The Larry Fedora Era at Southern Miss will officially come to an end tonight in Hawaii. It wasn’t always a smooth ride, but no one can really argue that the USM program isn’t in a better place now than it was when Fedora took over in 2008.
And so the Ellis Johnson Era will begin in earnest next week. No small amount of trepidation accompanied the build up to Johnson’s introductory press conference on Tuesday. Despite the former South Carolina defensive coordinator’s name being among the first associated with the job following Fedora’s move to North Carolina, and his hiring seemingly growing inevitable as flashier names dropped out of the running or took other jobs, no groundswell of support ever materialized on his behalf. Concerns were raised over Johnson’s age, his lack of head coaching experience, and some derogatory comments he had made about the hurry-up no-huddle spread offense that had brought USM so much recent success.
Most fans seemed to want current offensive coordinator Blake Anderson to get the job, “to preserve the momentum” Fedora had created. Others called for a head coach with previous experience, like Louisiana Tech’s Sonny Dykes or Louisiana-Lafayette’s Mark Husdpeth. And others said that if Southern Miss was going to settle for a coordinator, they should at least pursue younger, sexier hires, like Gus Malzahn or Kirby Smart.
And according to reports, many of those avenues were explored through the hiring process. Yet all roads led back the search committee back to where it began…Ellis Johnson. But were all those concerns legitimate? Is he really cut out for this job?
First, let’s just get this out of the way: Johnson is Southern college football royalty. The man has spent the last 20 years carving out a niche for himself as the premier defensive guru in the South (with successful coordinator stops at Southern Miss, Clemson, Alabama, Mississippi State, and South Carolina). And being a guy who personally loves defense and was often irked by Fedora’s disregard for that side of the ball, I like that.
To me, the real concern is his age. People freaking out over him coming in and “killing” the spread was nonsense to me. For one thing, I’m possessed of no magical thinking regarding the spread. It’s an offense. They all have keys a defense can read to stop them, and they all don’t work if you don’t have the right players to run them. And secondly, just because a defensive coordinator might hate to play the spread, that doesn’t mean the same guy wouldn’t run the spread as a head coach. So I was not the least bit surprised when Johnson announced that the offense would remain “pretty close” to the same. (In fact, I’d wager that was a requirement of him getting the job.)
And it’s not even so much the fact of his age (at 60, he falls in the same age bracket as Nick Saban and Les Miles, two guys who’ve remained pretty successful at an “advanced” age), but how he’ll choose to manage himself. It’s hard to be a successful coach in any position at any level in modern college football, but it’s even harder to win consistently at the mid-major level. Fedora won at Southern Miss because he was willing to grind, in the film room, on the recruiting trail, wherever. He and his staff put in ungodly hours to get the program on track. Will Johnson be willing to do the same?
To his credit, Johnson came equipped to deal with the question of his age at his introductory presser. He turned the room on it’s ear when he responded to one such question by saying, “I’ve had no complaints from (his wife) Caroline.” It took a while for order to be restored to the proceedings following that quip, and nobody challenged him on it again. So at least he recognizes it’s a potential issue. But you can bet opposing coaches won’t be quite so polite when the recruiting dead period ends in January.
Ultimately, I think Johnson will succeed or fail based on the staff he hires. Saban and Miles both do an excellent job of filling their staffs with young, hungry coaches who can relate to the kids and are willing to grind on the recruiting trail to make their names. If Johnson can do the same (and if anyone has the right connections to find those guys, it’s him), this thing just might work.
For our thoughts on previous coaching hires please visit these links:
Bob Davie, Charlie Weis, Gus Malzahn, Hugh Freeze, Kevin Sumlin, Larry Fedora, Rich Rodriguez, Urban Meyer
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