NCAA Football

Marshall’s Win Over NIU Shows Why Chuck Heater is the Best DC in Mid-Major Football

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By @papreps

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Sometime soon, expect Chuck Heater‘s phone to ring and on the other end will be a newly hired coach from a Power 5 school offering him the keys to his new defense.

After a couple of years at Marshall, Heater has proven to be the best defensive coordinator in mid-major college football, otherwise known as the Group of 5. Give him a couple of weeks to gameplan for an offense and chances are the plan will be a flawless one. That’s the biggest takeaway from Marshall’s 52-23 win over Northern Illinois in the Boca Raton Bowl on Tuesday night. His Thundering Herd defense was ranked in the top 20 all season before giving up 67 points in their last regular-season game to Western Kentucky, but that result has been the exception, rather than the norm, in Heater’s short time at Marshall and his history in general.

Heater is a national championship DC, having won the title at Florida in 2009 under current Ohio State coach Urban Meyer. When then-Florida offensive coordinator Steve Addazio took over as head coach at Temple, he took Heater with him and the latter led the 2011 Owls that finished third in the nation in scoring defense, behind only Alabama and LSU. At Temple that year, he guided the Owls to consecutive shutouts of FBS foes — the only time that happened in the Owls’ long history.

Now Heater is with another former Florida coach, Marshall head coach Doc Holliday, and the two turned out to be a point away from orchestrating an unbeaten season. Much of the credit goes to Heater, whose defense was ranked No. 7 nationally in holding opponents on third-down conversions (a .302 percentage, 31-of-202). Before Florida, one of Heater’s other impressive accomplishments was being secondary coach for the 12-0 national championship Notre Dame team of 1988. Before Heater arrived at Marshall, the Thundering Herd were ranked No. 119 out of 120 FBS teams at the time in scoring defense so he provided a quick fix.

Heater’s defense was never more impressive than it was against a high-octane NIU offense that owns a win over Northwestern of the Big 10 and helped the Huskies finish with an 11-3 record. The Thundering Herd contained NIU quarterback Drew Hare, not a small achievement since Hare came into the game as one of the top dual-threat quarterbacks in the country.

Heater has proven he’s the best DC in mid-major football and, if there’s a defense that needs to be fixed at a Power 5 school, they could not find a better handyman.

Mike Gibson is a writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @papreps , “Like” him on Facebook or add him to your network on Google.

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