Culture
Is NFL's surge of hiring college coaches as coordinators an anomaly or a new norm?
The line between college and the NFL has been blurred in recent years with run options and run/pass options (RPOs) becoming a legitimate part of NFL schemes, but there is still a chasm between what college and NFL coordinators have to prepare for each week. However, that hasn’t stopped teams from tapping into the college ranks to fill coordinator positions. In fact, four coordinators hired this offseason came from the NCAA: Buccaneers OC Liam Coen, Chargers DC Jesse Minter, Packers DC Jeff Hafley and Seahawks OC Ryan Grubb.
Is this hiring cycle an aberration or a sign of things to come? Understanding what NFL teams adopt and don’t adopt from college systems, schemes and procedures might offer clues to answer that question.
NFL teams will still prefer to hire college coaches with an NFL background over those who mainly have only college experience. Of the four coordinators coming from college, only Grubb doesn’t have NFL experience.
Minter was a defensive assistant with the Baltimore Ravens for four seasons before becoming the defensive coordinator for Vanderbilt (one season) and Michigan (two seasons). After putting together one of the best defenses in the country and winning a national championship last season, he followed Jim Harbaugh back to the NFL.
minter on the mic pic.twitter.com/0HEgFICzwB
— Los Angeles Chargers (@chargers) May 23, 2024
Hafley was a defensive assistant for various NFL teams from 2012 to 2018 before becoming the defensive coordinator for the Ohio State Buckeyes and then taking the head coach job at Boston College.
Coen spent most of his career as a college coach but recently went from being an assistant coach for the Los Angeles Rams to offensive coordinator at Kentucky for a season. He returned to the Rams as their offensive coordinator, then returned to Kentucky for a season in the same role before finally landing with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers this offseason. In his one-year stint as offensive coordinator with the Rams, Sean McVay was the play caller, so this season will be Coen’s first season calling plays in the NFL (he called plays in one game for the Rams).
Though offensive schemes have trickled up with more frequency than defense in recent years, it could be rare for coaches without NFL experience to get immediate opportunities to call plays in the league. Too many such coaches have struggled to make the transition. College offenses rely more on running quarterbacks, breaking tackles, tempo and volume than in the NFL where every play is carefully schemed up and there is more of an emphasis on trying to get into the “perfect” play calls.
NFL offensive coordinators will certainly steal creative play designs from the college level but the game planning and play calling are more intricate in the pros. Grubb seems to be the rare example of a coach who has no NFL experience and will have an opportunity to jump straight to play caller at the next level.
However, Grubb’s Washington offense looked like an NFL offense. The Huskies split between under center and shotgun, they had many ways to run the same concept, and he did a creative job of using motion and shifts. An area that college coaches typically struggle with in the league is protection. College protection schemes are often simplistic, and when coaches like Chip Kelly got to the league, they didn’t have enough tools to handle some of the pressure schemes in the NFL. Grubb will have an advantage working against Mike Macdonald’s defense every day in practice — Macdonald’s scheme tests the rules of offense as much as any in the league — but that doesn’t automatically mean he will have a sophisticated protection scheme.
For years, the spread offense was the dominating scheme in college football, but we’re starting to see a trickle-down effect with teams adopting the outside zone/play-action scheme that has been so successful in the league. Kentucky hired Coen to implement McVay’s system, and he did so successfully. Defenses weren’t used to stopping that style of offense, and last season, Coen’s unit averaged 29.1 points per game despite being consistently overmatched talent-wise in the SEC. It’ll be interesting to see how his college experience influences his version of the McVay system with the Buccaneers.
Liam Coen worked with Baker Mayfield when Coen was the Rams offensive coordinator in 2022 after Mayfield was claimed by Los Angeles midseason. He’s reunited with the quarterback in Tampa Bay. (Kirby Lee / USA Today)
I believe we’ll see more assistant coaches in the NFL go to the college level to get experience as play callers at big schools and parlay it into opportunities in the league. The Ravens have had success hiring coaches that did exactly that. Macdonald was an NFL assistant coach for years before going to Michigan to coordinate for a season. When he returned, his way of teaching and implementing his system helped the Ravens become the best defense in the league last season. He was hired as the Seattle Seahawks head coach after just two seasons as defensive coordinator.
Minter followed in Macdonald’s footsteps and ran a similar scheme at Michigan. Both ran pro-style schemes and applied lessons from their time in the league to their college defenses. They ran classic four-down fronts and presented problems for offenses with simulated pressures from different presentations. Minter did an excellent job of situational play calling, which will serve him well at the next level.
For example, on the Gaylor Family Benefit Whiteboard Clinic, Minter did a fantastic breakdown of how he looks at second-down situations.
“The goal on second-and-7-plus is to create third-and-6 or more. It used to be, ‘Hey, on second-and-8, let’s hold them to half the yardage.’ Now you’re in third-and-4,” Minter said. “If you look at the third-down percentages of winning, third-and-6 or more is where you can dictate more on that D&D (down and distance). We’re trying to really attack on this down and distance. We’re playing tight coverage. We’re trying not to give up the quick game, the get-back-on-track plays.”
When talking to NFL coaches, they were adamant that college defensive schemes don’t influence NFL schemes much. The current trend in college is the “tite” front (three defensive linemen) with match coverage behind it to combat the spread.
One of the best defenses last year was the Arizona Wildcats.
Here’s an excellent example of how the Tite Front fits Counter GY from their 3-High package.
#5 will ‘travel’ with the TE, #13 leverages the kick-out, while #44 races to take on the kick-out. #ArtofX pic.twitter.com/TptVgiE2Oc
— Cody Alexander (@The_Coach_A) April 30, 2024
Though NFL teams will dabble in those concepts, it’s much harder to run this type of defense as a base. Another key difference between NFL defenses and college is that college defenses play a lot more match quarters coverage in which defenders’ eyes lock onto routes rather than the quarterback as they would in spot drop defenses. Though NFL teams have been more willing to play quarters coverage, it’s a watered-down version.
“So I wouldn’t say that it’s wholesale quarters, but you need split safety … variations of it,” an NFL defensive coach told The Athletic. “I don’t know if it’s just wholesale quarters. It may be quarter, quarter, half to the boundary, maybe half, quarter, quarter to the field, which is Cover 8. The difference is that you’re trying to stay in that shell, you know, to try to limit explosive plays on the back end.”
Essentially, colleges play quarters and aggressively match routes and NFL teams will play it with more zone technique and soft coverage.
Since being hired, Hafley and Green Bay Packers coach Matt LaFleur have made it clear they will be a spot drop team.
“More vision on the quarterback because he’s ultimately going to take you to where the ball is going to go,” LaFleur said. “And it’s hard to do that when you’re playing with your back to the quarterback … not to say that we won’t be that. There’s certainly going to be circumstances when you want to man up and play some match coverage. I would say a big part of what we’re going to do, especially from a coverage standpoint, is going to be have vision on the quarterback.”
GO DEEPER
New Packers defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley draws raves from former players
Sources in the league say they expect Hafley’s defense to look more like the San Francisco 49ers and New York Jets defenses, which originated from Seattle’s Cover 3 system. Hafley was a defensive backs coach for then-coordinator Robert Saleh in San Francisco. He used more one-deep safety looks than colleges typically do, and he talked shortly before the Packers hired him on “The Next Up” podcast with Adam Breneman about how it’s the base of his system.
Ultimately, LaFleur is going away from Vic Fangio’s system that heavily trended around the league in the last few years and back to a Cover 3 system that was trending out of the league. The Packers struggled to defend against the run under former defensive coordinator Joe Barry, and Hafley’s system will naturally put the strong safety in the box more often, which should help shore up the Packers’ run defense.
The Seattle system fell out of favor because it could be predictable and requires an elite four-man pass rush to work. So how will Hafley complement Cover 3? What kind of coverages will he use? He could employ some of the split-safety looks he used at Boston College or maybe he’ll draw from his experience working with Mike Pettine, LaFleur’s first defensive coordinator with the Packers, and run more simulated pressures.
“We’re gonna attack.” 😤
Jeff Hafley joins the coaching staff going into the 2024 season.
1-on-1 with the new #Packers defensive coordinator 🎥 pic.twitter.com/T8AZzS0lhQ
— Green Bay Packers (@packers) April 20, 2024
Again, NFL teams are very willing to borrow bits and pieces from college schemes, but coaches believe they are two different games. For example, a handful of NFL teams used some three-safety structures, popularized in college a few years ago, to disguise on passing downs, but they’ll never be a base defense in the league.
“I don’t think they can take much schematically, more so than the relations with younger players and learning to be better teachers,” an NFL defensive coach said when asked about what NFL coaches can learn from coaching in college.
Macdonald seemed to streamline his system and make it easy for players to learn, communicate and execute in part because of his college experience. NFL play calls can get lengthy, which can be hard to communicate in college because of the offenses’ tempos.
“Talking to Mike (Macdonald), that was how people first really tried to attack him when he came to college,” Minter said. “It was like, ‘Oh, he’s going to run this elaborate NFL system … the best way to combat that is to go fast.’”
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Macdonald had to streamline his system and how he communicated his play calls at Michigan and it’s helped him create a unique malleable system in the NFL. Though his experience in college has certainly made him a better coach, there are things you learn in the league that aren’t emphasized in college.
For young assistant coaches in the league, going to college to call plays and get experience coordinating is invaluable, but in the NFL, there is a bigger emphasis on attacking matchups, manipulating protection schemes and situational play calling. Having those skills as a foundation is critical to being a successful coordinator in the league.
There will be a lot of college coaches clamoring to make the jump up to the NFL during the name, image and likeness era as they’d prefer to get away from the increased recruiting responsibilities, but this year’s hiring cycle with four college coaches getting coordinator jobs might be something of an anomaly.
(Top photo of Jeff Hafley, Ryan Grubb and Liam Coen: Dan Powers / USA Today, Steph Chambers and Cliff Welch / Getty Images)
A strong sense of place can deeply influence a story, and in some cases, the setting can even feel like a character itself — or have a lasting influence on an author. With that in mind, this week’s literary geography quiz highlights the final stops for five authors after a life of writing. To play, just make your selection in the multiple-choice list and the correct answer will be revealed. At the end of the quiz, you’ll find links to the books if you’d like to do further reading.
Whatever you do, don’t think of a bird.
Now: What kind of bird are you not thinking about? A pigeon? A bald eagle? Something more poetic, like a skylark or a nightingale? In any case, would you say that this bird you aren’t thinking about is real?
Before you answer, read this poem, which is quite literally about not thinking of a bird.
Human consciousness is full of riddles. Neuroscientists, philosophers and dorm-room stoners argue continually about what it is and whether it even exists. For Wallace Stevens, the experience of having a mind was a perpetual source of wonder, puzzlement and delight — perfectly ordinary and utterly transcendent at the same time. He explored the mysteries and pleasures of consciousness in countless poems over the course of his long poetic career. It was arguably his great theme.
Stevens was born in 1879 and published his first book, “Harmonium,” in 1923, making him something of a late bloomer among American modernists. For much of his adult life, he worked as an executive for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, rising to the rank of vice president. He viewed insurance less as a day job to support his poetry than as a parallel vocation. He pursued both activities with quiet diligence, spending his days at the office and composing poems in his head as he walked to and from work.
As a young man, Stevens dreamed of traveling to Europe, though he never crossed the Atlantic. In middle age he made regular trips to Florida, and his poems are frequently infused with ideas of Paris and Rome and memories of Key West. Others partake of the stringent beauty of New England. But the landscapes he explores, wintry or tropical, provincial or cosmopolitan, are above all mental landscapes, created by and in the imagination.
Are those worlds real?
Let’s return to the palm tree and its avian inhabitant, in that tranquil Key West sunset of the mind.
Until then, we find consolation in fangles.
When the director Rob Reiner cast his leads in the 1986 film “Stand by Me,” he looked for young actors who were as close as possible to the personalities of the four children they’d be playing. There was the wise beyond his years kid from a rough family (River Phoenix), the slightly dim worrywart (Jerry O’Connell), the cutup with a temper (Corey Feldman) and the sensitive, bookish boy.
Wil Wheaton was perfect for that last one, Gordie Lachance, a doe-eyed child who is ignored by his family in favor of his late older brother. Now, 40 years later, he’s traveling the country to attend anniversary screenings of the film, alongside O’Connell and Feldman, which has thrown him back into the turmoil that he felt as an adolescent.
Wheaton has channeled those emotions and his on-set memories into his latest project: narrating a new audiobook version of “The Body,” the 1982 Stephen King novella on which the film was based.
A few years ago, Wheaton started to float the idea of returning to the story that gave him his big break — that of a quartet of boys in 1959 Oregon, in their last days before high school, setting out to find a classmate’s dead body. “I’ve been telling the story of ‘Stand By Me’ since I was 12 years old,” he said.
But this time was different. Wheaton, who has narrated dozens of audiobooks, including Andy Weir’s “The Martian” and Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One,” says he has come to enjoy narration more than screen acting. “I’m safe, I’m in the booth, nobody’s looking at me and I can just tell you a story.”
The fact that he, an older man looking back on his younger years, is narrating a story about an older man looking back on his younger years, is not lost on Wheaton. King’s original story is bathed in nostalgia. Coming to terms with death and loss is one of its primary themes.
Two days after appearing on stage at the Academy Awards as part of a tribute to Reiner — who was murdered in 2025 alongside his wife, Michele — Wheaton got on the phone to talk about recording the audiobook, reliving his favorite scenes from the film and reexamining a quintessential story of childhood loss through the lens of his own.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
“I felt really close to him, and my memory of him.”
Wheaton on channeling a co-star’s performance.
There’s this wonderful scene in “Stand By Me.” Gordie and Chris are walking down the tracks talking about junior high. Chris is telling Gordie, “I wish to hell I was your dad, because I care about you, and he obviously doesn’t.”
It’s just so honest and direct, in a way that kids talk to each other that adults don’t. And I think that one of the reasons that really sticks with people, and that piece really lands on a lot of audiences, and has for 40 years, is, just too many people have been Gordie in that scene.
That scene is virtually word for word taken from the text of the book. And when I was narrating that, I made a deliberate choice to do my best to recreate what River did in that scene.
“You’re just a kid,
Gordie–”
“I wish to fuck
I was your father!”
he said angrily.
“You wouldn’t go around
talking about takin those stupid shop courses if I was!
It’s like
God gave you something,
all those stories
you can make up, and He said:
This is what we got for you, kid.
Try not to lose it.
But kids lose everything
unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks
are too fucked up to do it
then maybe I ought to.”
I watched that scene a couple of times because I really wanted — I don’t know why it was so important to me to — well, I know: because I loved him, and I miss him. And I wanted to bring him into this as best as I could, right?
So I was reading that scene, and the words are identical to the script. And I had this very powerful flashback to being on the train tracks that day in Cottage Grove, Oregon. And I could see River standing next to them. They’re shooting my side of the scene and there’s River, right next to the camera, doing his off-camera dialogue, and there’s the sound guy, and there’s the boom operator. There’s my key light.
I could hear and feel it. It was the weirdest thing. It’s like I was right back there.
I was able to really take in the emotional memory of being Gordie in all of those scenes. So when I was narrating him and I’m me and I’m old with all of this experience, I just drew on what I remembered from being that little boy and what I remember of those friendships and what they meant to me and what they mean to me today.
“Rob gave me a gift. Rob gave me a career.”
Wheaton recalls the “Stand By Me” director’s way with kids on set, as well as his recent Oscars tribute.
Rob really encouraged us to be kids.
Jerry tells the most amazing story about that scene, where we were all sitting around, and doing our bit, and he improvised. He was just goofing around — we were just playing — and he said something about spitting water at the fat kid.
We get to the end of the scene, and he hears Rob. Rob comes around from behind the thing, and he goes, “Jerry!” And Jerry thinks, “Oh no, I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble because I improvised, and I’m not supposed to improvise.”
The context for Jerry is that he had been told by the adults in his life, “Sit on your hands and shut up. Stop trying to be a cutup. Stop trying to be funny. Stop disrupting people. Just be quiet.” And Jerry thinks, “Oh my God. I didn’t shut up. I’m in trouble. I’m gonna get fired.”
Rob leans in to all of us, and Rob says, “Hey, guys, do you see that? More of that. Do that!”
The whole time when you’re a kid actor, you’re just around all these adults who are constantly telling you to grow up. They’re mad that you’re being a kid. Rob just created an environment where not only was it supported that we would be kids — and have fun, and follow those kid instincts and do what was natural — it was expected. It was encouraged. We were supposed to do it.
They chanted together:
“I don’t shut up,
I grow up.
And when I look at you I throw up.”
“Then your mother goes around the corner
and licks it up,”
I said, and hauled ass out of there,
giving them the finger over my shoulder as I went.
I never had any friends later on
like the ones I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, did you?
When we were at the Oscars, I looked at Jerry. And we looked at this remarkable assemblage of the most amazingly talented, beautiful artists and storytellers. We looked around, and Jerry leans down, and he said, “We all got our start with Rob Reiner. He trusted every single one of us.”
And to stand there for him, when I really thought that I would be standing with him to talk about this stuff — it was a lot.
“I was really really really excited — like jumping up and down.”
The scene Wheaton was most looking forward to narrating: the tale of Lard Ass Hogan.
I was so excited to narrate it. It’s a great story! It’s a funny story. It’s such a lovely break — it’s an emotional and tonal shift from what’s happening in the movie.
I know this as a writer: You work to increase and release tension throughout a narrative, and Stephen King uses humor really effectively to release that tension. But it also raises the stakes, because we have these moments of joy and these moments of things being very silly in the midst of a lot of intensity.
That’s why the story of Lard Ass Hogan is so fun for me to tell. Because in the middle of that, we stop to do something that’s very, very fun, and very silly and very celebratory.
“Will you shut up and let him tell it?”
Teddy hollered.
Vern blinked.
“Sure. Yeah.
Okay.”
“Go on, Gordie,”
Chris said. “It’s not really much—”
“Naw,
we don’t expect much from a wet end like you,”
Teddy said,
“but tell it anyway.”
I cleared my throat. “So anyway.
It’s Pioneer Days,
and on the last night
they have these three big events.
There’s an egg-roll for the little kids and a sack-race for kids that are like eight or nine,
and then there’s the pie-eating contest.
And the main guy of the story
is this fat kid nobody likes
named Davie Hogan.”
When I narrate this story — whenever there is a moment of levity or humor, whenever there are those brief little moments that are the seasoning of the meal that makes it all so real and relatable — yes, it was very important to me to capture those moments.
I’m shifting in my chair, so I can feel each of those characters. It’s something that doesn’t exist in live action. It doesn’t exist in any other media.
“I feel the loss.”
Wheaton remembers River Phoenix.
The novella “The Body” is very much about Gordie remembering Chris. It’s darker, and it’s more painful, than the movie is.
I’ve been watching the movie on this tour and seeing River a lot. I remember him as a 14- and 15-year-old kid who just seemed so much older, and so much more experienced and so much wiser than me, and I’m only a year younger than him.
What hurts me now, and what I really felt when I was narrating this, is knowing what River was going through then. We didn’t know. I still don’t know the extent of how he was mistreated, but I know that he was. I know that adults failed him. That he should have been protected in every way that matters. And he just wasn’t.
And I, like Gordie, remember a boy who was loving. So loving, and generous and cared deeply about everyone around him, all the time. Who deserved to live a full life. Who had so much to offer the world. And it’s so unfair that he’s gone and taken from us. I had to go through a decades-long grieving process to come to terms with him dying.
Near the end
of 1971,
Chris
went into a Chicken Delight in Portland
to get a three-piece Snack Bucket.
Just ahead of him,
two men started arguing
about which one had been first in line. One of them pulled a knife.
Chris,
who had always been the best of us
at making peace,
stepped between them and was stabbed in the throat.
The man with the knife had spent time in four different institutions;
he had been released from Shawshank State Prison
only the week before.
Chris died almost instantly.
It is a privilege that I was allowed to tell this story. I get to tell Gordie Lachance’s story as originally imagined by Stephen King, with all of the experience of having lived my whole adult life with the memory of spending three months in Gordie Lachance’s skin.
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