First Round of Assistants Announced

Coach Loeffler announced his first round of assistants and showed that he is committed to building a program...starting with his staff.  The University also showed that it understands what was wrong with the Jinks staff, because every bio of one of the new assistants highlights his experience as a coach.  There's also a tabulation floating around that says the staff has an average of 22 years (or something) of coaching experience.

You can see the full story here.  Here is a summary with some general thoughts.

First, Loeffler, as expected, cleaned house on the offensive side of the ball.  All of the original Jinks assistants are now gone.  This includes Seth Doege, whose brother is our QB.

On defense, Loeffler did keep Carl Pelini.  I'm happy with this because I think he's a good coach and a former head coach and he provides some depth on the defensive side of the ball that Loeffler does not have.  For those of you who think Pelini did an awful job with the defense this year, I will have a post up on that in due time.  When we get some players, Pelini will coach a very solid defense and the players respect him.

The only defensive coach retained right now is Jacob Schoonover, the LB coach.  The d-line and D-backs coaches are not known at this time.

The biggest news was Terry Malone at OC.  This is his second stint in that job.  He was here from '86 to '95.  He has coached all over the place, including at UM, Purdue, the Saints for Sean Payton, etc.  He was at WMU when he took this job.  He's got experience and ability.  He will also coach the line, which I contend was the most poorly coached position group on our team over the last three years.  He's done enough to provide Loeffler with the support he needs as a new head coach.

The RB coach is a guy named Chris Hedden.  He has coached all over the place, including being the head coach at St. Francis.  He's currently OC at Trine, a DIII school in Indiana.  That team has a RB who is a semi-finalist for the DIII player of the year award and is #4 in the nation in rushing.  He was also an assistant at UT for 8 years.

Erik Campbell will coach the WRs, after a 30 year career, much of it in the Big Ten and some in the CFL.

Max Warner will coach QBs, as I noted yesterday.

The TE coach will be Louie Addazio.  The son of BC Coach Steve Addazio, he's a GA at OSU right now.

And the strength coach, Kevin Tolbert, was at UM for the last 3 years and will SF and Stanford before that, as he moved along with Coach Harbaugh.

So, here's the thing.  Coach said that he was going to find the best staff in the country, and I think he's done a great job putting a team together and doing it fast.  Clearly, this was not the first time he had thought about it.  The only guys without collegiate assistant coaching experience so far are Warner and Addazio.  That's in contrast to the last staff, for sure, where most of them had a resume like Addazio's.

And not to say Addazio won't be a good coach.  He grew up around it, worked at OSU, etc.  Just saying that instead of having a full staff of people like that, he's the only one and can continue to learn from the other coaches.

I think BG fans will be happy with this staff.  The last two positions remain to be filled, but the opening announcement of the Loeffler Era shows a coach who's prepared and ready to re-build this program.