Urban Meyer is one heck of a football coach as he has already won two national titles in his time at the University on Florida. Even though he has moved to a new university to be their head football coach, he still remains the same Meyer that was a thorn at Notre Dame’s side in his time at Florida.
It all began following the 2004 season when the then Utah head coach decided to go to Florida instead of his so called “dream job” at Notre Dame. Meyer had been an assistant for Lou Holtz for a single season in 1996 and then was retained by Bob Davie when he took over the head coaching duties in South Bend.
In Meyer’s time in Gainesville, he and his assistants, mainly Greg Mattison, now at Michigan, used some questionable methods to poach some Irish commits at the time and get them to the Florida campus. Some of them were top defensive talent that Charlie Weis desperately needed at the time.
Last season, it looked as though Meyer had made amends with the university that gave him his first real profile job. He was a speaker at Brian Kelly’s coaching clinic and even said some nice things about the university while he was a commentator at ESPN. That all changed as soon as Meyer became the Buckeyes head man.
Reports yesterday came out that Irish running backs coach Tim Hinton decided to leave Notre Dame for a role on Meyer’s staff. Now numerous of reports have come out today that ND offensive line coach and run game coordinator Ed Warriner is going to Ohio State as well to join Hinton.
To deal with the sweeping changes to his staff, Kelly announced on Monday that Chuck Martin has been moved to the offensive coordinator’s role replacing Charley Molnar. Martin ran the offense at Grand Valley State, so he has experience in the role with some success even though the move from coaching the secondary isn’t common.
In other moves, Bob Diaco is now an assistant head coach, Kerry Cooks has been promoted to co-defensive coordinator, intern Scott Booker is now a full-time assistant and extensions have been out to all the assistant coaches remaining on the staff.
Like I said yesterday, Hinton leaving makes sense. He is a graduate of Ohio State and has lots of ties to the state of Ohio and Meyer himself, but Warriner is shocking, especially when it appears a lateral move. Was he upset that Kelly passed him over for OC’s job? That seems like the only logical reason to why he is leaving.
Warriner is a big loss though. He was one of the reasons why the offensive line played so well and why the run game was dramatically improved this season. He was also a big asset in the recruiting game and there are several Irish commits who are not happy that he is leaving, but all of them are expected to remain committed.
Kelly will have to add at least one more full-time his assistant to his staff in order to respond to the losses that he has suffered over the last two seasons.
The Irish head coach now knows what he is dealing with in the head coach at Ohio State. A man who is one of a heck football coach, but has extremely questionable tactics to winning battles against his former dream school.
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