Report: FAU expected to fire Tom Herman

FAU will reportedly be making a head coaching change in-season.

Per On3’s Pete Nakos, Florida Atlantic will be firing Tom Herman. With that, Chad Lunsford, their associate head coach, special teams coordinator, and tight ends coach, will be taking over as the interim for the Owls.

“FAU is set to fire head coach Tom Herman, a source tells @On3sports,” Nakos tweeted earlier this morning. “Chad Lunsford will be interim head coach for final two games. @mzenitz first.”

FAU would be paying a buyout of $4.1 million to move on from Herman.

This comes after Herman had recently been in search of an offensive coordinator job somewhere in the Power Four per Nakos.

Through two seasons in Boca Raton, Herman posted a record of 6-16 with a 3-11 mark in the AAC. That includes a current mark this season of 2-8 while being winless through six games and dead-last because of that during conference play in the American.

Herman was previously a head coach for two seasons at Houston and four at Texas over the final half-decade in the 2020s. He went 54-22 in those other two stints to post a total record of 60-38 (.612) in leading those three programs. All of his teams with the Cougars and Longhorns were ranked at some point in the AP Poll and each of them went to a bowl game where they had a postseason record of 5-1. However, that didn’t happen at Florida Atlantic with them having just the six wins total through not even two full years.

Herman was also previously an offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Ohio State, Iowa State, Rice, and Texas State from 2005 through 2014. He also spent a season as an offensive analyst with the Chicago Bears in the NFL in 2021.

Herman would now be available to take another job, specifically an apparent one as a coordinator, elsewhere with this decision. FAU will also evidently now be looking for a new head coach after reports of this firing to start this week.