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Bill O’Brien to Boston College Isn’t A Done Deal, But Ohio State Will Have Options If It Needs A New Offensive Coordinator

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2 years ago

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Bill O’Brien to Boston College Isn’t A Done Deal, But Ohio State Will Have Options If It Needs A New Offensive Coordinator


Ohio State’s offensive coaching staff appeared to be set for the 2024 season. Then Boston College’s head coaching job opened up.

When Jeff Hafley left Boston College on Wednesday to become the Green Bay Packers’ defensive coordinator, it didn’t take long for Bill O’Brien to emerge as a possible candidate for the job. Although O’Brien just became Ohio State’s offensive coordinator on Jan. 19, the smoke that O’Brien could soon be on his way back to Boston – the city he grew up in and where his family still lives – has grown stronger by the day.

Multiple reporters who cover Boston College, including Rich Thompson of the Boston Herald, have reported that O’Brien is the frontrunner for the job and that he could be close to finalizing a contract with the Eagles. Multiple national reporters, however, have reported that Boston College’s interview process is ongoing; ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported Monday that BC is still scheduled to hold multiple rounds of interviews this week, though a final decision is expected by the weekend.

O’Brien, meanwhile, was reportedly at the Woody Hayes Athletic Center with the rest of Ohio State’s coaching staff on Monday, indicating that he remains the Buckeyes’ offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, at least for now.

Ryan Day and Ohio State certainly don’t want to lose O’Brien less than a month after hiring him. Ohio State’s offensive transfer additions expressed excitement about playing for O’Brien last week. It wouldn’t be easy to find another offensive coordinator with as many qualifications as O’Brien, who has been both a head coach and offensive coordinator at both the NFL and college levels. And while Day is expected to delegate offensive play-calling duties this year, he isn’t going to give that responsibility to just anyone.

“Every year, you have to look and identify the things you want to tweak and change. I felt like this was important for a lot of reasons,” Day said in a recent interview with ESPN Cleveland when asked about hiring an offensive play-caller. “The landscape of college football has changed. Where my focus needs to be has changed. Bill brings a tremendous amount of experience to the table. I wouldn’t have done it with just anybody.”

That said, Ohio State should have plenty of viable options to replace O’Brien if it ends up needing to do so.

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Candle, Kelly, Johnson among names to watch

While it’s never ideal to be thrust into a coaching search more than a month after the end of the season, Ohio State wouldn’t be starting from scratch in replacing O’Brien. Any coach who was a candidate for the job the first time around could re-emerge as a candidate, especially if they remain in the same situation they were in before Ohio State hired O’Brien.

One such candidate could be Toledo head coach Jason Candle, who reportedly drew serious consideration for the job before O’Brien was hired. While Candle has been linked to several Power 4 head coaching jobs (including the Boston College job) over the past two months, he has yet to land another job, which could make him consider taking a coordinator position at a major program.

Ohio State could give Candle a pay raise, as he made just $1.125 million at Toledo last season, and a successful run as OSU’s OC could improve Candle’s prospects of landing a future head coaching job at a bigger program. He has never coached in a major conference and has only two years of experience as a quarterbacks coach, but he is an Ohio lifer whose offenses at Toledo have consistently ranked among the best in the MAC.

A potential upside to making a new hire in February would be that it could make the Ohio State job more appealing to coaches who might have been holding out for a potential NFL offensive coordinator job the first time around.

That group could include UCLA head coach Chip Kelly, who was recently linked to the Washington Commanders’ and Las Vegas Raiders’ offensive coordinator jobs. It appears unlikely Kelly will land an NFL offensive coordinator job this offseason, however, as the Commanders hired Kliff Kingsbury while the Raiders are expected to hire Luke Getsy.

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Leaving a job as a Big Ten head coach to become a Big Ten offensive coordinator would certainly be an unconventional move, but Kelly appears to be looking for an exit ramp out of Westwood. He would check the same boxes that O’Brien did, having been a head coach and offensive play-caller in both the NFL and college, and has a close relationship with Day dating back to when Kelly coached Day as New Hampshire’s offensive coordinator.

Hiring Kelly wouldn’t come cheaply, as Ohio State would have to pay a $1.5 million buyout to UCLA, but it certainly wouldn’t feel like a downgrade if Ohio State went from O’Brien to Kelly.

Chip Kelly could be a candidate to replace Bill O’Brien if O’Brien leaves Ohio State for Boston College. (Photo: Gary A. Vasquez – USA TODAY Sports)

Another coach who was connected to the job before Ohio State hired O’Brien was former Philadelphia Eagles offensive coordinator Brian Johnson, who was fired by the Eagles four days after Ohio State hired O’Brien. While he’s never been a head coach like O’Brien, Johnson has been an offensive coordinator in both the NFL and college; in his most recent job as a collegiate offensive coordinator, Johnson led a Florida offense that ranked ninth in the FBS in total yards per game and 13th nationally in points per game in 2020.

Johnson’s lone season as the Eagles’ offensive coordinator fell short of expectations, and he’s still looking for a new job as a result. But the Eagles still ranked in the NFL’s top eight in both points and yards per game in 2023, and the 36-year-old former Utah quarterback was viewed as a rising star in the industry before this past season.

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Other logical fits

Super Bowl-winning offensive coordinators Josh McDaniels and Frank Reich are both still looking for jobs after they were fired as NFL head coaches this past fall, so they could both be worth calling, though neither of them has ever been a full-time assistant coach at the collegiate level.

National championship-winning offensive coordinator Dan Mullen previously worked alongside Day when Day was a graduate assistant at Florida, though it’s uncertain whether the current ESPN analyst is interested in a return to coaching.

Akron head coach Joe Moorhead was an excellent offensive coordinator at both Penn State and Oregon and had a salary of just $620,000 last season, so he’s another coach with both head coaching and offensive play-calling experience that Ohio State could make a run at if it needs to replace O’Brien.

If the Buckeyes can’t get Kelly, it would be hard to replace O’Brien with another coach who has experience as both a head coach and offensive coordinator at both the NFL and collegiate levels. But there are plenty of coaches Ohio State could pursue that check at least a couple of those boxes.

Buckeyes have been here before

Should O’Brien leave for Boston College, it wouldn’t be the first time that Ohio State has had to replace an assistant coach just weeks after hiring him. A similar situation played out in Urban Meyer’s first year as head coach in 2012. Meyer initially hired Bill Sheridan that January to be Ohio State’s cornerbacks coach, but Sheridan left the staff in February to become the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ defensive coordinator.

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Meyer replaced Sheridan with Kerry Coombs, who quickly established himself as one of college football’s best cornerbacks coaches, producing five first-round draft picks in a five-year span while helping the Buckeyes win the 2014 national championship.

Ohio State may not have to worry about replacing O’Brien if Boston College goes in another direction or O’Brien simply decides to stay in Columbus. But the Buckeyes should be well-positioned to find an effective Plan B – one that would still allow Day to delegate responsibility to his offensive coordinator and focus more on his many other responsibilities as a head coach – if O’Brien ends up shipping up to Boston.





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Boston, MA

First Alert: Mix of snow and rain today, then looking ahead to warmer weather

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4 hours ago

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March 3, 2026

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First Alert: Mix of snow and rain today, then looking ahead to warmer weather


Today is a First Alert weather day. A system to our south is pushing mix of snow and rain into southern New England through this evening and tonight. 

For us here in Greater Boston, expect snow to continue spreading over our area through the afternoon/evening commute. In fact, parts our area could see up to 1 to 2 inches of snow accumulation before the sleet and rain move in.

Much of Greater Boston will likely see snow amounts on the lower end. Higher snow amounts are expected toward southern New Hampshire and along and north of outer Route 2. Also, some ice accumulations are possible, up to a tenth of an inch, creating a thin glaze here and there.

Dozens of schools in Connecticut and Massachusetts have already announced early dismissals as a result of the storm.

While this system won’t cripple our area, conditions could still create a mess on the roads during the evening commute through tonight. Be careful while driving. A Winter Weather Advisory remains in effect for parts of our area through early Wednesday morning. High temperatures will be in the mid to upper 30s today. Overnight lows will drop into the low 30s.

We’ll wake up to patchy fog Wednesday morning before the sun returns. High temperatures will be in the upper 40s. We’ll stay in the 40s on Thursday with increasing clouds. But by late Thursday night into Friday, wet weather returns. Some snow could mix with the rain into Friday morning. Highs will be in the upper 30s Friday.

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Warmer weather is expected this weekend. Highs will be in the 50s Saturday and possibly near 60 on Sunday.



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Boston, MA

Boston police officials dominate the list of highest-paid city workers in 2025 – The Boston Globe

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16 hours ago

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March 3, 2026

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Boston police officials dominate the list of highest-paid city workers in 2025 – The Boston Globe


That was more than what every other city department spent on overtime combined, though it was a slight drop from the $103 million the police department spent on overtime in 2024.

High overtime spending inside the police department has long been controversial and a source of frustration for police-reform advocates. Last year’s nine-figure total comes as Mayor Michelle Wu warns of a challenging budget season to come for the city, which is grappling with inflation and the possibility of more federal funding cuts.

In a December letter, Wu told the city council that she instructed city department heads to find ways to cut 2 percent of their budgets in the next fiscal year. She also imposed a delay on new hires. Boston Public Schools Superintendent Mary Skipper has also proposed cutting somewhere between 300 and 400 positions next fiscal year due to budget constraints.

Overall, the city spent about $2.5 billion on employee salaries in 2025, up around 1.5 percent from $2.4 billion in 2024. The city employs roughly 21,000 workers, according to a public dashboard.

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In a statement, Emma Pettit, a spokesperson for Wu’s office, attributed the payroll increase to raises, and in some cases, employees receiving retroactive pay, that were part of contracts the city negotiated with its various labor unions.

“We’re grateful to our city employees for their hard work to hold Boston to the highest standard for delivering city services,” Pettit said.

When Wu won her first mayoral race in November 2021, all of the city’s 44 union contracts had expired. Since then, Wu’s office has negotiated new agreements with all of them, and last year, agreed to a one-year contract extension with the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association, the city’s largest police union.

But as the city heads back to the bargaining table to negotiate extensions or new contracts with others, city leaders should keep cost at the forefront of those conversations, said Steve Poftak, president of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, a business-backed budget watchdog group.

“As budgets tighten, I’m hopeful that it increases the scrutiny on these collective bargaining agreements,” Poftak said.

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The top earner on the city’s payroll last year was Boston Police Captain Timothy Connolly. In addition to his $194,000 base salary, Connolly took home nearly $230,000 in overtime, about $26,000 in undefined “other pay,” and roughly $49,000 as part of a higher-education bonus, for a total of $498,145 in compensation.

Skipper, as BPS superintendent, was the 55th-highest earner among city workers, coming behind 54 members of the police department. She made a total of $378,000 in 2025.

Nearly 300 city employees made more than $300,000 last year. In contrast, Wu made $207,000, though her salary increased to $250,000 this year. More than 1,700 city employees made more than the mayor in 2025.

Larry Calderone, president of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association, argued that the high overtime costs in the police department are, in part, a result of understaffing.

The department is short roughly 400 rank-and-file police officers, Calderone said, meaning the department has to pay its staff to work overtime and fill vacant shifts. The average salary for an officer in the BPPA is roughly $195,000, Calderone said.

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With several large events approaching, including a Boston-based fan fest around this summer’s World Cup matches and the return of a fleet of tall ships to Boston Harbor, Calderone said most of the members of his union are likely to be working the maximum allowable 90 hours a week.

“We just don’t have the bodies on the street,” he said.

The Boston Police Department and the Boston Police Superior Officers Federation — the union that represents the department’s sergeants, captains, and lieutenants — did not immediately return requests for comment Monday.

Jamarhl Crawford, an activist and former member of the Boston Police Reform Task Force, said while high spending on overtime is not new for the police department, it’s a pressing problem the city should tackle.

The police and fire departments are “essential components of the city and society in general … [and] folks should be getting a fair wage. But it also has to be within fiscal responsibility,” Crawford said.

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“In another 10 years,” he continued, “with pensions and everything else, this type of thing can bankrupt the city.”

Niki Griswold can be reached at niki.griswold@globe.com. Follow her @nikigriswold. Yoohyun Jung can be reached at y.jung@globe.com.





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Boston, MA

Red Sox rotation contender strikes out four in dominant outing

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1 day ago

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March 2, 2026

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Red Sox rotation contender strikes out four in dominant outing


FORT MYERS, Fla. — Johan Oviedo’s first outing of the spring last week didn’t go great, as the right-hander walked three over 1 2/3 innings in a performance manager Alex Cora described as “erratic.”

His second outing on Monday went much better.



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