Southern Miss faces critical hire at offensive coordinator. Here’s why, plus options.
Southern Miss redshirt senior quarterback Jack Abraham has to be tired of introducing himself to a new offensive coordinator every season.
When Abraham begins spring practice, he’ll be working under a fifth offensive coordinator in his fifth season of college football.
Todd Fitch was his offensive coordinator at Louisiana Tech after Abraham signed with the Bulldogs out of Oxford High School. After spending about 18 months there, he transferred to Northwest Mississippi Community College where he worked under his old high school offensive coordinator, Stan Hill.
The offensive coordinator merry-go-round has followed him to Southern Miss since he landed there in the spring of 2018. He worked his first season under Shannon Dawson, who was later hired by Houston. Abraham seemed to click well in 2019 with Buster Faulkner, but he left recently to join the Georgia staff as an offensive analyst.
That leaves USM’s Jay Hopson, a defensive-minded head coach, looking for a man who can run his offense and help Abraham reach his potential in the final season of his college career.
The offensive scheme hasn’t been that different for Abraham from year to year, but it’s hard to keep up momentum when you’re going from coach to coach. Every offensive coordinator comes with his own language and approach to the offense, putting Abraham in a position each year to learn new terminology.
His father, Michael, put it best this week when he told the Sun Herald his son is “becoming multilingual.”
There’s a good chance Hopson will turn to an offensive coordinator who isn’t that familiar to USM fans. While he has mostly hired defensive assistants who have worked with him in the past, Dawson and Faulkner had never been on the same staff as Hopson previously.
Who is the next USM coordinator?
Which direction Hopson goes at offensive coordinator remains to be seen with Faulkner’s departure seeming to catch most by surprise.
A report by FootballScoop.com indicated that Hopson is inclined to hire an offensive coordinator from outside the program, but co-offensive coordinator/receivers coach Scotty Walden should get serious consideration for the job. At the age of 26, he was the youngest head football coach in the NCAA when he took over Div. III East Texas Baptist in 2016. He has been on the USM staff since 2017 and had co-offensive coordinator added to his title for the 2019 season.
Walden has play-calling experience on the Div. III level and would bring some continuity to the offense.
Whether Les Koenning gets a look this time around is unclear, but the veteran offensive coordinator and former USM running backs coach is a name worth mentioning. He might have been the offensive coordinator at USM during the 2019 season had he not been hired away a year ago by new Kansas head coach Les Miles.
Koenning’s stint at Kansas didn’t go well. He was fired six contests into the season with the offense averaging 22.8 points a game.
Even though Koenning, 60, may not be a sexy addition to the staff, he does have the experience that comes with stints as an offensive coordinator at Mississippi State, Texas A&M, Alabama, Houston, Duke, UAB and South Alabama.
Pressure builds for Jay Hopson
Hopson has already filled one spot on his staff on the defensive side with Tony Pecoraro rejoining the USM staff after serving as the team’s defensive coordinator in 2016 and 2017. He left to take on the same role at Florida Atlantic before becoming a defensive analyst at Kansas for the 2019 season.
With Tim Billings now serving as defensive coordinator/safeties coach, Pecoraro’s role on the staff is still to be determined. He fills the spot left vacant by the departure of co-defensive coordinator/linebackers coach Derek Nicholson, who is now on the Louisville staff.
With 14 starters returning, the 2019 season will be Hopson’s fifth as the USM head coach and the pressure is on to put together a team that will contend for a conference championship. Following a 7-6 season that ended with three consecutive defeats, USM is 28-22 and has yet to play in a conference title game under Hopson’s watch.
That makes Hopson’s hire at offensive coordinator a critical one. Abraham is back as a three-year starter, but there’s plenty to clean up in the spring. It will also be tough to replace the production lost by the decision of redshirt junior receiver Quez Watkins to enter the NFL Draft. In just 11 games this year, he caught 64 passes for 1,178 yards and six touchdowns. Replacing left tackle Drake Dorbeck and speedy running back De’Michael Harris are no small chores either.
This story was originally published January 30, 2020 at 4:00 AM.
