect and Sale the general contractor. 

Sale came along when Napier landed the Louisiana job, with both men moving up a level -- Napier to head coach, Sale to offensive coordinator while continuing to coach the offensive line. That arrangement worked wonderfully. Sale sent three Ragin' Cajuns linemen to the NFL and, eventually, himself, coaching the New York Giants' offensive line last season, Joe Judge's last on the job. (Sale seems to have a talent for joining non-Napier head coaches in their final year.) 

Along the way, Napier went 40-12 at UL and oversaw an offense that rewrote the record book. The 2019 offense was the best in Cajuns history, tallying more yards and touchdowns than any in school history. 

Now at their fourth school together in a relationship spanning more than a decade, Napier and Sale no longer need words to communicate. Grunts and nods will do.

“You don’t have a lot of wasted time,” Sale said this spring. “You don’t have to sit there and shut the door and say, ‘We’re putting in these eight concepts.’ We can just send a text or I can just look at the install and say, ‘Alright we’ve got this today.’

“We can walk past in the hall and say, ‘We’ve got this, they’re doing this’ and it’s, ‘Alright, I got ya boss.’ We can be efficient in other areas. We’ve just been speaking the same language for so long and living on the same page as well.” 

For proof of the bond between Sale and Napier, Sale will be the only OC/O-line coach in the SEC this season. 

"He's one of those guys that had a relationship with before, kind of a foxhole guy, really a guy that I can lean on and have a great relationship with," Napier said at SEC media days. 

So when the Gators inevitably transform offensive football a third time, the revolution will start up front. 

 

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The 15 most important assistant coaching hires of 2022 -- No. 13: Joe Gillespie, TCU

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ZACH BARNETT            AUG 3, 2022

For the first time in a quarter century, someone other than Gary Patterson is the brains behind the TCU defense.

Who: Joseph Gillespie, TCU

Title: Defensive coordinator/linebackers coach

Previous stop: Tulsa defensive coordinator (2019-21)

Why he's important: For the first time since 1997, the TCU defensive playbook won't be written in Gary Patterson's handwriting. Patterson's defensive mastery changed not only the trajectory of TCU football, but of Texas Christian University. When he arrived, TCU was in the WAC; today, TCU is in the Big 12. Along the way, the Horned Frogs finished in the AP Top 10 five times, won the Rose and Peach bowls, and forever avoided the fate of "Rice with not-as-lofty academics." Each day as they walk into the office, TCU's new coaching staff will pass by a statue of Patterson. 

Needless to say, finding TCU's next defensive coordinator was a big job for new head coach Sonny Dykes. 

To fill that job, Dykes pulled one of the oldest tricks in the head coaching book: If you can't beat 'em, hire 'em.. 

"I had an opportunity to play against Tulsa four years. Did not enjoy those experiences of playing against that defense at Tulsa," Dykes said at Big 12 media days. "So Joe Gillespie was certainly on the radar from day one, and had a chance to talk to people that had worked with Joe. Had a chance to talk to people that knew him. It became pretty obvious to me that he was the right guy. Just loved his coaching style."

In four games against Gillespie and Tulsa, Dykes went 1-3. The one victory came in triple overtime. 

"The way you measure a defensive coach in my opinion is how hard does his team play for him. What's the effort that that defense shows down in and down out. To me that's all coaching. When we played Tulsa, they played harder than any defense we played against in college football."

Beyond the tenacity Gillespie's defense played with, he also loved the alignment. Tulsa played the 3-3-5 scheme, pioneered by Iowa State's Jon Heacock, that's like a magic trick, where the fifth defensive back always seems to be at the line of scrimmage on run downs and deep in the secondary on pass downs. 

"They had a great scheme. Loved what they do," Dykes said. "Felt like it made sense in this league, felt like it had been successful in this league."

Like Dykes, Gillespie was a Texas high school coach before he became a Texas college coach. He'd spent the entirety of his career (save one year) at his alma mater Stephenville High School, a 75-minute drive southwest of Fort Worth, winning two state titles as an assistant under Art Briles and one of his own as the head coach in 2012. He was an original member of Philip Montgomery's Tulsa staff and was promoted to defensive coordinator in 2019. Former winners selected Gillespie as the FootballScoop Linebackers Coach of the Year in 2020, the year he developed Zaven Collins -- the No. 2,142 recruit nationally and the No. 29 player in Oklahoma in the class of 2017 -- into the Nagurski, Bednarik and Lombardi Award winner and a first-round draft pick in the spring of 2021. 

Partially on the strength of that Patterson-esque coaching job, Gillespie is now TCU's defensive coordinator.

Here, Gillespie describes his arrival as a odd-front practitioner and what it will bring to the Frogs' defense. "You're going to get multiple looks offensively with the same personnel," Gillespie says, "Why can we not do (multiple looks) with the same personnel on the field as well?"

TCU will also play more zone than it did in years past. "In theory, that's going to lead to more takeaways, because you've got more eyes on the ball now," Gillespie said. For a defense that tied for last in the Big 12 with 13 takeaways in 2021, increasing takeaways could be the key to a quick turnaround. 

Because, let's be honest, TCU's defense needs a turnaround. 

From 2012 (TCU's first year in the conference) through 2019, the Frogs finished among the top two in yards per play defense seven times in eight tries. TCU fielded the Big 12's top yards per play defense four times in that span, and in the other year (2013), they were third. In 2020, TCU tied for fourth. And in 2021? The Frogs tied Kansas for last place at 7.21 yards surrendered per snap, more than a yard beyond eighth-place Texas, and 2.36 yards worse than where the same unit finished in 2018.

Opponents averaged 34.9 points per game, the most since 2004. 

TCU went 5-7 thanks to an offense that finished 10th nationally in yards per play. The Frogs return quarterbacks Max Duggan (806 career attempts) and Chandler Morris, running back Kendre Miller (7.51 yards per carry on 83 attempts) and receiver Quentin Johnston, an All-America candidate. 

If TCU can play effective defense in 2021, the Frogs will play in a bowl game and could march a dark-horse run to Arlington for the title game in the most wide-open year the Big 12 has had in years. And if Gillespie runs TCU's defense as long as Patterson did, the next Frog defensive coordinator will be introduced in 2046.  

That'd be just fine with him. "I told Coach Dykes, 'God willing, this is my last stop.'"

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The 15 most important assistant coaching hires of 2022 -- No. 12: Brennan Marion, Texas

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ZACH BARNETT            5 HOURS AGO

If -- if, if, if, if -- the Texas offense takes off as the talent indicates it could, Marion is in prime position to benefit.

Who: Brennan Marion, Texas

Title: Passing game coordinator/wide receivers coach

Previous stop: Pittsburgh wide receivers coach (2021)

Why he's important: I know I risk instant electrocution by typing this, but I'm going to do it anyway: Texas has all the tools to be really, really good in 2022. At least on offense. At least when they're throwing the ball. So long as the offensive line can provide enough protection. Is that enough qualifiers? [ZZZZZZZ-nnnnnnngggg] Phew. Okay, that wasn't too bad. 

For starters, Texas has the best running back in college football in Bijan Robinson. Xavier Worthy was the best freshman wide receiver in college football a year ago. Worthy happened to be the only Longhorn to catch more than 26 passes last season, but that has been addressed by returning a healthy Jordan Whittington (Texas went 5-1 in games he completed last season and 0-6 without him) and the transfer of Isaiah Neyor, who caught 12 touchdowns and averaged nearly 20 yards on his 44 catches a year ago at Wyoming. They also added Agiye Hall and Jahleel Billingsley from Alabama. 

Quarterback Casey Thompson is gone; battling to replace him are sophomore Hudson Card, who won the job out of fall camp last year and played well against Louisiana in the opener before losing the job the following week, and Quinn Ewers, one of the highest-rated quarterbacks in the history of modern recruiting. The offensive line remains a question mark, but the staff addressed it by recruiting the best O-line class in the country in 2022, a 7-man haul that weighs a combined 2,183 pounds.

Depending on the development of a couple freshman linemen and the formation, Texas could deploy as many as six 5-stars at a time in Ewers, Robinson, Whittington, freshman offensive linemen Kelvin Banks and Devon Campbell and tight end J'Tavion Sanders, plus a high 4-star and Freshman All-American in Worthy. 

If nothing else, the raw materials are there. Coordinated by the same coach who turned Tua Tagovailoa, Najee Harris, DeVonta Smith, Henry Ruggs, Jerry Jeudy and Jaylen Waddle into one of the most explosive offenses in college football history, it doesn't take a genius to anticipate the general thesis of the Texas offense moving forward: Have Ewers or Card throw the ball deep to Worthy, Neyor, freshman Brenen Thompson (a 10.2 100-meter sprinter) and Hall, let Whittington, Sanders and Billingsley operate the in the intermediate zones, all while challenging defenses to keep tabs on Robinson at all times. Basically, something like this.

If the whole adds up to the sum of its parts, the assistants most likely to benefit in terms of career opportunities are quarterbacks coach AJ Milwee (an unsung hero of the Arch Manning commitment, and as a returning coach ineligible for this list) and Brennan Marion.

Marion replaces Andre Coleman, one of two assistants Steve Sarkisian retained from Tom Herman's staff, and the only one he relieved of duties following last season's 5-7 debacle. (The other, assistant head coach/running backs coach Stan Drayton, landed the Temple job.) 

Marion got the job for his one season of work as Pittsburgh's wide receivers coach, where he helped turned Jordan Addison from a solid receiver into the Biletnikoff Award winner. Working with coordinator Mark Whipple, Marion added a catch a game to Addison's 2020 average, 6 to 7, but nearly doubled his average yardage, from 60 per game to 113.8.

“If you watch the receivers at Pitt a year ago in a scheme that is similar to ours, you see the detail in the way they play,” Sarkisian said this offseason. “You see the competitiveness. You see the ball skills, and that was probably the biggest thing that jumped out. Now we’re going through our own cut ups, and now the dialogue is coming up that this is what they did, this is how they did it.”

Beyond Marion's skills as a coach, prospective employers are also liable to attach themselves to his story.

After attending high school in Pennsylvania, Marion's college career began as a blocking tight end at the junior college level in California. After a transfer, a year later he was a JuCo All-American, which earned him a scholarship at a Tulsa, where he set NCAA single-season and career yards per reception records. That earned him but a brief NFL career, and by 2011 he jumped into coaching at the junior college level.

From there, he embarked on a path that had him a high school head coach in his mid-20s, then a QC on an Arizona State staff with Mike Norvell and Kenny Dillingham, then a Division II position coach, and then, a year later, an FCS offensive coordinator. 

In his first season as Howard's offensive coordinator (2017), Marion added 11 points and 110.8 yards per game as the Bison improved from 2-9 to 7-4. By 2018, Howard was in the top 25 nationally in yards, passing yards, and points. That success landed him the William & Mary offensive coordinator job, where in one year he nearly doubled the Tribe's scoring output, from 13.6 points per game to 25.3.

Marion utilized the Go-Go Offense (first step to successfully marketing your ideas: come up with a catchy name), a two-back attack that Sarkisian said Texas plans to utilize this season.

 

 

“He did some really good things when he was at William & Mary,” Sarkisian said. “I think he’ll add to that dimension with us as well.”

Texas finished 18th nationally at 35.3 points a game last season, a misleading number given the 'Horns were held to 24 or below six times in 12 games. 

If -- if, if, if, if -- the Texas offense takes off as the talent indicates it could, Marion could be at the front of the line for a promotion elsewhere. 

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The 15 most important assistant coaching hires of 2022 -- No. 10: Eric Kiesau, Auburn

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Yes, we know Kiesau isn't new to the Auburn staff. But go with us here.

Who: Eric Kiesau, Auburn

Title: Offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach

Previous stop: Auburn wide receivers coach/passing game coordinator (2021)

Why he's important: Any head coach taking a job in the SEC without prior experience in the region faces a difficult but important choice. He can double down on what got him the job, or he can pivot. When Urban Meyer took the Florida job with zero prior SEC experience, he brought Dan Mullen, who himself had zero prior SEC experience, with him. When Nick Saban took the LSU job with zero prior SEC experience, he hired Jimbo Fisher, a first-time traveler on the Saban Express but plenty experienced in the Deep South at Samford and Auburn. Both moves worked. Of course, countless coaches have made similar decisions and failed, too.

Full article...

https://footballscoop.com/news/the-15-most-important-assistant-coaching-hires-of-2022-no-10-eric-kiesau-auburn

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The 15 most important assistant coaching hires of 2022 -- No. 9: Mike Denbrock, LSU

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LSU's offense has two modes: chronic underachievement or total domination. Which one will it be for the new regime?

Who: Mike Denbrock, LSU

Title: Offensive coordinator/tight ends coach

Previous stop: Cincinnati offensive coordinator (2017-21)

Why he's important: For the biggest hire he'll ever make, Brian Kelly threw it back to the beginning. Kelly and Mike Denbrock were roommates when they were GAs together at Grand Valley State, way back in 1987. When Kelly completed his 5-year climb from GA to head coach, Denbrock left his FCS job to return to GVSU, where he and Kelly installed a spread passing attack that was revolutionary at the time in Division II. Grand Valley State led the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference in passing yards and points over the four seasons from 1992-95.

In 1996, Kelly moved Denbrock from offensive coordinator to defensive coordinator. “Mike was a heck of a defensive coordinator for a very short period of time,” Kelly told The Advocate in March. 

Denbrock left for the bright lights of the Arena Football League in 1999, then moved to Stanford in 2001. He bounced around Division I until 2010, when Kelly landed the Notre Dame job. Denbrock had spent 2002-04 in South Bend with Tyrone Willingham, and so he was a natural choice to coach the tight ends when Kelly landed the job in 2010. He was there when Notre Dame reached the BCS National Championship in 2012, and he was there when Notre Dame hit rock bottom in 2016. 

Here's what Kelly said of Denbrock in 2014, when he promoted him to offensive coordinator in 2014.

"He brings a great deal of experience as a football coach, he's a great developer of football players at all positions, he's coached virtually all the positions for me, a great understanding of the offense that we want to run, and certainly has my trust in putting together the offense on a day‑to‑day basis for us."

That was before Denbrock developed one of the most balanced attacks in college football. 

Denbrock took the Cincinnati offensive coordinator job in 2017, where he helped build that program from the wreck Alabama's junior US Senator left behind (seriously, Cincy went 1-7 in AAC play in 2016) into the first College Football Playoff glass ceiling buster. Led by Desmond Ridder, Cincinnati was one of five schools to finish among the top 20 nationally in scoring, passing efficiency, and yards per carry. 

Now, these former Allendale, Mich., roommates are working together to resurrect an SEC power. 

 

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https://footballscoop.com/news/the-15-most-important-assistant-coaching-hires-of-2022-no-9-mike-denbrock-lsu

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The 15 most important assistant coaching hires of 2022 -- No. 8: Jesse Minter, Michigan

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Jim Harbaugh found a winning formula in 2021. Can it be duplicated with different players and different coaches?

Who: Jesse Minter, Michigan

Title: Defensive coordinator

Previous stop: Vanderbilt defensive coordinator/safeties coach (2021)

Why he's important: The Harbaugh-to-Harbaugh Connection worked so well in 2021, they're running it back in 2022.

Jim hired away from John in 2021, plucking linebackers coach Mike Macdonald from the Ravens to run his defense, in a move that worked fantastically for all three parties. Michigan improved from 95th to eighth in scoring defense, experienced a long-awaited Ohio State/Big Ten Championship/College Football Playoff breakthrough, and Macdonald returned to Baltimore as defensive coordinator. 

Macdonald and Minter spent four years under John in Baltimore. Though Minter is four years older, Macdonald was the senior of the two; Minter joined the staff as a defensive assistant in 2017 after four years as defensive coordinator at Georgia State, when Macdonald was the DBs coach. Minter moved to assistant defensive backs coach in 2019, then took over the secondary in 2020, working in concert with the linebackers coach Macdonald. 

Both left for the college ranks in 2021. Macdonald played a major role in Michigan's best season since the 1997 national championship. Minter was part of a 2-10 season at Vanderbilt.

The defense Minter inherits will not be the one Macdonald left behind. 

Full article...

https://footballscoop.com/news/the-15-most-important-assistant-coaching-hires-of-2022-no-8-jesse-minter-michigan

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The 15 most important assistant coaching hires of 2022 -- No. 7: Mark Whipple, Nebraska

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As he undertakes a reboot with no room for error, Mark Whipple indicates he has his finger on the real problem at Nebraska.

Who: Mark Whipple, Nebraska

Title: Offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach

Previous stop: Pittsburgh offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach (2019-21)

Why he's important: The longest flight in the world is offered by Singapore Airlines, a 9,300-mile journey from Singapore to New York's JFK airport. At least, that's the longest flight right now. The longest flight in the world could be taken later this month, from Dublin, Ireland to Lincoln, Neb., a mere 4,060-mile journey on the map that, in reality, would make the Singapore-to-New York trip's 18 hours and 40 minutes look brisk if the Cornhuskers lose to Northwestern on Aug. 27.

 

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https://footballscoop.com/news/the-15-most-important-assistant-coaching-hires-of-2022-no-7-mark-whipple-nebraska

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The 15 most important assistant coaching hires of 2022 -- No. 6: Josh Henson, USC

Screenshot_2022-08-12-10-08-41_kindlephoto-8891395.png.5fd77b39ebd5e2f6d0bb79f09553e13a.png Coming off a 4-8 season, USC is talking about championships. With skill talent galore, Josh Henson's group has to make it happen.

Who: Josh Henson, USC

Title: Offensive coordinator/offensive line coach

Previous stop: Texas A&M offensive line coach (2019-21)

Why he's important: No 4-8 team in college football history has ever had more hype in front of it than the 2022 USC Trojans. Not even close. 

Bettors have USC as the sixth most likely team to win the national championship. The coaches poll rated USC 15th, which The Athletic's Stewart Mandel argued No. 15 wasn't high enough. He wrote:

I wouldn’t have said this earlier in the offseason, but after adding Biletnikoff winner Jordan Addison from Pitt, Riley’s first USC offense is just ridiculously loaded. He also added Williams at quarterback, four-year Oregon standout running back Travis Dye and ex-Oklahoma wide receiver Mario Williams. It won’t be enough to completely overcome the Trojans’ talent-deficient defense, but they could certainly win 10 games.

 

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https://footballscoop.com/news/the-15-most-important-assistant-coaching-hires-of-2022-no-6-josh-henson-usc

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