Coaching Carousel: Lincoln Riley, James Franklin and Mike Elko nail pivotal coordinator hires

It hasn’t exactly been the silliest of seasons. Unlike recent years, the head coaching carousel didn’t go crazy this cycle, with Texas A&M the lone marquee opening.

But there are still all sorts of assistant coaching dominos falling — with many, many more to come over the next six weeks — and three programs that needed to nail pivotal coordinator hires sure look like they have.

On paper, anyways.   

Both Lincoln Riley and James Franklin entered the offseason tasked with making among the most critical hires of their head coaching careers. Definitely for Riley. Arguably for Franklin. 

Well, kudos gentleman. 

Coming off a disappointing 7-5 season at USC, Riley spent a month evaluating candidates to fix the Trojans’ leaky defense and he landed on a coordinator who happened to already live in town. 

Plucking UCLA defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn was a strong hire for USC. In just one season in Westwood, Lynn, only 34 with mostly NFL experience, turned a bad Bruins defense (90th in scoring, 74th in yards per play) into a Top 20 unit nationally in both categories.  

UCLA had the best defense in the Pac-12 in 2023, and Lynn was able to both create havoc (league-high in sacks and TFLs) while limiting explosive plays (just 33 plays over 20 yards, fewest in the Pac-12, compared to 68 allowed by USC). 

That’s been a foreign concept for most all of Lincoln Riley’s teams. Perhaps not anymore. While there’s some uncertainty to Lynn’s recruiting acumen, there’s no questioning his ability to coach and teach fundamentals. That’s paramount for a Trojans defense that couldn’t tackle, was constantly misaligned and lacked physicality. 

Lynn won’t single-handedly solve all of USC’s issues, but his hire is a step in the right direction for Riley as the program, transitions to the Big Ten. It’ll be a process at USC, and there will still be growing pains to come, but he had to get a solid hire right first. And I think he did.  

The next steps are adding more talent to the defensive roster and truly embracing (and simply giving lip service) to changing the way USC practices and preaches physicality. 

As for Franklin, he was in the market for another offensive coordinator after moving on from Mike Yurcich — the third OC he’s canned as Penn State’s head coach but his first midseason firing.  Franklin aimed to land an “offensive CEO” like he had when Joe Moorehead was running the Nittany Lions’ unit in 2016-17, and he found just that by nabbing Kansas’ Andy Kotelnicki. 

Kotelnicki might not be a household name, but he’s a helluva offensive coach — especially considering the offensive personnel he’s had to work with throughout his career. 

The Jayhawks had to play three different QBs in 2023, and yet they still averaged 7.01 yards per play — No. 8 nationally and better than the likes of Oklahoma, Texas and Ohio State. They averaged 36 points per game in 2022, and 33.6 this past year.

Kotelnicki helped develop Jalon Daniels into an all-conference quarterback, and he has a system that thrives on creativity, misdirection and mailability. Kansas’ offenses were fun (hello trick plays and funky formations), explosive (Top 30 nationally) and efficient (13th nationally in third downs). 

That all should be music to Nittany Lions fans’ ears after watching PSU’s plodding offenses the last two seasons. Penn State just went 10-2, yet the season felt like a failure because the Nittany Lions couldn’t muster much of anything offensively in their biggest two games against Michigan and Ohio State. When Franklin fired Yurcich after the loss to the Wolverines, Penn State ranked dead last among all Power 5 teams in explosive plays over 20 yards (25).

That shouldn’t happen with a quarterback with as much potential as Drew Allar. Not with two tailbacks as dynamic as Kaytron Allen and Nick Singleton. 

Ideally, Kotelnicki can maximize those strengths. Penn State still needs upgrades on the perimeter, but from Wisconsin-Whitewater to Buffalo to Kansas, Kotelnicki has found a way to get guys open. 

Franklin whiffed on his last two OC hires (Kirk Ciarrocca was even worse in 2020), but grabbing Lance Leipold’s longtime lieutenant was a shrewd move that should improve the program as it looks to breakthrough in 2024. 

Mike Elko makes his first big hire

News dropped Wednesday that Texas A&M is expected to hire Kansas State’s Collin Klein as the Aggies’ offensive coordinator under new head coach Mike Elko. 

Talk about a good match. 

Klein turned down advances from Notre Dame and others a year ago, but this is an opportunity too good to pass up. The former Wildcats quarterback has been a coordinator for just two seasons, but he guided an offense that won the Big 12 by playing multiple quarterbacks in 2022 and then actually got better this fall despite losing star tailback Deuce Vaughn to the NFL. 

Under Klein, Will Howard emerged as one of the best QBs in the conference this fall, and now he’s seen as one of the top available options in the transfer portal with interest from USC, Nebraska and others. 

After years of a rudderless attack under Jimbo Fisher, Klein will coach an offense tailored to the personnel’s strengths. Texas A&M has been terrible at scoring red zone touchdowns the last three seasons, and Kansas State just finished No. 1 nationally in that very metric in 2023. 

Klein will have all sorts of talent to work with in College Station, as the Aggies return former 5-star quarterback Conner Weigman and a host of blue-chip receivers and tailbacks. Klein coach a physical brand of football that suits Elko’s ethos, but it will still be an offense that embraces the modern elements of the sport. 

It’s critical that a defensive-first head coach gets his inaugural OC hire right. Just ask Will Muschamp. Klein hasn’t coached a game yet, but the pairing with Elko makes all the sense in the world.