The Illinois Coaching Staff Search

FT35 said:

I know it has little to do with Miller since he's only been there a year, but it's interesting how Wyoming has managed to land 1 or 2 Illinois kids in a number of their recent classes. They landed 6 Illinois kids in their 2017 recruiting class.

Here's the recruiting profile for Miller:

Bart Miller All Time Recruits

247sports.com

This may not tell the whole story, however, since he could have been the lead recruiter for a number of guys who aren't listed here. I wonder if he was the lead recruiter for Jovan Marsh or Jack Walsh? We're obviously looking to land better recruits, but it would at least show that he's had a presence in this state in terms of recruiting.

This state produces a lot of quality linemen, so hopefully we can start landing some of the top OL prospects in Illinois. You can see that our OL has been made up primarily of Illinois guys in recent years and a number of them have done quite well.

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ChiefGritty said:

Looks like 300k at East Carolina, and 200k at Louisiana Tech.

The story of Petersen's career was that he was part of the rise of Marshall from 1-AA backwater to intimidating mid-major FBS school first as a player (starting QB) then as an assistant coach all the way up to getting to OC gig in 1998 (the year after Randy Moss left) and won the MAC that year. He parlayed that into a spot on Glen Mason's Minnesota staff (probably a big salary/prestige bump in those days), and he gained and lost playcalling duties there, and then after getting fired with Mason caught on as the QB coach for Gene Chizik's Iowa State, who were absolutely loathesome offensively and none of whom were brought to Auburn (Gus Malzahn got the offensive reins there).

The next year he was a non-coordinator at FCS South Dakota, still just age 43. Hanging by a thread in the profession.

Doc Holliday, a West Virginian through and through, got the Marshall job the next season, and carved out a gussied-up AHC-type role for Petersen as the well-liked former QB and assistant there. A lifeline.

Petersen obviously wanted to call plays, so he parlayed that into the OC spot on Skip Holtz' new staff at Louisiana Tech. Essentially, 15 years later he was back where he had been in 1998 at Marshall.

In terms of any real analysis of what we are getting in Offensive Coordinator Tony Petersen, that's where the story starts. That first year he crashed what had been an excellent Air-Raid offense under Sonny Dykes (an offense that absolutely thrashed the first Beckman team at MS, remember that?), going from offense #18 to offense #115. But they built it, and by year 3 the offense and team were quite good.

That landed him the jump and big raise to East Carolina, which was just a tip to tail failure over three full years.

A year in a makework analyst job followed, and then the OC job on Shawn Clark's new staff (the third in three seasons there) at App State where the Satterfield/Drinkwitz good times more or less kept rolling along.

It's a workaday mid-major OC career. As I said before, there are 20 of these guys. Petersen pulled the golden ticket out of the chocolate bar somehow.

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WINTer said:

The weird thing about ECU, is that somehow he went from there to hopping on with a P5 program for year

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WINTer said:

most assistants are going to cycle through programs and positions. That's pretty much the life of a college assistant coach.

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ChiefGritty said:

These analyst roles are nothing jobs just eating tape for a token salary, basically just the coaching profession laundering donor money for its institutional benefit. A financial safety net for guys like Petersen who have paid their dues and are well-liked.

Mid-majors don't have those because they don't have the money.

Back in the day Petersen just would have been a volunteer assistant for his kid's high school while he looked for another job. In career terms it's exactly the same thing.

Getting the App State OC job speaks to a degree of credibility at that level of football, I want to be clear not to deny that, there is an element of compliment in the term "career duffer". But it's the correct term.


Absolutely true, though someone like Bart Miller keeps pushing upward. Randomly having Bret Bielema hand you the OL job as a 26 year old know-nothing is a stroke of good luck, being in the wrong place at the wrong time when the Tracy Claeys thing blew up for non-football reasons is a stroke of bad luck. But there he is again, on a great staff with a great head coach where the OL play has been terrific, getting a raise and a title bump to try and hang onto him for another couple years, because a P5 job is the step right in front of him.

Petersen lost that forward momentum in the early 2000's and when he got a nibble of it again he got depantsed at ECU. He had found his equilibrium point as a Sun Belt OC when the phone rang from Illinois.

It's just a gigantic reach of a hire. That is the simple, objective reality with even a passing layperson's understanding of the coaching profession. Any conclusions drawn from there are a matter of opinion, sure, but the record is right there in black and white.

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WINTer said:

it seems weird to only be 1 year removed from being "depantsed" and then get the OC job at a pretty good, right trajectory G5 program

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Pennsy said:

Which one of you is going to meet with Bielema to tell him this board does not approve of his OC hire? You certainly have plenty of historical ammo. Doesn't matter you never met him or heard how loud he can blow a whistle.

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WINTer said:

The 3 big name OCs don't exactly have stellar resumes either. Enos absolutely bombed at Miami, hence why he's not calling plays anywhere. Dooley has all of 1 year experience as an OC after bombing hard as a HC at Tennessee and having no previous OC experience. Helfrich has the best OC resume of those 3, but he's been pretty much always out west and has a very different offensive philosophy from BB. You can easily poke holes in nearly any coach's resume. The staff in it's entirety is going to tell us a lot. The OL hire seems very positive. He's young, has experience, gets results and has all the makings of a good recruiter, who also happens to have played high school football in Illinois. I assume he will have an experienced defensive staff with some guys he's worked with previously. Petersen seems like a guy that can fit in with any type of coaching staff, so I can see why BB chose him. Also, unless the money is astronomical, it's a non-issue. We aren't hiring a B1G HC for much less than 4 mil/year. We aren't giving the OC like 300k when the going rate is 500+.

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OC Tony Petersen said he and Bielema got to know each other when Bret was an assistant at Iowa and he was at Minnesota. Recruited Florida at the same time. Said they always thought they'd hook up on same staff.

Tony Petersen said he's fired up to work with QB Brandon Peters and watched him and Isaiah Williams on film today. Said he hopes to help Peters have his best year, like he did with Jeff Driskel at La Tech.

Tony Petersen said they'll be in shotgun at times and under center at times.

Tony Petersen said RBs Mike Epstein and Chase Brown impressed him when he watched the Nebraska game.

Tony Petersen pretty clearly saying his offense will be versatile.

"We're going to show a lot of eye candy on some stuff. It's going to be a modern-day type of spread look. But it's not going to be out of 10 personnel where we have four wide receivers out there."

https://twitter.com/jwerner247

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OL coach Bart Miller: "We're going to play a physical brand of football. ...We're going to change the line of scrimmage."

Bart Miller: "I want the meanest, toughest, nastiest dudes on the field. ...I think that's the only way to play the game."

Bart Miller is saying everything you want to hear from an OL coach who is going to recruit the state of Illinois.

First impression: Bart Miller is gonna be a good recruiter.

Bart Miller: Happy to see Kramer, Lowe and others (Palcho) come back. "I'm excited with what we have to work with here. I don't see it as a rebuild."

Bart Miller: "I want this to be an o-line school."

https://twitter.com/jwerner247

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Pennsy said:

Which one of you is going to meet with Bielema to tell him this board does not approve of his OC hire? You certainly have plenty of historical ammo. Doesn't matter you never met him or heard how loud he can blow a whistle.

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mhuml32 said:

If only there was an online message board where we could express our opinions knowing (1) that we could be completely wrong and (2) have absolutely no say on the process but we still want to express our thoughts as a means of conveying our fandom.

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Illiniblueorange said:

I totally understand what your saying but it seems like the same people are always beating the horse. Just started the healing process and the wound can not scab over before some pick it again.

I have always appreciated other peoples opinions but some don't let it go .

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Illinois Football: 4 reasons Tony Petersen is a home run hire for the Illini

Illinois football has tabbed Tony Petersen as the next offensive coordinator. Here are four reasons why this is a home run hire for the Illini.

writingillini.com

Dan said:

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the juiceman cometh said:

If you want pure, unadulterated, unearned optimism, may I suggest Rees Woodcock?

Illinois Football: 4 reasons Tony Petersen is a home run hire for the Illini

Illinois football has tabbed Tony Petersen as the next offensive coordinator. Here are four reasons why this is a home run hire for the Illini.

writingillini.com

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From 2007 up until now, Petersen has been hired by eight different teams for roughly the same position as offensive coordinator. If you are bad at your job, you aren’t as wanted as Petersen is on the job market.

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Illini in OC said:

View attachment 6962
... Be still my heart

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JFGsCoffeeMug said:

Regardless of how you feel about the hire, the above quote is some of the most insane spin on this situation that I can imagine.

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the juiceman cometh said:

If you want pure, unadulterated, unearned optimism, may I suggest Rees Woodcock?

Illinois Football: 4 reasons Tony Petersen is a home run hire for the Illini

Illinois football has tabbed Tony Petersen as the next offensive coordinator. Here are four reasons why this is a home run hire for the Illini.

writingillini.com

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ChiefGritty said:

It's absolutely pathetic that this passes for "positivity" and "optimism", especially when it directly contravenes everything Josh Whitman has said publicly about this process.

We have a top 5 assistant salary pool in the Big Ten (and money is basically all that matters), and I'm sorry, but Petersen does not have a good track record. He stepped up from the low-major level of college football to a bigger job at East Carolina and comprehensively failed at exactly the sort of establish-and-build job he's going to be asked to do at Illinois.

He had Gardner Minshew splitting time with someone called "Thomas Sirk" at ECU, and Minshew was totally average there, despite putting up video game numbers both before and after and being a genuine NFL talent.

It's an unimaginably weak hire for this position on this staff for this project for this money. That does NOT mean it can't end up "working", and it's wildly premature to extrapolate the hire to broader conclusions about the staff, but the objective facts of Petersen's resume are what they are. That saying "well, we're a pathetic embarrassing dumpster fire so we deserve to laughably overpay mediocrities to coach here" can be coded as being the loyal good fan is just beyond my comprehension, I do not get it.

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JFGsCoffeeMug said:

Regardless of how you feel about the hire, the above quote is some of the most insane spin on this situation that I can imagine.

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