Northwestern completed its coaching staff shuffling on Saturday with the addition of cornerbacks coach Ryan Smith.
Smith, who comes to Evanston from Virginia Tech, in effect replaces the vacancy left by tight ends coach Bob Heffner, who retired at the end of the 2021 season.
Head coach Pat Fitzgerald added tight ends to special teams coach Jeff Genyk’s duties. Smith comes in to coach cornerbacks, leaving Matt MacPherson to coach safeties. MacPherson, who also holds an assistant head coach title, previously coached both cornerbacks and safeties as the defensive backs coach.
Smith’s hiring was first reported by Pete Thamel of Yahoo! Sports.
After playing cornerback at William & Mary, Smith has had coaching stops at UTSA and Penn State as a graduate assistant, and then Elon (cornerbacks), James Madison (safeties) and Virginia Tech (cornerbacks) as an assistant.
Smith, and the rest of defensive coordinator Jim O’Neil’s staff, has their work cut out for them. Northwestern, whose recent success was predicated on strong defense, is coming off of one of its worst defensive seasons of Fitzgerald’s 16-year tenure.
The Wildcats finished 102nd in the nation in total defense (429.8 ypg) in 2021. They saw their points allowed per game almost double from 2020 to 2021, from 15.9 to 29.0 points per game. More applicable to Smith, the Wildcats tumbled from first to 70th in the country in pass-efficiency defense.
While many fans were hoping for more substantial coaching changes after an ugly 3-9 season, there is a lot of like about Smith’s hiring: he’s young, he’s a strong recruiter and he has no previous ties to Northwestern.
You can see a definite trend toward youth on Fitzgerald’s staff in his recent years. Smith, who just graduated from William & Mary in 2014, just turned 30 and is less than half of Heffner’s age. In the last two years, Fitzgerald has replaced offensive coordinator Mick McCall (in his 60s) with Mike Bajakian (40s), and defensive coordinator Mike Hankwitz (70s) with O’Neil (40s).
Fitzgerald is retooling his staff to be a younger one that will better relate to players. It also comes in handy in recruiting. Smith will be pitching players whose shoes he was in about a dozen years ago.
Smith is a rising star in the coaching game. Just five years ago, he was a grad assistant at Penn State. Three years ago, he was coaching cornerbacks at an FCS program. In 2020, he was named to 247Sports’ 30 Under 30 list of rising college football coaches. He was also one of two coaches that new Virginia Tech coach Brent Pry was expected to keep on his staff in Blacksburg.
Looking at the comments from Virginia Tech fans and media on message boards and social media, Smith was seen as a strong recruiter. He played and coached in Virginia and has strong recruiting tries in the talent-rich DMV area. In Virginia Tech’s 2022 recruiting class he landed in a pair of DBs from Maryland.
Lastly, Smith is an important hire because he has no previous connection to Northwestern, which shows that Fitzgerald strayed from his typical MO when it comes to hiring staff members. Smith will offer a new perspective to a defensive staff that could use one.
MacPherson has been with Fitzgerald for the head man’s entire career, while defensive line coach Marty Long came aboard in 2008. More recent hires like linebackers coach Tim McGarigle and O’Neil either played or coached at Northwestern.
Some of the coaches Smith has worked for include Larry Coker at UTSA, James Franklin at Penn State and Justin Fuente at Virginia Tech.
