For the second time in less than a week, an assistant football coach is leaving Northwestern for the NFL.
ESPN's Adam Rittenberg tweeted on Monday morning that the Denver Broncos are hiring NU running backs coach Lou Ayeni for the same role on new head coach Sean Payton's staff.
Ayeni follows in the footsteps of cornerbacks coach Ryan Smith, who left Northwestern last week to take the same role with the Arizona Cardinals on Feb. 22.
Ayeni's departure means that head coach Pat Fitzgerald will turn over half of his staff since the end of the 2022 season.
He hired David Braun as defensive coordinator, Christian Smith as defensive line coach and Armon Binns as wide receivers coach to replace three coaches he fired at the end of the season: Jim O'Neil, Marty Long and Dennis Springer, respectively.
Now, Fitzgerald is looking for coaches to replace Ryan Smith, who spent just one season in Evanston, as well as Ayeni. That means that five of the Wildcats' 10 assistant coaches next fall will be in their first year on staff.
While this degree of staff upheaval is extraordinary, it's not entirely surprising after Northwestern finished the 2022 season 1-11, the program's worst mark in 33 years. The Wildcats have gone 4-20 since winning the Big Ten West and finishing the 2020 season ranked 10th in the nation, so some kind of change was certainly warranted.
Three of the five changes came as the result of firings, but it's certainly ironic that, after years of stability, two Wildcat assistants got tapped for promotions to the pro level after the worst stretch of Northwestern football in decades.
Ayeni's departure leaves Fitzgerald with a big hole to fill. His work with Northwestern's running backs drew praise, but he also served as the program's recruiting coordinator. He was a dynamic recruiter and personality, and his status as a former Wildcat player gave him instant credibility with high school prospects.
The Wildcats' just-completed 2023 recruiting class was ranked 45th in the nation, according to Rivals, the highest of Fitzgerald's 17-year tenure. It was a remarkable achievement for a program that has won just two of its last 18 Big Ten games.
Ayeni also recruited the Houston area for the Wildcats, a particularly fertile ground that produced many Northwestern stars over the years, including Venric Mark and Paddy Fisher. Northwestern signed three prospects in the 2023 class from the Houston area.
A former running back who was a member of Northwestern's 2000 Big Ten co-champions, Ayeni joined Fitzgerald's staff in 2018 after four years at Iowa State. He also coached at Toledo for four years and began his career as a graduate assistant at Northwestern in 2008-09.
Northwestern's coaching staff, which once went seven consecutive years without any changes, has now seen an almost complete turnover since 2018. Only Fitzgerald and safeties coach Matt MacPherson have been at NU for more than five years.
