Northwestern has filled one of the remaining coaching vacancies on its staff right as spring practice got started.
On Tuesday morning, the first day of spring football, ESPN's Pete Thamel tweeted that LaMarcus Hicks will be hired as the Wildcats' new cornerbacks coach.
Hicks is the fourth coaching hire made by head coach Pat Fitzgerald since the end of Northwestern's 2022 season. Like the three before him, Hicks is young, comes from a lower-level program and has no apparent ties to the Wildcat program. He is also the third hire who is African-American.
Hicks had previously served in the same capacity at Utah State since the start of the 2022 season. Prior to that, he made stops as the cornerbacks coach at North Texas and Eastern Michigan. He was the safeties coach at Jackson State and the defensive backs coach at Bowling Green, too.
Before getting into coaching, Hicks had an impressive career as a player. He played his college ball at Iowa State and was named a first-team All Big XII safety his senior year, when he nabbed a conference-best five interceptions. He would go on to sign with the Detroit Lions and play two years in the NFL, making 12 tackles in 12 career appearances.
Hicks comes to Northwestern to replace Ryan Smith, who left Evanston to take the cornerbacks coach role with the Arizona Cardinals after only one season with the Wildcats. The three other coaches are replacing men that Fitzgerald fired after a disastrous 1-11 2022 season.
Fitzgerald's hires this offseason have all come from programs below the Power Five level. Hicks comes from Utah State of the Mountain West. New wide receivers coach Armon Binns (Youngstown State), new defensive coordinator David Braun (North Dakota State) and new defensive line coach Christian Smith (South Dakota State) all come to NU by way of the FCS.
All four new coaches are younger than their predecessors in the role, which should help them better relate to the high school and college transfer prospects they will be recruiting. Three of the four new staffers are also Black, which makes sense given that African-Americans represent the largest demographic in Division I football (48%, according to an NCAA report).
These new coaches mark a notable change in Fitzgerald's hiring strategy. Previously, Fitzgerald put an emphasis on hiring coaches with NFL experience on their resume, like offensive coordinator Mike Bajakian, offensive line coach Kurt Anderson and previous defensive coordinator Jim O'Neil. Many of them also had played or coached at Northwestern, like O'Neil, special teams coach Jeff Genyk, linebackers coach Tim McGarigle and outgoing running backs coach Lou Ayeni.
But Fitzgerald took a different tack with this group after the Wildcats won just four of 24 games over the last two seasons. He is seemingly looking for coaches who have worked at other schools and will bring new ideas into his program.
It remains to be seen whether or not the focus on young, up-and-coming outsiders will produce more wins, but a change in a on-field results never would have come without a change in strategy from the head man first.
Fitzgerald still has one more hire to make: he needs a new running backs coach as Ayeni left to take the same job with the Denver Broncos. Once he makes that hire, five of his 10 assistant coaches will be in their rookie seasons in Evanston.
