Ole Miss hires Weis Jr. as OC
A quick look at some staff changes for the Rebels
Hope everyone is having a good week. We’ve got a new podcast out with former Ole Miss recruiting specialist Weldon Rotenberg discussing the Charlie Weis Jr. hire, previewing the matchup with Baylor and more. Check that out here or anywhere you get podcasts.
We’ve got a lot to discuss today. Buckle up.
Kiffin hires Weis Jr. as OC
Lane Kiffin turned to a familiar face to replace departing offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby. The second-year head coach tabbed Charlie Weis Jr. to be the program’s next offensive coordinator. Weis is 28 years old and spent the last two seasons as the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at South Florida under head coach Jeff Scott. Weis was Kiffin’s offensive coordinator at Florida Atlantic for two seasons prior to that. This is an interesting hire on a number of different levels. Here are some thoughts that immediately came to mind.
Weis is less than two years older than me. He’s now been named offensive coordinator at three different FBS programs and is now (presumably) a newly-minted millionaire. I write a newsletter, spit takes on a podcast and sell grease during the day. I’ll let the people decide who is more successful.
In all seriousness, I don’t really think age is a factor in any of this, not that anyone is suggesting it is. Young is all the rage in football these days, all the way up to the game’s highest level. Remember the NFL hiring cycle three years ago when anyone in their mid 30s who peed next to Sean McVay got a head coaching gig? I do too. Weis’ resumé speaks for itself. He is qualified for the job. Kiffin clearly thinks highly of him. He made Weis the youngest coordinator in college football history in 2018 when Weis joined Kiffin’s staff in Boca Raton at the ripe age of 24.
To me, this hire makes sense. I was a little surprised at the timing of it. I didn’t think Ole Miss would make a hire until after the Sugar Bowl. There was no need to rush the hire, and I am not saying Kiffin did, I was just a little surprised how quickly it all played out based on what I had previously heard. When the news broke that Lebby was departing for Oklahoma, there were three or four names that immediately came to mind that made sense for Kiffin to pursue. Weis was one of them, along with Kendall Briles and Graham Harrell. But as I told you at the time, Kiffin is so much more connected in the industry than Ole Miss’s previous two coaches were, I basically gave it a 50 percent chance he’d hire someone no one really thought of as a candidate. This is just a guess, but I doubt Weis was Kiffin’s first choice, but I bet he was pretty close to the top of the list. I have no clue if Kiffin pursued either of the other two aforementioned possible candidates, but I don’t think he got too far down on the list before settling on Weiss. Will this hire be successful? Who the hell knows, but it makes sense on paper.
If you haven’t already, I imagine many of you will look at USF’s offense the last two seasons and wonder what the hell Kiffin is thinking. The Bulls were the third worst offense in the American Athletic Conference this season and ranked the same in 2020. I’m not going to try to convince any of you that statistic is completely irrelevant, but I am not sure it’s the best indicator of how competency. USF has only had a football program since 1997. The program peaked under Willie Taggart in 2016 with an 11-win season and has been on the decline over the last four years. Scott didn’t exactly inherit a great situation from Charlie Strong two years ago and took over in a year that saw the sport riddled by a global pandemic. The Bulls haven’t landed a recruiting class inside the top 60 since 2014 under Willie Taggart. The previous two recruiting classes before Scott took over the program (including the 2020 class as he took over) were 78th and 110 after about a five-year run in the low 60s.
Anyway, I’m not telling you Weis was working with nothing nor am I telling you he’s great recruiter. I genuinely have no idea. I’m just saying his situation at USF doesn’t seem like a completely fair gauge of his abilities. That’s not spin, either. The little I have been able to gather on him makes it sound like he’s a decent recruiter. Ole Miss is going to need a hell of a lot better than decent, but again, I don’t really know how to evaluate his recruiting abilities at a pair of directional Florida schools. He had to start a true freshman at quarterback this year. That seems suboptimal. Jordan McCloud started as a sophomore for the Bulls in 2020 and then transferred to Arizona. Kiffin seemed to think he was a decent recruiter when he hired him in 2018.
In all seriousness, I don’t know what make of the hire based on Weis’ previous stops and I am not going to use that limited history to declare that the hire sucks or is a great fit. I haven’t a clue.
I will say this, Weis is clearly decently regarded within the industry. His first job out of college was as an offensive analyst at Alabama. If Nick Saban gives someone their first job, I tend to think that there might be something to it. Weldon had a terrific note on the podcast of a story (legend of sorts) he and other recruiting staffers heard about Weis meeting with Saban in 2015. What was supposed to be a relatively brief meeting allegedly turned into a multi-hour football nerd fest. If that story is halfway true, capturing Nick Saban’s attention for that long isn’t exactly easy to do. Here’s a 2018 story from CBS on Kiffin hiring Weis at 24. Kiffin called him a prodigy with a photographic memory. It seems like somehow every young offensive mind in football over the last half decade has a ‘photographic memory.’ But the point is that he is highly-regarded by Kiffin and Saban thought highly enough of him to to hire him at the ripe age of 22.
I don’t know what the offense will look like next year. I didn’t watch a ton of 2-10 USF this year. I think it’s an impossible question to answer and anyone who tries to tell you something concretely is likely full of shit. It’ll depend partly on personnel, too. Ole Miss will have a lot of new on the offensive side of the ball next year, including the quarterback. Kiffin is pretty good at being malleable in terms of fitting his scheme to his personnel (see Dontario Drummond and Kenny Yeboah). But generally speaking, I imagine it will look pretty similar to what you have seen the last two years. Kiffin loves the Briles offensive tree. And even though Weis isn’t a Briles guy per say, his offense looks like it has similar base concepts from what a saw during like 90 minutes of YouTubing earlier today and I would be shocked if Kiffin had some sort of epiphany and elected to go with a drastic change in how his program runs offense.
I also believe Weis will have a pretty large amount of autonomy when it comes to play calling, just like Lebby did. I have no information to base that off of, it just seems like Kiffin has decided he has too much else to manage to have a heavy hand in play calling. I say that while also realizing Kiffin handled a lot more of the play calling responsibilities when these two worked together at FAU. Will there be a little more guidance and steering? Maybe. But I would guess Weis is the primary play caller.
In 2019, FAU ranked 14th nationally in total offense, largely thanks to the running game. Devin Singletary was the primary back that year. He’s in the midst of one hell of an NFL career so far. Kiffin and Weis also helped produce a Mackey award winner in Harrison Bryant in 2019.
Lastly, I’ll reiterate what I said at the top. I think this hire makes sense. Kiffin clearly thinks highly of Weis and the two have worked together before. That matters. There are things in Weis’ resume that would lead you to believe he’s up for the task. There are also reasons for doubt. I view this pretty much as a clean slate for Weis. What I mean by that is that this is his first major challenge in college football. He will run an SEC offense for the first time ever. He’s armed with four years of G5 coordinator experience. Will it work? I don’t know. What I do know is that Kiffin has a pretty good track record when it comes to making hires and he moved relatively quickly on this one.
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Love reportedly headed to Oregon
On3’s Matt Zenitz reported earlier today that Ole Miss strength coach Wilson Love is leaving Oxford for the same position on Dan Lanning’s staff at Oregon. This is a significant loss for Ole Miss. There is no way around that. Love was a seismic upgrade from the Rebels’ previous strength and conditioning staff and is very good at his job by all accounts. This might shock you, but I am not a weightlifting savant. But when judging Love’s performance at Ole Miss, I revert back to a brief conversation I had with Neal in 2019 (I think). For about four years under the previous strength staff, Ole Miss didn’t have a lot of bodies that changed. Guys came in as freshman and didn’t really look at ton different by the time they were juniors and senior years. This is somewhat subjective, but I believe that have changed since Love took over. There are a handful of guys that just look different, in a good way. Love is a professional and good at what he does. He will be difficult to replace.
I have no idea who Kiffin will hire. But if you want to know. You should join RebelGrove.com because I guarantee you Neal and Chase will have it before anyone else.
Current Deal: For being a loyal subscriber, show him proof of subscription and you’ll get a 16 oz. prime strip for $15 and a pack of sausage for $5. That’s a hell of a dinner on the grill for 20 bucks. Go check him out, it’s the best place in Mississippi to get meat and Oxford is lucky to have it.
On the horizon
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Was a little short on time today. I’ll have more on the Sugar Bowl and various things in a newsletter tomorrow
Sugar Bowl recap show on Sunday
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