Brian Kelly builds coaching staff

[Herb]

Well, looks like Brad White is staying at Kentucky:

https://247sports.com/college/kentucky/Article/kentucky-football-brad-white-lsu-defensive-coordinator-brian-kelly-178348808/

 

[Hatchertiger]

56 minutes ago, Herb said:

Well, looks like Brad White is staying at Kentucky:

https://247sports.com/college/kentucky/Article/kentucky-football-brad-white-lsu-defensive-coordinator-brian-kelly-178348808/

 

I don't believe he was offered the position.  This is a very important hire, I've read where BK basically turns the defense over to the DC.

[LSUDad]

https://thespun.com/sec/lsu/brian-kelly-reportedly-lets-go-of-notable-lsu-coach/amp

[houtiger]

Personally, I am glad BK is taking his time in filling out the staff.  He could try to rush to satisfy the early signees, but that would have been a mistake.  If a kid was not committed to LSU by the 15th, knowing who his coordinator would be, without having had the time to build a relationship with said coordinator, I doubt that kid turns into a commitment just because he knows the coordinators name.

O jumped on Matt Canada quickly, and it cost us a million to get out of that deal for whatever reason.  He moved too fast and listened to too many other people.

Kelly is taking the time to have a full discussion of philosophy, vet some references, maybe watch some film.  If a smart man takes the time and evaluates all aspects of working together, he should make a better hire.

BK understands these are key decisions to his and LSU's success over the next few years, and it is worth some time to get it right.  Yes, he may miss on 5 recruits now, but he can sign 5 kids that are almost as good.  Look at how devastatingly bad making a bad hire was when O picked Pelini, who he didn't interview (?).

This is a bit uncomfortable waiting, but hopefully it will be for the better in the long run.  We gotta believe in BK.

[Nutriaitch]

8 minutes ago, houtiger said:

Personally, I am glad BK is taking his time in filling out the staff.  He could try to rush to satisfy the early signees, but that would have been a mistake.  If a kid was not committed to LSU by the 15th, knowing who his coordinator would be, without having had the time to build a relationship with said coordinator, I doubt that kid turns into a commitment just because he knows the coordinators name.

agree, the WHO matters way more than the when. 

the correct who could have landed maybe an extra guy or two. but that’s about it. 

8 minutes ago, houtiger said:

O jumped on Matt Canada quickly, and it cost us a million to get out of that deal for whatever reason.  He moved too fast and listened to too many other people.

because O’s IQ is comfortably below room temperature. 
and i keep my A/C blasting most of the year.

he didn’t screw up on Canada because he rushed. 
He screwed up on Canada because he doesn’t know what to look for in an assistant and just took some guy he saw on the Broyles list.  Then immediately complained about the style of offense his OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR ran. 

he took a long time to name Pelini. 
that sucked. 

he also took his time with Peetz. 
that also sucked. 

 

8 minutes ago, houtiger said:

Kelly is taking the time to have a full discussion of philosophy, vet some references, maybe watch some film.  If a smart man takes the time and evaluates all aspects of working together, he should make a better hire.

smart man is the key words in this section. 

8 minutes ago, houtiger said:

BK understands these are key decisions to his and LSU's success over the next few years, and it is worth some time to get it right.  Yes, he may miss on 5 recruits now, but he can sign 5 kids that are almost as good.  Look at how devastatingly bad making a bad hire was when O picked Pelini, who he didn't interview (?).

agreed. 

8 minutes ago, houtiger said:

This is a bit uncomfortable waiting, but hopefully it will be for the better in the long run.  We gotta believe in BK.

here’s the thing:

we may even already have our guy lined up. 
the public just doesn’t know it yet. 

sure the impatience in me is dying to know. 

but me knowing doesn’t change anything. lol. 
 

in fact the secrecy is a huge relief from having Ponamsky constantly trying to gauge fan reaction before making hires. 

Competence in the Athletic Department is a huge breath of fresh air. 

[LSUDad]

https://www.wafb.com/2021/12/18/sources-lsu-lb-coach-blake-baker-not-being-retained-by-brian-kelly/

[Hatchertiger]

Take this w/ a grain of salt, this same site was pushing the Riley to LSU based upon their "sources" so who knows:

Quote

12 HOURS AGO

Update on Brian Kelly's LSU staff: Coordinator positions coming into focus

Sources tell FootballScoop that Kelly is targeting a pair of playoff coaches -- one at the college level and one in the NFL for his top two assistant spots.

...

Offensively, numerous sources this week told FootballScoop that Kelly is expected to reunite with Mike Denbrock, Kelly’s former Notre Dame offensive coordinator and assistant head coach who spent seven seasons alongside Kelly in South Bend, Indiana.

...

On the defensive side of the ball, Kelly has set his target – per sources -- on an up-and-coming NFL assistant coach Matt House, the Kansas City Chiefs’ linebackers coach who spent almost two decades coaching at the collegiate level before he exited the University of Kentucky three years ago for an opportunity with the Chiefs.

https://footballscoop.com/news/brian-kelly-lsu-sec-nfl-coordinators

 

[houtiger]

10 hours ago, LSUDad said:

https://www.wafb.com/2021/12/18/sources-lsu-lb-coach-blake-baker-not-being-retained-by-brian-kelly/

I'm sorry to see Baker go.  The players seemed to like him a lot, and based on Damone Clarks improved play, it looks like he helped the team.  but, life moves on.  Maybe the DC is lined up and he knows who he wants for LB coach.  who knows?

[LSUDad]

Three Added to Athletic Development Staff

 

BATON ROUGE – Three of the nation’s top strength and conditioning coaches – all with backgrounds in Power Five football – have joined Jake Flint’s athletic development staff at LSU.

New additions to the athletic development staff for the LSU Football program include Kyle Seger, Shawn Facione, and Zaviar Gooden. Seger will serve as associate development coach, while Facione and Gooden will be assistant development coaches.

“We have assembled the best high performance staff in the country,” Flint said. “This group will work diligently to provide optimal training that puts equal value in both hard work and scientific based principles.

“This group of coaches will bring great energy, expertise and innovation to our athletic development program. They will demand excellence in all that we do as we help grow our student-athletes in the wholistic approach to development that this staff will provide.”

Seger comes to LSU after spending the 2021 season working with Flint at Notre Dame where they were part of a staff that helped the Irish to an 11-1 record and a berth in the Fiesta Bowl.

Prior to Notre Dame, Seger served as player development coach at Georgia Tech in 2019-20. He spent the 2017-18 seasons at Temple as a strength and conditioning graduate assistant.

A native of Huntingburg, Ind., Seger played defensive end for Ball State from 2012-16. He earned a bachelor’s degree in exercise science from Ball State (2016) and a master’s of education degree from Temple (2019).

Facione most recently spent a year at the University of Florida after serving as assistant strength and conditioning coach at Florida Atlantic. A former collegiate linebacker, Facione has also been part of strength staffs at Tennessee-Martin, Ole Miss and Cincinnati.

Facione graduated from Capital University in 2017 with a degree in exercise science.

Gooden, who spent five years in the NFL as a linebacker, most recently worked at Southern Cal as assistant strength coach. Prior to that, he was the head sports and fitness trainer at CRA-Z Sports Training, a company he founded in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. He served as a speed and performance coach at D1 Sports Training in Dallas/Fort Worth in 2018-19. He also volunteered as assistant strength coach at SMU during the summer of 2018.

Gooden played linebacker in the NFL for 5 years (2013-17). Following his college career at Missouri, he was selected in third round of the 2013 NFL Draft by the Tennessee Titans.

[Fishhead]

There's no sense in rushing the hire.  ESD is over and it's a recruiting dead period into January.  

Also, anyone who says they know who it's going to be is throwing ish at the wall hoping it sticks. 

We'll know in January and that's enough time to help with recruiting through NSD in February.

[Hatchertiger]

Don't know much about him:

https://lsusports.net/news/2021/12/29/robert-steeples-named-lsu-football-defensive-assistant/

[LSUDad]

https://www.vikings.com/team/coaches-roster/robert-steeples

[COTiger]

Pretty impressive going from a high school HC to a NFL assistant.  I wonder who hooked him & Kelly up?

[Herb]

57 minutes ago, COTiger said:

Pretty impressive going from a high school HC to a NFL assistant.  I wonder who hooked him & Kelly up?

A Jesuit High School...

No telling who hooked him up. Kelly has been in coaching for a looooong time so he probably has an extensive network.

Don't believe all of the haters out there who try to portray him as an angry person that nobody likes. I'd be willing to guess that more people admire him than dislike him (unless you are a Notre Dame graduate, that is).

[LSUDad]

1 hour ago, COTiger said:

Pretty impressive going from a high school HC to a NFL assistant.  I wonder who hooked him & Kelly up?

Bo Pelini did the same thing. He was under Bill Walsh. 

[Herb]

On 12/29/2021 at 12:40 PM, Hatchertiger said:

Don't know much about him:

https://lsusports.net/news/2021/12/29/robert-steeples-named-lsu-football-defensive-assistant/

 

https://www.dandydon.com/media-gallery/robert-steeples-madd-men-pregame-speech/

 

[Fishhead]

Jamar Cain DL coach, home run!

Here's some funny takes from the OU board that speak volumes imo

"LOL!

Side note: He’s going to be a NIGHTMARE to recruit against at LSU.

Second side note: Worth it to screw TBOW!"

 

[Fishhead]

I've learned TBOW is That femaledog out west, Lincoln Riley

[Fishhead]

"Absolute nightmare. Love that he spurned Lincoln, but sucks that it’s LSU. Dear LSU board, take care of coach Cain for us. He will do wonders for you. Home run hire"

[Fishhead]

"Love Cain but I don’t think he wanted the 4-3 / 4-2-5 scheme that we’re going to. Pumped for him. LSU just made things a little harder for us to recruit elite DL"

[Fishhead]

"Yeah LSU can already recruit on the DL hope we get a big hire. I trust BV and the DE coach seems like he will be good. But yeah idk who he will get better than Cain."

[LSUDad]

BREAKING: #LSU will be hiring Mike Denbrock as their next Offensive Coordinator. Louisiana Tech’s Joe Sloan has agreed to become QB’s coach as well. 

[LSUDad]

Sources: Cincinnati's Mike Denbrock expected to join LSU's staff as offensive coordinator

Pete Thamel

31 December 2021, 10:45 pm

The LSU football staff is continuing to come together in the upcoming days as sources told Yahoo Sports that Cincinnati offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock is expected to join Brian Kelly’s staff in Baton Rouge.

LSU is also expected to add former Louisiana Tech offensive coordinator Joe Sloan to coach quarterbacks and former Oklahoma assistant Jamar Cain, who was committed to join Lincoln Riley at USC, as the defensive line coach.

The hiring of Denbrock as offensive coordinator reunites him with Kelly, as the two first worked together in the late 1980s at Grand Valley State. Denbrock also spent seven years on the Notre Dame staff with Kelly, including offensive coordinator in 2014, and he also coached tight ends, wide receivers and worked as the associate head coach.

Denbrock is expected to install and call the same offense that Brian Kelly ran at Notre Dame, which made Denbrock’s familiarity an attractive option. Denbrock has been Cincinnati’s offensive coordinator during Luke Fickell’s entire tenure, and the Bearcats consistently improved over five seasons and entered Friday's College Football Playoff semifinal ranked No. 10 in scoring offense (38.8 ppg).

SOUTH BEND, IN - OCTOBER 02: Cincinnati Bearcats offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock looks on during a game between the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and the Cincinnati Bearcats on October 2, 2021, in South Bend, IN. (Photo by Robin Alam/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Denbrock, 57, also coaches the Bearcats’ tight ends, and Cincinnati has one of the country’s top tandems in future NFL draft picks Josh Whyle and Leonard Taylor. He has also worked at Stanford and Washington.

Sloan, 35, served as the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Louisiana Tech the past two seasons and was on Skip Holtz’s staff starting in 2013. He spent the past seven years as the associate head coach and was named interim coach after Holtz’s firing earlier this year.

Sloan served as a primary recruiter at Louisiana during his tenure, and his familiarity with the state was attractive to LSU. Sloan’s hire helps address the need for local recruiters on Kelly’s staff.

LSU is also adding Cain as the school’s defensive line coach, according to sources. Cain was recently added to Riley’s staff at USC, although never formally announced because he coached in Oklahoma’s bowl game. Prior to his two seasons at Oklahoma, Cain coached at Arizona State, Fresno State and North Dakota State.

Cain is considered one of the country’s most dynamic recruiters and helped develop star OU defensive linemen Ronnie Perkins and Nik Bonitto. Cain will also add the title as defensive run game coordinator at LSU.

[LSUDad]

Old coworkers, ‘great friends’ Brian Kelly, Mike Denbrock meet as opponents

 

Patrick Engel • InsideNDSports

Beat Writer

@PatrickEngel_

 

Cincinnati offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock’s and Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly’s careers first crossed paths in 1987 as graduate assistants at Division II Grand Valley State, two coaching hopefuls working endless hours for little monetary reward.

Their introduction via shared grind turned into 15 years on staffs together and a close friendship. Denbrock was Kelly’s offensive coordinator (1992-95) and defensive coordinator (1996-98) at Grand Valley State. He was on Kelly’s Notre Dame staff in various offensive assistant roles from 2010-16, including a season as the offensive coordinator in 2014. He was even in Kelly’s wedding party.

Denbrock departed Notre Dame after the 2016 season to take his current job. Nearly five years later, he will his return to Notre Dame Stadium when the No. 7 Bearcats (3-0) play the No. 9 Irish (4-0) on Saturday(2:30 p.m., NBC). Which means he and Kelly will coach against each other for the first time in their careers.

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“I have a ton of respect for Mike,” Kelly said Monday. “We’re great friends.”

The top-10 matchup has plenty of ties that bind. Kelly, defensive coordinator Marcus Freeman and cornerbacks coach Mike Mickens left the same jobs at Cincinnati to come to Notre Dame. Mickens is a former Cincinnati player under Kelly. Bearcats wide receiver Michael Young Jr. played for Notre Dame from 2017-19, catching 17 passes.

Then there’s Denbrock, who brings a top-10 scoring offense into the game against his longtime friend at his former workplace. 

“I think he has done an incredible job at Cincinnati and maintained a high level of offense,” Kelly said. “If you look at where they are, Mike has been part of that ascent. They’ve played really good defense and Marcus Freeman has been lauded for that, but Mike has done an incredible job on the offensive side of the ball maintaining that over a long period of time.”

Cincinnati is averaging 43.0 points per game and hung 38 points in a win Sept. 18 at Indiana. The Bearcats are 29th in yards per play, at 6.78. They have scored touchdowns on 12 of their 13 red-zone trips (85.7 percent), tied for the fourth-best rate nationally.

Fifth-year senior quarterback Desmond Ridder is in his fourth year as a starter and enters the game with a 65.1 percent completion rate, 748 passing yards, seven touchdowns and two interceptions. He’s averaging 9.0 yards per pass.

Under Denbrock’s direction last year, Cincinnati was 16th in yards per play and averaged 37.5 points per game. It finished in the top 25 in scoring in 2018 and 2020.

The defense, meanwhile, has not dropped off under Freeman’s replacement, Mike Tressel. The Bearcats have allowed just six plays of 20 or more yards, the fewest of any team in the country. No team allows a lower completion rate. Only Georgia has held opposing quarterbacks to a worse passing efficiency.

Kelly, director of athletics Jack Swarbrickand director of football operations Ron Powlus scheduled the game against Cincinnati in April 2019, when the Bearcats were coming off an 11-2 season in head coach Luke Fickell’s second year in charge. They surely understood it would be no rollover, even if Notre Dame is paying Cincinnati $1.2 million to play the game. It’s unlikely, though, anyone in South Bend imagined it would pose this kind of test.

“They’re deserving of where they’re ranked,” Kelly said. “This is clearly, from our perspective, the best team we’ve played up to this point.”

One of his best friends is a major reason why. And he’s out for bragging rights.

“He wants to beat us, and I want to beat him,” Kelly said. “He wouldn’t want it any other way.”

[Herb]

Wait...I thought Kelly was such an ogre that nobody likes to work with him!

Be skeptical of the narratives out there surrounding Brian Kelly. Notre Dame has a lot of reach in the sports reporting world and they are bitter that Kelly left. 

I've read in Twitter comments where people are shocked that Kelly is hiring an offensive coordinator that he fired and that Denbrock is not a good OC and is leaving Cincinnati because "the handwriting is on the wall" that Fickell was going to get rid of him.

LSU will NOT have a Mike McCarthy/Kurt Warner type of offense, a fact that make a lot of "the sky is falling" type of fans to whine.

What we will have is a well-coached team that will win most of its games through sound fundamentals and execution. We will have OL that are in shape and more athletic than what we've seen the last few years (with a few notable exceptions). We will have defenders that have sound tackling techniques instead of watching our guys give a token arm tackle against an opponent that goes on for a big gain. We will have sound game plans and actual game plan adjustments when needed instead of going into 2nd halves thinking we'll just out muscle our opponents and come from behind.

What I am pleased with regarding all of Kelly's hires is that they all seem to have reputations for being very good recruiters. Joe Sloan may be an effective answer in North Louisiana against Saban's ability to continually grab recruits from that part of the state.