Bates departure will continue shuffling of NU's staff

All those Northwestern fans who have been clamoring for changes on head coach Pat Fitzgerald’s coaching staff sure got their wish this year. Though not in the way they could have imagined.

Yahoo’s Pete Thamel was the first to report on Saturday that Northwestern linebackers coach Randy Bates would be named defensive coordinator at Pittsburgh. Bates’ move would be the second coach to leave the program in the last two weeks and necessitate hiring the third new coach to join the program.

For a coaching staff that has remained intact since 2011, this represents a tsunami of change. And while fans were mostly urging changes to the offensive staff, it’s the defensive side of the ball that will undergo the most upheaval.

Let’s review what has transpired since Northwestern’s 24-23 win over Kentucky in the Music City Bowl gave Fitzgerald his third 10-win seasons over the last six years.

Cornerbacks coach Jerry Brown retired after 25 years as an assistant coach. That opened one new job on Fitzgerald’s staff. The second opening came this month, when the NCAA allowed schools to add a 10th assistant coach to their staffs.

Fitzgerald hired former Wildcat players Louis Ayeni and Tim McGarigle to fill those vacancies. But he moved a couple pieces around so it wasn’t a one-to-one swap.

Ayeni, who played both running back and safety during an injury-plagued career at Northwestern from 1999-2003, will coach running backs and be the team’s recruiting coordinator. Both of those jobs were previously held by Matt MacPherson. He was announced as the new cornerbacks coach, replacing Brown, and for the newly created role of special teams coordinator. McGarigle, a former NU middle linebacker, was named the new safeties coach.

Then came Saturday’s bombshell that almost no one saw coming. Bates has been part of Northwestern’s staff since 2006, when Fitzgerald was promoted to the big chair and Bates took over as linebackers coach. Bates has been a coordinator before, at Louisiana Tech, but he was not on the radar as a potential candidate at Pittsburgh, said PanterLair.com publisher Chris Peak.

So what will Fitzgerald do to fill Bates’ shoes? The most likely scenario is moving McGarigle to linebackers coach. The all-time FBS tackles leader not only played middle linebacker at NU and briefly in the NFL, but he coached linebackers at Western Michigan from 2012-15 and at Illinois in 2016. So that seems like a natural fit.

That would leave Fitzgerald looking for a safeties coach. Or, he could make MacPherson the defensive backs coach – covering both corners and safeties, as Brown did – and then hire another coach as a full-time special teams coordinator. Or, he could opt to do more internal shuffling and bring in a coach on the offensive side. There are a lot of possibilities.

Bates was also one of Northwestern’s best recruiters. He most notably covered the Houston area that has produced a steady flow of talent to Evanston, including former star running back/kick returner Venric Mark and current Freshman All-America middle linebacker Paddy Fisher. Ayeni, noted as a dynamic recruiter himself, will most likely take over the Houston territory from Bates.

One thing is for sure: for the first time in seven seasons, there will be substantive changes to the coaching roster on NUSports.com.